Alexander Petrovich Sumarokov (1718 – 1777). The son of a general and an aristocrat. At the age of 14 he entered the Gentry Cadet Corps, opened in 1732 by the government of Anna Ioannovna. Art, including literature, occupied a significant place in the corpus. Sumarokov was the first to take up literary work professionally.
Sumarokov's life was extremely sad. He was a nervous man who reacted sharply to the surrounding savagery of morals; had extraordinary ideas about serving the Fatherland, honor, culture, virtue. He was the creator of a new type of drama, the first director, and theater director.
Sumarokov’s first poems are odes from 1739 in a brochure entitled: “To Her Imperial Majesty, the most merciful Empress Anna Ivanovna, the All-Russian autocrat, congratulatory odes on the first day of the new year 1740 from the cadet corps, composed through Alexander Sumarokov.
He was influenced by the work of Trediakovsky, and then Lomonosov, with whom he was friends. Late 40s - early. 50x – discrepancy with Lomonosov.
Sumarokov believed that his poetic activity was a service to society, a form of participation in the political life of the country. By political views he is a noble landowner. counted serfdom necessary, believed that the state was based on two classes - the peasantry and the nobility. Nevertheless, the nobleman, in his opinion, does not have the right to consider the peasants his property, to treat them as slaves. He must be the judge and commander of his vassals and has the right to receive food from them. Sumarokov believed that the tsar must obey the laws of honor embodied in state laws.
In January 1759, Sumarokov began publishing his own magazine, “The Hardworking Bee.” Published monthly, published in the Academy of Sciences. Published mainly by one person. In the eyes of the government, such a body of independent noble public opinion was undesirable, and the magazine had to be closed.
Being one of Nikita Panin’s friends, after the coup that brought Catherine the Second to power, Sumarokov was close to the palace and received support as a writer. However, by the end of the 60s he found himself in disgrace, because Catherine began to crack down on all kinds of freethinking. Sumarokov gradually made enemies for himself. There was also unhappy love in Sumarokov’s life. He fell in love with a simple girl - his serf, and married her. Relatives of Sumarokov's first wife began a process against him, demanding that his children from his second marriage be deprived of the rights. Although the case ended in Sumarokov’s favor, it caused damage to his health, he began to drink; He became so poor that when he died, there was no money even for a funeral. The writer's coffin was carried in their arms to the cemetery by actors from the Moscow Theater. Besides them, two people came to see him off.
As a poet and theorist, Sumarokov completed the construction of the style of classicism in Russia. The basis of Sumarokov’s concrete poetics is the requirement of simplicity, naturalness, clarity poetic language. Poetry should avoid the fantastic and vaguely emotional. Preaches simplicity in verse and prose.
Sumarokov polemicizes a lot with Lomonosov, does not agree with his grammar and word usage. Sometimes he turns directly to the analysis of Lomonosov’s works. Sumarokov considered changing the meaning of a word as a violation of grammatical correctness.
In 1747, Sumarokov published his first tragedy - “Khorev”, in next year- “Hamlet.” "Khorev" was installed in the cadet corps in 1949. A kind of cadet troupe was created that played at court. Her soul was Sumarokov. Later he was the director of the theater organized by F. Volkov. (see ticket about the tragedy)
Sumarokov wrote tragedies and comedies. He was a brilliant comedian, but he was soon surpassed in this by Fonvizin, Knyazhnin, and Kapnist. As an author of tragedies he was unsurpassed. In total, Sumarokov wrote 12 comedies: “Tresotinius”, “An Empty Quarrel” and “Monsters”, written in 1750. Then, after 14 years - “Dowry by Deception”, “Guardian”, “Reddy Man”, “Three Brothers Together”, “Poisonous”, “Narcissus”. Then three comedies from 1772 - “Cuckold by Imagination”, “Mother Companion to Daughter”, “Crazy Woman”. Sumarokov's comedies have minimal connection to the traditions of French classicism. All of his comedies are written in prose; none has the full volume and correct arrangement of the composition of the classical tragedy of the West in five acts. Eight comedies have one act, four have three. These are small plays, almost sideshows. Sumarokov very conditionally maintains three unities. There is no unity of action. In the first comedies there is a rudimentary plot in the form of a couple in love, who at the end get married. The composition of the comic characters in them is determined by the composition of the stable masks of Italian folk comedy. They are enlivened by Sumarokov’s language - lively, sharp, cheeky in its unvarnishedness.
The six comedies of 1764–1768 were noticeably different from the first three. Sumarokov switches to the type of comedy of characters. In each play, the focus is on one image, and everything else is needed either to shade it or to create a fiction of the plot. The undoubted masterpiece of Sumarokov’s entire comedic work is his comedy “Cuckold by Imagination.” (In general, I think there’s no need to go into much detail about the comedy, because we were mostly going through tragedy, so I think that’s enough.)
Sumarokov’s poetic creativity amazes with its diversity, richness of genres and forms. Considering himself the creator of Russian literature, Sumarokov sought to show his contemporaries and leave for his descendants examples of all types of literature. He wrote exceptionally a lot and, apparently, quickly. Sumarokov wrote songs, elegies, eclogues, idylls, parables (fables), satires, epistles, sonnets, stanzas, epigrams, madrigals, solemn, philosophical odes, etc. He also translated the Psalter.
In total, Sumarokov wrote 374 parables. It was he who discovered the fable genre for Russian literature. He borrowed a lot from La Fontaine. Sumarokov's parables are often topical, aimed at ridiculing specific disorders of the Russian public life his time. Sometimes they were very small in volume. The most important theme of the fables is the Russian nobility. The language of fables is lively, bright, interspersed with sayings and colloquial expressions... In the mid-18th century, the main direction in the development of fables was determined. 1st model: the fable is written in the middle style, Alexandrian verse. Moral story. 2nd model (Sumarokov model): offers mixed verse, elements of low style - a fable story. In Sumarokov’s satirical works one can feel bile, conceit, and scandalous temperament.
In Lyrics, Sumarokov strives to give a generalized analysis of man in general. The love face gives an image of love in its “pure form.” In songs and elegies, Sumarokov speaks only about love, happy or unhappy. Other feelings and moods are not allowed. We will also not find individual characteristics of lovers and loved ones. There are no facts or events of real life in lyrical poems. Sumarokov wrote songs from the perspective of a man and a woman. The text consists of repeated formulas, devoid of specific character expression. Sumarokov created the language of love as a high feeling. Sumarokov did not publish his songs. Pastoral motifs appear in a number of songs and idylls. Elegies and eclogues are written in iambic hexameter, and songs give all kinds of rhythmic combinations.
1747 “Epistole on Language”, “Epistole on Poetry”. The “Epistole on Language” gives general principles for the assimilation of antiquity. The “Epistole on Poetry” has its own theory, exemplary writers, genres. (at first General characteristics, then the main samples, then the characteristics of individual genres.)
The tragedy of Sumarokov.
Sumarokov, the author of the first Russian tragedies, took advantage of the example of French tragedians of the 17th and 18th centuries. A number of characteristic features of their system are Alexandrian verse (iambic hexameter with a caesura on the 3rd foot), 5 acts, the absence of extra-plot insertions and digressions, the absence of comic elements, “high syllable”, etc. Sumarokov transferred it to his tragedies. However, it cannot be said that Sumarokov borrowed the tragedy from the French, since there it was constantly developing, and, by borrowing, he would have to transfer the final version to Russian soil, i.e. Voltaire's version. Sumarokov built his tragedy on the principles of extreme economy of means, simplicity, restraint, and naturalness. The simplicity of the dramatic plot of his plays does not allow us to talk about intrigue, because... there is no hub of events, the whole action tends to be limited to one peripeteia. The initial situation stretches through the entire tragedy and is lifted at the end. Sumarokov's roles are also usually motionless. The tragedy is filled to a large extent by revealing the main situation in its significance for each pair of heroes separately. Dialogues, especially those of the central characters (lovers), receive a lyrical coloring. No narrative inserts. The central place of the drama, the third act, is marked mainly by an extra-plot device: the heroes draw swords or daggers from their scabbards. (because there is no plot climax). The action of most of Sumarokov's tragedies is attributed to ancient Rus'; here Sumarokov breaks the custom of depicting distant eras and distant countries in tragedy. Unlike the French tragedy, Sumarokov has almost no confidants, their role is extremely small. He either turns into a messenger, or, on the contrary, becomes a separate hero. The departure from the confidante system led to the development and abundance of monologues, since a monologue can replace a false dialogue with a confidant. Monologue is used to communicate to the viewer the thoughts, feelings and intentions of the characters. The desire to reduce the total number of characters. Thus, Sumarokov created a very unified compositional system of tragedy, in which all elements are fused and conditioned by the principle of simplicity and economy.
Sumarokov believed that “tragedy is done in order... to instill in the caretakers love for virtue, and extreme hatred for vices.” Sumarokov’s plays strive to arouse in the viewer admiration for virtue, to influence his emotional sensitivity. She wanted to correct the souls of the audience, not the minds, not the state apparatus. Hence the predominance of happy endings. (Only “Khorev” and “Sinav and Truvor” end tragically for the heroes.) The presence of a clear moral and evaluative characteristic. Before us are either wise, virtuous heroes (Semira, Dimisa, Truvor) or black villains (Dimitri the Pretender, Claudius in Hamlet), the villains die, the virtuous heroes emerge victorious from disasters.
Conflict is understood as the conflict between a person's life and how he should live. (“Dimitri the Pretender”) is not a conflict between feeling and duty. The tragedy of a person who does not live the way he should live. A man's collision with fate. At these moments, the scale of the hero’s personality is revealed. In tragedies, the location of the action is not important. The heroes are devoid of characteristic features. Classicism negatively perceived everything concrete - it was perceived as a distortion of human nature. Existential image of life. A tragic hero must be unhappy. Kupriyanova writes that “the hero of a classical tragedy should be neither good nor bad. He must be miserable." Tragedy elevates viewers and readers (catharsis... blah blah blah ).
The tragedy of Sumarokov gave rise to a tradition. His successors - Kheraskov, Maikov, Knyazhnin - nevertheless introduced new features into the tragedy.
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LITERARY INSTITUTE
Them. A.M. GORKY
Examination on the discipline
"Russian literature of the 18th century"
"Creativity of A.P. Sumarokov."
Completed by 1st year student Karelin Alexey Anatolyevich.
Moscow 2004
1. EPIGRAPH………………………………………………………………………………………………Page. 4
2. INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………………………..Page. 5
3. MAIN PART…………………………………………………….... ………. Page 6
3.1. LIFE AND LITERARY PATH OF A. P. SUMAROKOV……………..Page 7
3.2. FEATURES OF CREATIVITY
SUMAROKOV THROUGH THE PRISM OF HIS LIFE……………………………….Page 10
3.3. LITERARY ACTIVITY……………………………………………………………Page. eleven
3.4. SUMAROKOV’S SATIRE…………………………………………………………… Page. 13
3.5. PARABLES AND FABLES OF SUMAROKOV……………………………………………………………. Page 15
3.6. PHILOSOPHICAL VIEWS OF SUMAROKOV…………………………………. Page 20
3.7. POETRY OF SUMAROKOV………………………………………………………. Page 21
3.7.1. ECLOGES OF SUMAROKOV……………………………………………………………………... Page. 22
3.7.2. ELEGIES …………………………………………………………………………………………. Page 24
3.7.3. ODES OF SUMAROKOV…………………………………………………………….Page. 25
3.8. EVALUTION IN SUMAROKOV’S WORK……………………………………………………... Page. thirty
3.9. SPONTANEOUS USE OF SPOKEN RUSSIAN LANGUAGE IN SUMAROKOV’S WORK………………………………………………………………………………. Page 31
3.10. TRAGEDIES OF SUMAROKOV…………………………………………………….. Page 35
3.11. SUMAROKOV'S COMEDIES…………………………………………………….. Page. 39
3.12. THE INFLUENCE OF CHARACTER ON SUMAROKOV’S WORK……………… Page. 42
4. CONCLUSION………………………………………………………………………………………. Page 43
4.4. CONCLUSIONS……………………………………………………………………………………… Page 44
5. LITERATURE……………………………………………………. ……………… Page 46
3
SUMAROKOV Alexander Petrovich
(1717 - 1774)
1. EPIGRAPH
POETRY TEACHER
For rhyming
It takes a lot of agility
And the rhyme should always be good,
Or should I completely forget her with poetry?
This can be proven clearly:
Someone sang about passion
in which he seethed,
And thinking, I can sing according to rhymes.
The dear one told him with a grin
And as if she was scolding:
"You sing hotly in the cold to love, beckoning,
And if you really start loving me,
So you'll forget the rhymes
And you won’t talk about love in rhymes.”
Fate did not separate love from poetry,
Love
Ignites the blood
And with this fervor she taught many to compose poetry.
And I will say that often
Love prowls the road.
Reasonable by beauty
Sooner than all singers he will find a good rhyme,
He won’t, he’ll write bad rhymes,
Sweetness of love and poetry
Has undivided power over the singer.
[Sumarokov A.P.: Poetry Teacher, S. 2 ff. Russian Poetry, p. 36792 (cf. Sumarokov: Izbr., p. 244 Dictionary)]
2.INTRODUCTION
SUMAROKOV Alexander Petrovich (1717 - 1774). (The date usually given - 1718 - is incorrect. Sumarokov himself indicated 1717),
Russian writer, one of the prominent representatives of classicism.
Born into a noble family and received home education, from the age of 14 he studied at the Land Noble Corps, where he wrote his first works, imitating the French classic poets and Tredyakovsky. The sentimental songs composed by Sumarokov at this time were set to music and were a great success. His first dramatic experiments date back to the same time. Upon completion of his studies, he entered service in the military chancellery; the service provided him with the opportunity to visit high society capital and led to acquaintance with the most outstanding people of that time.
In 1747, the tragedy "Horev" was published. Its success had a great influence on the founding of a permanent Russian theater. The invitation to St. Petersburg of the Yaroslavl troupe was preceded by the production of Sumarokov's plays in the building and in the palace in 1750-51, and the roles were performed by cadets. The existence of the theater was strengthened by a decree of Catherine II to the Senate in 1756, and Sumarokov was appointed its director. While continuing to work for the theater, he at the same time wrote numerous odes, elegies, fables, satires, parables, eclogues, madrigals, critical articles, etc. In 1759, Sumarokov founded the magazine "Hardworking Bee".
In 1755, Sumarokov staged the first Russian opera: “Cephalus and Procris”. Beginning in 1758, he wrote tragedies on national historical themes: “Yaropolk and Dimiza”, “Vysheslav” (1768), “Dmitry the Pretender” (1771), “Mstislav” (1774), as well as numerous comedies. The speed with which he created his works can be judged by the notes on the comedy “Tressotinius”: “conceived on January 12, 1750, completed on January 13, 1750.”
(KHERASKOV M.M.)
Sumarokov’s extremely proud and stubborn character often led to quarrels and conflicts with other writers: Lomonosov and Tredyakovsky wrote numerous epigrams about him, and he, for his part, parodied Lomonosov’s pompous stanzas in odes, and portrayed Tredyakovsky in
(V.I. MAYKOV)
"Tressotinius", in the person of a stupid pedant, reading clumsy and funny poems from which everyone runs.
Friends and admirers of Sumarokov’s talent were Kheraskov, V.I. Maykov and Knyazhnin. The last years of Sumarokov's life were marred by periods of heavy drinking and extreme poverty. He died in Moscow and was buried in the Donskoy Monastery.
(PRINCE)
3. MAIN PART
3.1. LIFE AND LITERARY WAY OF A. P. SUMAROKOV
The creation of a “bureaucratic-noble monarchy” under Peter I was accompanied by a noticeable change in the everyday life of the upper and partly middle strata of the nobility. Already under Peter, signs of a desire for luxury appeared among the court nobility; the tsar’s demands to build up a new capital and populate it led to large expenses for the capital’s residents.
Along with expensive fashions in clothes, shoes, carriages, home decoration, in St. Petersburg, and then in Moscow, a fashion appears to visit coffee shops, restaurants, different types spectacle. Each nobleman considered himself obliged to have his own “discharged” (foreign) cook. Already in the first quarter of the 18th century, a passion for card games began, which spread extremely quickly and led to the ruin of noble families.
IN further life in Russia and especially in St. Petersburg became more and more expensive, the “city” (that is, St. Petersburg in the first place) turned into some kind of hostile phenomenon to the noble landowner, associated, according to his concept, with the loss of simple morals, honesty, sincerity, devotion, love, etc.
The luxury of court and metropolitan life under Elizabeth and Catherine took such forms that different writers began to speak out against it in different forms. Lomonosov repeatedly spoke about the “unsatisfied greed of property and power.” Reactionary noble writer Prince. M. M. Shcherbatov wrote a pamphlet “On the Damage to Morals in Russia,” which was not without interest. The theme of “money”, “wealth”, “gold”, “golden age”, “acquisitiveness”, “greed for property and power”, “stinginess”, “extravagance” has become one of the most relevant.
The need of the nobles for money necessary to maintain the standard of living accepted in the capital's circle led to the appearance in St. Petersburg of a large number of moneylenders who took enormous interest. Then tax farmers also appear, mostly rich merchants, but often nobles as well. The growth of the population of cities, especially St. Petersburg, caused an increase in prices for food items, and officials (“clerks”), who were unable to live on their salaries, made bribes the main source of their existence: many of the officials quickly became rich, bought the estates of bankrupt landowners, and became new nobles. Previously unknown names surfaced on the public surface. Especially many such upstarts appeared as favoritism intensified under Elizabeth and Catherine, when the short-term lover (“favorite”) of the empress hurried to enrich himself and his relatives at the expense of the state.
The ruinous lifestyle in St. Petersburg led to the decline of many high-born noble families. Before the eyes of contemporaries, noticeable changes took place in the composition noble society: they became poor, some went bankrupt, others appeared who became rich through unclean means. The thirst for enrichment entailed a violation of religious norms that had previously seemed unshakable. Moral concepts lost their traditional meaning. The class legal institutions that existed in Russia at that time did not take the side of the victims; the court and administration, consisting of the same self-interested people, enjoyed the most negative reputation in the minds of their contemporaries.
All these sharp contrasts of Russian life in the mid-18th century were reflected in contemporary literature. They also determined the content of Sumarokov’s literary activity.
3.2. FEATURES OF SUMAROKOV'S CREATIVITY THROUGH THE PRISM OF HIS LIFE
Features of A.P.’s creativity Sumarukov is that it is inextricably linked with his life, and in order to understand the origins of that Russianness, that genuine desire to elevate and raise the Russian language to the proper level, it is necessary, in my opinion, to go to the biography of the writer, and through him to consider and his works.
So, let me remind you once again that Sumarokov was born on November 14 (25), 1717. His father Pyotr Pankratievich Sumarokov (1692-1766) was a military man of the Petrine era and belonged to an old noble family. He was quite a rich man for that time - in 1737, there were 1,670 serfs on his six estates. At the end of Anna Ioannovna's reign, he switched to civilian service and played a prominent role in the official life of St. Petersburg in the subsequent time. In addition to his second son, Alexander, the future poet, P. P. Sumarokov had five more children: two sons and three daughters.
First, A.P. Sumarokov, under the guidance of his father, received a home education (until 1727, his teacher was a certain I.A. Zeiken or Zeikin, who at the same time gave lessons to the heir to the throne, the future Emperor Peter II). In 1732, Sumarokov was assigned to the newly opened Land Noble Corps, a special educational institution for children of the highest nobility. The students of this “knightly academy” received superficial but varied knowledge and for the most part remained poorly educated people, which did not prevent them from subsequently making a major military and civilian career. At the same time as A.P. Sumarokov, one of the early Russian poets, M.G. Sobakin, famous military figures P.A. Rumyantsev, Prince. A. M. Golitsyn, gr. P. I. Panin, poet-translator and major figure of Catherine’s time A. V. Olsufiev and others.
Among the “cadets” were lovers of poetry and theater, who performed almost from the very beginning of the corps’ existence as poets and participants in amateur performances, and soon became followers of Trediakovsky. However, in the early years the name Sumarokov does not appear in this connection. Only by the time he graduated from the Land Noble Corps were his two “Odes” published (1740). In them, Sumarokov continued the traditions of cadet poets who sang the “good deeds” that Empress Anna Ioannovna provided to the “noble corps” (class), and in form he imitated Trediakovsky, who was then very popular.
In 1740, Sumarokov completed a course of study at the Land Noble Corps and was released as an aide-de-camp to the Vice-Chancellor, Gr. M. G. Golovkin, one of the most prominent nobles of the end of the reign of Anna Ioannovna and the regency of Anna Leopoldovna. The fall of Golovkin after the accession of Elizabeth Petrovna (1741) did not affect the fate of Sumarokov, and he soon became the adjutant of the favorite of the new empress, Count. A. G. Razumovsky, having served in this position for more than ten years.
In 1756, Sumarokov was appointed director of the newly organized Russian Theater. His merits in this area are very significant: thanks to his energy, the theater, despite the opposition of court circles, was preserved. However, at the end of 1761 Sumarokov was forced to resign. From that time on, he was exclusively engaged in literary activities. He died on October 1 (12), 1777 in Moscow, where he moved in 1769.
3.3. LITERARY ACTIVITY
Sumarokov's literary activity, which began in the second half of the 1730s, lasted at least forty years. Around the end of the 1750s, his worldview was fully formed, and Sumarokov became the most prominent literary exponent of the ideology of the advanced nobility of the mid-18th century. And Sumarokov’s general worldview, and his political sympathies, and his aesthetic positions - all this was determined by his understanding of the role and significance of the nobility in the Russian state as the main driving force social progress.
In his philosophical views, Sumarokov was very close to the sensualists. In the article “On Human Understanding According to Locke,” he sympathetically sets out the English philosopher’s arguments against the doctrine of innate ideas. Believing, like many of his contemporaries, that “nature is divided into spirits and matter,” Sumarokov quite consistently declared as a sensualist: “I don’t know what spirits are, but matter has measure and weight.” Following the sensualists, Sumarokov recognized feelings as the source of human knowledge. However, in his philosophical views, he paid a much greater tribute to rationalism, since in the individual and social life of a person he assigned a large place to “reason”, “reason”: “Logical and mathematical proofs are not pedantry, but the path to truth, which the enlightened mind follows.” Having a guide to the final boundaries of our thinking, it is impossible to get lost.” The denial of innate ideas led Sumarokov to the conclusion that “nature does not explain the truth in our souls and, therefore, does not provide any moral instruction.” Truth is comprehended by a person as a result special development his “reason,” which is also not innate: “Education, science, good conversationalists and other useful instructions lead us to an immaculate life, not innate truth.”
The purpose of human life is “good.” “What is based on nature and truth can never change, but what has other foundations is boasted, blasphemed, introduced and withdrawn according to the will of each and without any reason.” In order to harmonize such different and dissimilar “thinking” and “actions”, people invented “morality” and “politics”: “Morality cares about the good of the individual.”<частном, личном>, politics is about the common good.” It is clear that the “clearer” the “mind” of people, the more correct their “morals” and “politics”.
These provisions are the basis of Sumarokov’s entire system of socio-political views. People, in his opinion, differ in social life only in the degree of clarity of their “mind.” Since people equally receive impressions through the senses, but there is no innate truth, since truth is achieved through the efforts of “reason,” then by nature all people are equal, since at birth they are equally deprived of “reason.” From this point of view, both nobleman and serf, and master and servant are the same and equal. The difference between them, according to Sumarokov, arises only as a consequence of education, the development of “mind”. “By sound reasoning we approach the center of knowledge, which mortals can never touch. Whoever reaches this center more and whoever passes it less, acts more justly.”
Thus, a nobleman, educated, brought up accordingly, surrounded cultured people, stands, according to Sumarokov, above the serf, uneducated, ill-mannered, surrounded by uncultured people like himself. Consequently, Sumarokov recognizes the equality of people by nature and their inequality in social reality; He considers educated and well-mannered nobles to be “the first members of society”, “sons of the fatherland.” These same provisions determine Sumarokov’s ideas about “morality” and “politics.”
3.4. SUMAROKOV'S SATIRE
Sumarokov owns ten satyrs. The best of them, “On Nobility,” is close in content to Kantemir’s satire “Filaret and Eugene,” but differs from it in its laconicism and civic passion. The theme of the work is true and imaginary nobility. The nobleman Sumarokov is hurt and ashamed for his fellow classmates who, taking advantage of the benefits of their position, forgot about their responsibilities. True nobility lies in deeds useful to society:
And in the nobility everyone, no matter what rank,
Not in title - in action one must be a nobleman (p. 190).
The antiquity of the family, from the point of view of the poet, is a very dubious advantage, since the ancestor of all humanity, according to the Bible, was Adam. The right to high positions is given only by enlightenment. An ignorant nobleman, a slacker nobleman cannot lay claim to nobility:
And if I am not fit for any position, -
My ancestor is a nobleman, but I am not noble (P. 191).
In his other satires, Sumarokov ridicules mediocre but ambitious writers (“On Bad Rhyme Makers”), ignorant and self-interested judicial officials (“On Bad Judges”), and gallomaniac nobles who mutilate Russian speech (“On the French Language”). Most of Sumarokov’s satires are written in Alexandrian verses in the form of a monologue, rich rhetorical questions, appeals, exclamations.
“A Chorus to the Perverse Light” occupies a special place among Sumarokov’s satirical works. The word “perverted” here means “other,” “other,” “opposite.” “The Chorus” was commissioned by Sumarokov in 1762 for the public masquerade “Minerva Triumphant” on the occasion of the coronation of Catherine II in Moscow. According to the plan of the organizers of the masquerade, it was supposed to ridicule the vices of the previous reign. But Sumarokov violated the boundaries proposed to him and started talking about the general shortcomings of Russian society. “Chorus” begins with the story of a “tit” who flew in from across the “midnight” sea, about the ideal orders that she saw in a foreign (“perverted”) kingdom and which are sharply different from everything that she encounters in her homeland. The “perverse” kingdom itself has a utopian, speculative character in Sumarokov. But this purely satirical device helps him expose bribery, the injustice of clerks, the nobles’ disdain for science, and their passion for everything “foreign.” The most daring were the poems about the fate of the peasants: “They don’t skin the peasants there, // They don’t put villages on the cards there, // They don’t trade people overseas” (p. 280).
In form, “Chorus” differs sharply from Sumarokov’s other satires. It has a clear focus on folk art. The beginning of the poem echoes the well-known folk song “Over the sea, the tit did not live magnificently...”. “Chorus” is written in rhymeless verses, without observing feet.
Based on the eclectic combination of elements of sensationalism and rationalism in Sumarokov’s views, his political and social beliefs were formed: asserting the equality of people “by nature,” he justified their inequality in public life.
All these views are fully reflected in artistic creativity Sumarokova. In the satire “On Nobility,” he reminds the nobles that
....born from women and from ladies,
Without exception, Adam is the forefather of all.
To the question:
What's the difference between a gentleman and a peasant? -
Sumarokov answers:
Both of them are animate earths.
And if you don’t clear the mind of the lordly peasant,
So I don't see any difference.
The nobleman must justify his position as the “first member of society” by his attitude to the matter, to the interests of “society”:
...in the nobility everyone, no matter what rank,
Not in title - in action he must be a nobleman.
To the nobleman, says Sumarokov,
You can never despise science,
And it’s difficult for us to sort out the truth without her.
In the satire “On Honesty,” the poet sets out his positive program of noble morality and paints the image of an “ideal” nobleman:
...true honor is to give joy to the unfortunate,
Don't expect any reward for it;
Love your neighbor, thank the creator,
And whatever is on my mind, that’s all I can say;
13
Do as much good as you can with all your might...
Serve our neighbor as much as we find the strength...
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Don't crawl before anyone, don't be arrogant.
This satire ends with a purely noble maxim:
Be a son of the fatherland and faithful to the sovereign!
Sumarokov understood the place of peasants in the life of the noble “society” differently. For him, a “man” is a person
From the meanest kind,
Which nature made to plow.
("Donkey in Lion's Skin")
The peasant, sowing grain, works and does not sleep,
This is why he was born and heeds the voice of duty.
(“Epistle by E. I. V. to the sovereign Grand Duke Pavel Petrovich on his birthday, September 20, 1761”)
He thought:
Those who were born black must remain so forever.
("Arap")
There is a designated, immutable order for everything:
Be content with a simple uniform, soldier,
Since you can’t be, my friend, a commander:
It may be a great honor
Only the mind can exalt the fatherland,
But naked rank only gives rise to flattery.
("Snakes head and tail")
If only Adam and Eve
They did not eat the fruit from the ordered tree,
I would live as I wanted
And while working on the plow, I wouldn’t sweat.
For Sumarokov, the “peni” of the “man” is “out of line rubbish.” With his parable, Sumarokov tries to prove that the work of a serf peasant is a natural consequence of human imperfection.
The teachings that raised the question of changing the system of the serf state aroused Sumarokov’s indignation:
God knows how to establish the order of nature
And it is in our nature to glorify ourselves magnificently.
("New Calendar")
However, recognizing the inviolability of the social structure of contemporary Russia, Sumarokov did not approve of the slavish forms of exploitation of the serfs by landowners - and precisely because the nobles must be impeccable in everything.
In his prose works of a journalistic nature, Sumarokov made a sharp distinction between the concepts of “serf” and “slave”: “There is a difference between a serf and a slave: one is tied to the land, and the other to the landowner.”
Sumarokov did not recognize the “slavery” of the peasants in relation to the landowners; he believed that the peasants, like all other classes of society, except for the nobles, the higher clergy and the upper layer of the merchants, are “slaves of the fatherland” and not the landowners. Therefore, serfs cannot be, according to Sumarokov, sold: “People should not be sold like cattle.” To justify the institution of serf ownership, Sumarokov put forward the position that landowners could sell the land they owned, to which the peasants were attached, and along with it the serfs living on it. He did not recognize the separate sale of serfs. At the same time, he believed that serfdom was not only normal, but also necessary for the proper functioning of the noble state. In a note submitted to the Free Economic Society at the end of 1767, Sumarokov wrote: “First we must ask: is freedom necessary for the common well-being of serfs? To this I will say: does the canary that amuses me need freedom, or does it need a cage, and does the dog guarding my house need a chain? - A canary is better off without a cage, and a dog without a chain. However, one will fly away, and the other will gnaw people; So one thing is needed for the peasant, and the other for the sake of the nobleman.” Further, Sumarokov asks: “What will a nobleman do when the men and the land are not his; What’s left for him?” Sumarokov’s note ends with these categorical words: “However, peasant freedom is not only harmful to society, but also detrimental, and why it is detrimental does not need to be interpreted.” Perhaps Meade’s “donkey ears,” which supposedly “later” became known to everyone, are the favorites of Catherine II.
Standing firmly in these positions, Sumarokov considered himself obliged in his parables and satires to attack the nobles who sell and lose serfs at cards. In the parable “The Axle and the Bull,” Sumarokov sarcastically speaks of a “tender gentleman” who squanders the labors of the serfs; in the satire “On Nobility” he indignantly brands the “master’s son”, who
...often glorifies his nobility,
That he would put a whole regiment of people on the line.
Oh! Should cattle have people?
Isn't it a pity? Can a bull sell people to a bull?
However, most of Sumarokov’s fables, epigrams and satires are devoted to the fight against the negative phenomena of the then Russian reality, mainly the noble one. The main subjects of Sumarokov’s satirical ridicule were ignorance, disrespect for the native language and preference for the French language, extravagance of noble young people, ruinous fashion, bribery of officials, tricks of tax farmers, greed for money, non-compliance with generally accepted moral principles, family relationships, etc.
A noticeable section in Sumarokov’s satirical works, especially parables, consists of literary themes. Many fables are dedicated to his literary opponents - Trediakovsky (“Beetles and Bees”, “Owl and the Rhymer”, etc.), Lomonosov (“Donkey in Lion’s Skin”, “Monkey the Poet”, “Unfounded Conceit”), D.V. Volkov (“The Parable of the Silly Scribes”), M.D. Chulkov (“The Judgment of Paris”), etc. Sometimes Sumarokov turned parables against his imitators (“The Tailor and the Monkey”). But he has a number of fables, apparently devoid of polemical orientation and decisive, so to speak, exclusively theoretical issues. Such are, for example, the parable “The Poetry Teacher,” in which Sumarokov explains the fundamental admissibility of rhymes in love poetry, and “Kite,” the subject of which is also stylistic issues.
When compared with the fables of Krylov, who, by the way, often turned to the same subjects as Sumarokov, the latter’s parables usually seem weak and, in any case, paler. If we take a historical point of view and remember that Sumarokov’s literary predecessors and contemporaries in the development of this genre were weak as fabulists Kantemir and
Trediakovsky (Lomonosov owned only three fables), later A. A. Rzhevsky, M. M. Kheraskov and others, it will become clear why in the 18th and early 19th centuries Sumarokov’s fables enjoyed enormous success. “His parables are revered as the treasure of Russian Parnassus,” N.I. Novikov wrote about Sumarokov in his “Experience in a Historical Dictionary of Russian Writers” (1772).
In the fables, Sumarokov, on the one hand, gave free rein to his satirical talent, not constrained by any genre “rules” of classicism (remember that Boileau bypassed the fable in his “Poetic Art”), on the other hand, he showed good knowledge of the language and exceptional ability to master it. Soviet researcher of the history of Russian fables N.L. Stepanov writes: “Originality and national character Russian fables were especially fully reflected in the work of A. Sumarokov. Sumarokov resolutely rebelled against the fable style of La Fontaine and other Western European fabulists, turning to creating a fable based on folk, folklore tradition. The “grotesqueness” and naturalism of Sumarokov’s fables were largely polemical in relation to Western European fables, based on popular and comic folk literature and folklore." 1
While these observations are undoubtedly true, they do not exhaust the characteristic features of Sumarokov’s fable style. It can be said with good reason that in his parables Sumarokov followed a path very close to the one that in the 19th century began to be called realistic. Almost at every step he encounters generalization images that have a socially typical meaning. So, in a fable with a double title “Mouse and Cat. - Boyarin and Boyarynya,” we find a strikingly capacious, economical, but comprehensive description of the nobleman, reminiscent of portraits of landowners in classical literature of the 19th century:
There was a boyar, there was a noblewoman...
The boyar ate, the boyar drank, the boyar slept,
And if you are tired from work,
To pass the time, he yawned.
In the fable “Happiness and Dream” Sumarokov paints the image of a favorite or even an unexpectedly rich nonentity:
1 N. L. Stepanov. Russian fable of the 18th and 19th centuries; in the book: Russian fable, “Library of the poet”, Big series, Leningrad, “Soviet writer”, 1949, p. XVII.
In total he had enough:
Without knowing the alphabet, I could even read and write
And thundered with glory throughout the sunflower,
And best of all, he had a mistress
The most beautiful herself, -
Such a lady
We don’t have dozens of them in Rus' either.
Bending before him, submit and be cowardly
And ask the idol for mercy.
He still had the behavior of a blockhead,
When he dislikes someone,
To make a heavy groan,
And sometimes a fever.
In Sumarokov’s parables one encounters remarkably vivid pictures of Russian folk life, in which one can see the poet’s great, and not at all in the spirit of classicism, observation. The fable “Two Passers-by” depicts the loss of an ax in a village:
There is a noise all over the village about the axe.
Peasants are always friendly in such cases.
The owner of the ax at that time was everyone's godfather,
Everyone has become a godfather, and everyone is at the service of the godfather,
And the women are all godfathers.
Even more colorful is another village scene, which apparently happened more than once before Sumarokov’s eyes:
There's noise all over the village,
You can't gather your thoughts
The whole mind is confused:
Angry women make noise.
When one makes noise,
It seems then as if thunder is roaring.
It is known that the voices of angry women are not weak.
The angry woman pours out all her anger, right to the bottom.
It's unbearable to hear when you're alone
(Ancient Xanthippe can be heard everywhere in the village),
And the whole village was noisy with the fierce women.
("Country Women")
Already from the examples given, it is clear that Sumarokov loved details in parables, leisurely narration, accompanied by the author’s assessments and reflections. However, this did not interfere with the conciseness and aphorism of his verse in many cases. In
In many of his parables there is a short conclusion - an aphorism, often very successful. Here are a few examples: “Science and the minds of the bags will not win” (“Two Stingy Ones”), “Reason has little power, strength has greater power” (“Donkey Puffed up with Pride”), “What you didn’t receive, you can’t count: It’s different, - what is in the hand, and what is in the mind” (“Dog with a Piece of Meat”), etc.
The metric of Sumarokov's fables deserves particularly detailed study. In all other genres, Sumarokov's verse was more or less monotonous. This, as stated earlier, is Alexandrian verse in elegies, eclogues, tragedies; iambic tetrameter or trochee in odes and dithyrambs. In parables, almost always written in iambic (among the exceptions, the parable “A Man with a Cat” deserves attention, one of the rarest cases of using poetry XVIII century of anapest), Sumarokov used verse containing from twelve syllables to one (“Kite”, “Parrot”, “Shipwreck”). He paid special attention to rhyme (see the fable “Vain Precaution,” consisting of eleven verses with one rhyme). In his tragedies and odes, Sumarokov had constant rhymes (“minutes” - “fierce”, “broken” - “perished”, “Ekaterina” - “krin”), in parables he is always inventive, always searching, and sometimes in iambic verse he allows a rare dactylic rhyme (“bybytom” - “trunk” - the fable “Kite”).
Many of Sumarokov’s fables (parables) also had a political nature. Thus, the struggle of the Orlov brothers for the place of favorite under Catherine was reflected in the parable “War of the Eagles.” The fable “Kulashny fight” is directed against gr. A. G. Orlov, who was distinguished by great physical strength and who loved to participate in fist fights with coachmen, butchers, etc. Undoubtedly, the parable “Mead” has a political nature, which tells the legend about King Midas, who had donkey ears; the essence of this fable is not in the plot, 1 but in the final verses, the “moral” directed against Catherine:
Although praise about whom is wrong and grumbles,
The story about him will scream differently.
Probably, the parable “Boyar Council” is connected with the events of the fight against Pugachev. The parable “Ambassador Donkey”, presumably, has the same character, the plot and denouement of which sound like an anecdote from the diplomatic world, and the epigram (essentially the same fable) “It’s not difficult to turn a madman into a sage,” in which a hint of the face is clearly felt , awarded the Order of the Golden Fleece.
(KRYLOV I. A.)
N.A. Stepanov, characterizing the style of Sumarokov’s fables, wrote: “This is not the rationalistic, clear and logical world of classicism, but a living, crudely plausible way of life, a grotesque reminiscent of sayings and jokes.” 1 True Observations researcher about the place of folklore in Sumarokov’s fables should be clarified: we must give more justice to Sumarokov’s personal creativity, we must understand that he could not only imitate (whether classicism or folklore, it doesn’t matter), but also create independently. And he worked in the direction that others followed after him, including the great Krylov. Therefore, it must be said frankly: Sumarokov (and after him Chemnitser) paved the way for Krylov, without Sumarokov it would have been much more difficult for Krylov.
3.6. PHILOSOPHICAL VIEWS OF SUMAROKOV
Sumarokov's philosophical views determined his aesthetic positions. If in matters of the theory of knowledge he was close to the sensualists, then in his literary and theoretical constructions and, to a certain extent, in his artistic practice he remained a rationalist.
The most significant feature of classicism, the literary movement to which Sumarokov belonged, is rationalism as philosophical basis aesthetics. The only thing beautiful, the classics argued, is what is “reasonable.” Only that which meets the requirements of “reason” is moral.
However, “mind” is not all-powerful; he has to fight the “passions” coming from “nature” that violate the harmony of the world built on the principles of “reason”. Where “reason” reigns, everything is beautiful, moral, there is “good”, general and private; where “passions” reign, there is chaos, the struggle of personal interests, and immorality triumphs. The source of social evils is “passions,” of which the most harmful are the thirst for wealth and autocracy.
Therefore, the suppression of “passions” and the fight against them should, in the opinion of supporters of classicism, constitute the main task of art.
From here grew one of the most important features of classicism - its political orientation. Since “politics cares about the common good,” the writer’s task should be to help strengthen the state whole, built on the principles of “reason.” In a tragedy, epic, or ode, a classical poet is obliged to propagate the high ideas of statehood, the ideas of “morality” and “politics.” The “common good” must be put above all else. And since Sumarokov understood “society” as a noble society, then “ common good“In his understanding, the “good” of the nobility was, and the task of art should be to educate the noble consciousness exclusively in the interests of class.
“Reason” is the same at all times, for all people. Therefore, what was beautiful in ancient times is still beautiful now. What is beautiful among the ancient Greeks and Romans should be considered beautiful among the newest peoples, among the French, for example, and among the Russians. This line of reasoning determined the attitude of the classics towards ancient art.
The classics asserted that a poet can create something beautiful that meets the requirements of “reason” if he renounces his individual aesthetic quests and strictly follows the “rules” of art and adheres to recognized models. “Rules” and “imitation” were considered by the classics to be the only path to true art. The less a writer shows imagination, a personal element in his work, the more opportunities he has to create a truly artistic creation. The rejection of the individual, local, nationally unique was a natural consequence of the rationalistic understanding of the idea of the eternal and unchangeably “beautiful.” The French classics of drama - Corneille, Racine, Voltaire - so avoided turning to local material that they did not devote a single tragedy to themes from the history of the Faction. If the classics turned to artistic treatments national history (“Henriad” by Voltaire, many of Sumarokov’s tragedies), then here too they removed almost everything that bore the stamp of the national, leaving only names.
From all this stemmed one of the most characteristic features of classicism, namely its ahistorical nature. The classics, in particular Sumarokov, did not strive to depict certain characters in their works - for example, tragedies - in accordance with the historical and national situation. In Sumarokov’s tragedies “Khorev”, “Sinav and Truvor”, “Mstislav”, “Dimitri the Pretender” and others, the action takes place in ancient Russia, in “Artiston” - in Persia, in “Hamlet” - in Denmark, but this is in no way reflected either in the construction of the plot, or in the interpretation of the characters, or in the language of the characters. In all the tragedies, Sumarokov was most occupied with moral and educational, or, if we follow his terminology, “political” educational tasks. The purpose of tragedy is to “lead to virtue”, “to purify passions through reason.” This is where the acute conflict in Sumarokov’s tragedies arises. The main conflict in them is the struggle between “duty” and “love,” “honor” and “interest,” that is, the same “reason” and “passions.”
3.7. POETRY OF SUMAROKOV
Sumarokov's poetic creativity is extremely diverse. He wrote odes, satires, eclogues, elegies, epistles, and epigrams. His parables and love songs were especially popular among his contemporaries.
Love poetry
This section in Sumarokov’s work is represented by eclogues and songs. His eclogues, as a rule, are created according to the same plan. First, a landscape picture appears: a meadow, grove, stream or river; heroes and heroines - idyllic shepherds and shepherdesses with the ancient names Damon, Clarice, etc. Their love longings, complaints, and confessions are depicted. The eclogues end with a happy denouement of an erotic, sometimes quite frank, nature.
Sumarokov's songs, especially love ones, enjoyed great success among his contemporaries. In total, he wrote over 150 songs. The feelings expressed in them are extremely varied, but most often they convey suffering, the pangs of love. Here is the bitterness of unrequited passion, and jealousy, and melancholy caused by separation from a loved one. Sumarokov's love lyrics are completely freed from all kinds of realities. We do not know the names of the heroes, nor their social status, nor the place where they live, nor the reasons that caused their separation. Feelings detached from the everyday life and social relations of the characters express universal human experiences. This is one of the features of the “classicism” of Sumarokov’s poetry.
Some of the songs are stylized in the spirit of folk poetry. These include: “The girls were walking in the grove” with the characteristic refrain “Is it my viburnum, is it my raspberry”; “Wherever I walk, I don’t go” with a description of folk festivities. This category includes songs with military and satirical content: “Oh, you, strong, strong Bendergrad” and “Savushka is a sinner.” Sumarokov's songs are distinguished by their exceptional rhythmic richness. He wrote them in two- and three-syllable sizes and even in long divisions. Their strophic patterns are just as varied. The popularity of Sumarokov’s songs is evidenced by the inclusion of many of them in printed and handwritten songbooks of the 18th century, often without the name of the author.
3.7.1. ECLOGES OF SUMAROKOV
In the early period of his literary activity, young Sumarokov did not yet turn to political topics. Although in the late 1730s and early 1740s he wrote several solemn odes, that is, works with political content, they were not genres characteristic of the then stage of his activity.
An aide-de-camp to the empress's favorite, spoiled by the attention of women in the social circle, Sumarokov then felt first and foremost a poet of “tender passion.” He composed a large number - however, not only at this time, but also later - then fashionable love songs, expressing, on behalf of both men and women, various shades of love feelings, especially jealousy, longing, love annoyance, longing, etc. etc. In the 1740s, songs were sung not to motives specially written for them, but, as Sumarokov himself pointed out, to “fashionable minavets” (minuets). Sumarokov’s songs, especially the “pastoral” ones, which, in accordance with the general European fashion, sweetly depicted the life of idealized shepherdesses (see the song “Nowhere, in a small forest”), were also a great success. Later, in 1760, Lomonosov, who set completely different goals for literature, sneered at Sumarokov about this: “He composed love songs and was very happy because all the youth, that is, pages, college cadets, cadets and guard corporals, so he It will follow that in front of many of them he himself resembled their disciple.” The total number of songs composed by Sumarokov exceeds 150.
Responding to the literary needs of the secular society in which he moved, Sumarokov began to write idylls and eclogues that were no less fashionable at that time. Pastoral painting, paintings of palace walls and ceilings with scenes from ancient and French idyllic poetry, tapestries with shepherd scenes, figurines depicting conventional shepherds and shepherdesses - all this made the eclogue genre very popular in the noble metropolitan society. Therefore, it is not surprising that Sumarokov wrote eclogues from the 1740s until the early 1770s and wrote a total of 65 eclogues and 7 idylls.
Pushkin’s words about Sumarokov’s “cynical pipe” were quoted above - they are talking specifically about eclogues (“pipe” in the poetic language of the XVIII, early XIX centuries - symbol"shepherd" genres).
Characterizing the latter and pointing out their rather frank eroticism, Belinsky nevertheless noted: “And despite this, Sumarokov did not even think of being seductive or indecent, but, on the contrary, he was concerned about morality.” To prove his point, Belinsky cited the dedication from Sumarokov’s “eclogue” in full; The main idea of this dedication is formulated by Sumarokov in the following words: “In my eclogues, tenderness and fidelity are proclaimed, and not indecent voluptuousness, and there are no such speeches that would be disgusting to the ear.” Sumarokov, apparently, still understood relativity similar words: in one of his almost indecent fables, he ironically remarked: “I have always been an extreme admirer of modesty.”
Despite the fact that Sumarokov wrote a large number of eclogues, they are all more or less monotonous. Almost every one begins with a large “landscape” introduction, depicting a conventional pastoral, happy country. The landscape of Sumarokov’s eclogues is usually peaceful, cloudless, with the obligatory “source”, “oak forest” or “dense bushes”, most often bathed in the sun, sometimes silvered by the moon:
To open the eyes and delight the gaze
Beautiful Aurora emerges from behind the mountains,
Pleasant spring shines in the meadows...
("Daphne")
The days of winter are over, there is no frost on the flock,
A barely beautiful rose comes out of the bunch,
As soon as the forests were covered with greenery,
And the naked trees clothed themselves,
We barely cleared the mud from the water across the ice,
Marshmallows - to the meadows, shepherdesses - to the cowsheds...
("Melanida")
Next, either the hero or heroine tells their friends or confides to the source their secret - love for a shepherdess or shepherd. The content of the further part of each eclogue is a struggle between passion and shame, always ending in “Tziter joys”, which, although briefly, but always with undoubted pleasure, Sumarokov speaks of in the last verses:
And they only touched that oak grove,
In a minute he took possession of all the beauty,
There were linden branches instead of cover,
And that Dubrova knows what happened there.
(“Values”)
O ye sufferings that have come to an end!
Touch, grief, the crown of love,
Now get your fill of Tzitherian fun
And enjoy victory and glory.
("Floriza")
They were left alone in the finished hut
And, instead of the former love poison,
All the fun of Tziter was felt there.
("Octavia")
In the eclogue of Caelmenes, the hero, the shepherd Orontes, delivers a panegyric in honor of love passion:
...there is no such power
Describe the minutes that are so sweet,
In which a person does not remember himself...
In another eclogue:
Having tasted the dearest fruit, the lover says:
“Ah, few people thank fate,
Having such fun in my youth,
The most important hundredfold greatness and glory!
("Lycoris")
And further:
Nature has not produced such fruits,
Which would surpass love affairs,
And what could be in the best color
Is there more beautiful tenderness in the world?
("Tselimena")
However, it would be a mistake to repeat the words of Pushkin the lyceum student about the “cynical pipe” of Sumarokov. For Sumarokov, the world of shepherds and shepherdesses he depicts is a sweet fantasy, this is the golden age that he talks about in the preface to his book “Eclogue”; this is that pastoral utopia that should take both the poet and his readers away from the world of prose, the world of terrible and ugly scenes of reality, from the stuffy, plague-ridden city (most of the eclogues published by Sumarokov in 1774 were, according to his testimony, written in Moscow in during the plague epidemic of 1771). A very convincing confirmation of what has been said is the following excerpt from the eclogue “Emilia”. Shepherd Valery swears his love to his incredulous beloved and saves the most terrible oath for the end:
And may I be to my grave, since I am a hypocrite in this,
I will live in cities. 1
- But I believe this oath, -
Emilia answers and continues, as if anticipating Aleko’s remark from Pushkin’s “Gypsies” about the “captivity of stuffy cities”:
I heard about how people live there,
Pretense is friendship, deception is called intelligence,
What's in the noise of a cunning and flattering people?
Their nature has completely changed,
That the days of the golden age ended there.
We keep them, Valery, we are the only ones.
This dream of a golden age in the lap of nature suggested to the poet the theme, figurative system and language of his eclogues, which are one of the most orthodox classical genres in Sumarokov’s work.
3.7.2. ELEGIES
Sumarokov wrote the first elegies in Russian literature. This genre was known in ancient poetry, and later became a pan-European property. The content of the elegies were usually sad reflections caused by unhappy love: separation from a loved one, betrayal, etc. Later, especially in the 19th century, the elegies were filled with philosophical and civil themes. In the 18th century elegies were usually written in Alexandrian verse.
In Sumarokov’s work, the use of this genre in to a certain extent was prepared by his own tragedies, where the monologues of the heroes often represented a kind of small elegies. The most traditional in Sumarokov’s poetry are elegies with love themes, such as “Playing and laughter have already left us,” “For others, a sad verse gives birth to poetry.”
A unique cycle is formed by elegies related to the author’s theatrical activities. Two of them (“On the death of F. G. Volkov” and “On the death of Tatyana Mikhailovna Troepolskaya”) were caused by the premature death of leading artists of the St. Petersburg court theater - best performers tragic roles in Sumarokov's plays. The other two elegies - “Suffer the sorrowful spirit, my breast is tormented” and “My annoyance has now surpassed all measures” - reflected dramatic episodes of the poet’s own theatrical activity. In the first of them, he complains about the machinations of his enemies who deprived him of his director’s position. The second is caused by a gross violation of copyright. Sumarokov categorically objected to the performance of the role of Ilmena in his play “Sinav and Truvor” by the mediocre actress Ivanova, whom the Moscow commander-in-chief Saltykov sympathized with. The author complained about Saltykov’s arbitrariness to the empress, but received a mocking and insulting letter in response. Sumarokov's works significantly expanded the genre composition of Russian classic literature. “...He was the first of the Russians,” wrote N.I. Novikov, “to begin writing tragedies according to all the rules of theatrical art, but he succeeded so much in them that he earned the name of northern Racine.”
Apparently, in the 1740s, Sumarokov began to write his elegies, the main purpose of which was, as in songs, to depict subtle emotional experiences, “tender feelings,” as they said then.
What else have you not sent me, evil time,
And where did you collect so much torment and sadness?..
Dangers and fears, obstacles, troubles
The languid spirit was tormented all of a sudden without succession.
("Elegy 5")
I hoped that I had resolved my bonds,
And I thought that I had exchanged love for friendship,
Tender thoughts did not delight me,
The infections in the eyes of others were not in the mind.
("Elegy 8")
Like eclogues, Sumarokov's elegies were structured more or less the same way. The first verse or first two verses usually provide an explanation of what caused the mental anguish." lyrical hero” of this elegy, and then there is a rather lengthy analysis of his experiences.
You suffer in illness... There is no urine in my heart...
("Elegy 12")
Wall, spirit, within me! groan, exhausted!
No longer are you, no longer, dear Eliza!
(“Elegy. On the death of a sister by E. P. Buturlina”)
Some elegies were subsequently significantly shortened by Sumarokov, who felt their lengthiness and sought to give them greater harmony and compactness. Thus, the elegy “Plays and laughter have already left us,” which had 40 verses in the first edition, was reduced to 12, and the elegy “You are destroying love only for this” during revision lost 68 verses (instead of 96, 28 remained).
Sumarokov’s songs, eclogues and elegies of the 1740s and subsequent years were the writer’s response to the needs of that noble circle, which at that time most forcefully determined the ways of forming the noble culture of the 18th century. It was precisely the fact that they met the aesthetic tastes and needs of the cultural or, more precisely, semi-cultured nobility of that time that created Sumarokov’s wide popularity in noble circles.
3.7.3. ODES OF SUMAROKOV
In the 1740s, along with songs, eclogues and elegies, Sumarokov also wrote odes - solemn and spiritual. Having Lomonosov's odes in front of him as a model, he followed them, especially at first. Thus, in his first ode of 1743, Sumarokov uses Lomonosov’s images and figures of speech:
ABOUT! the thought where you fly is daring,
Where do you take the captive mind?
. . . . . . . . . . . .
Moaned for him<Петре. - П.Б..>this holy city,
The great ocean roared...
. . . . . . . . . . . .
Borey, fearlessly daring,
Prisoner in air bonds,
I didn’t dare break the bonds and blow.
These features of Lomonosov's odic poetics are preserved in Sumarokov's odes of later times. Here is an excerpt from an ode to Elizabeth from 1755:
You were terrible in the womb,
You will be more terrible in anger:
You will mature our loyalty.
Arise, peoples of different countries,
Revolt, air, fire and water!
Let's go capture or die.
Here is a stanza from the ode about Prussian War (1758):
That where the Russian flame will touch,
Then there it shakes and falls;
The earth and air there groan,
And the sea roars in the clouds.
Where Russian regiments fight,
Fiery winds blow there,
And the clouds flow there, burning:
Dust and smoke flutter in front of the shadow
And the earth is covered in darkness,
At noon there is dawn in the sky.
External following of Lomonosov did not prevent Sumarokov from performing parodies of the odes of his teacher in the 1750s, the democratic nature of whose work, in essence, was deeply alien to him. However, these “nonsensical odes” can to a certain extent be considered autoparodies, since Sumarokov, when creating his solemn odes, obeyed the “laws of the genre” and used artistic techniques that he himself condemned.
At the same time, Sumarokov’s solemn odes gave him the opportunity to express his political views. In odes of the last period, addressing the heir to the throne, the future Emperor Paul I, Sumarokov warned him about the dangers that await every king; at the same time, drawing the image of a negative sovereign - a tyrant, the poet made it clear what he meant by Catherine:
This is not how the king distinguishes his rank,
What is there to strike and captivate?
That everyone stands before him with fear,
What rules people like dust
And that he can take a life.
When the monarch forcibly listens,
He is an enemy of the people, not a king...
A discordant king is a vile idol
And at sea the helmsman is unskilled.
His tombstone: “He was poison.”
His power will end
His glory will end,
Flattery will disappear, the soul will go to hell.
(“Ode to the sovereign Tsarevich Pavel Petrovich on his namesake day, June 29, 1771”)
Three years later, Sumarokov again wrote to Pavel Petrovich:
Never without common benefit
We cannot like the king.
The crown's shine darkens then,
The king will not be loved and glorious,
And the subjects always suffer.
The name of a great soul is flattering,
But she needs intelligence and work,
And without labor, kings are everywhere
Not scepters, but they carry dignity.
It is quite clear that Sumarokov could afford such allusions to Catherine only in the midst of official praise for the empress, which should, in his own terminology, be designated as flattery. However, in a number of his works Sumarokov tried to explain, on the one hand, the reasons for his flattery, and on the other, why he did not openly oppose those phenomena that outraged him as a nobleman - “a son of the fatherland.”
Thus, in the tragedy “Dimitri the Pretender” (1771) Sumarokov wrote:
Don’t imagine that I revealed the truth to the villain...
When we have a deal with a strong tyrant,
We cannot safely contradict him:
Deception has intensified to crown him on the throne,
So the truth must remain silent for the time being,
Until this burden is lifted from Russia...
(D. I, Rev. 4)
In the same tragedy, Sumarokov wrote:
I must conquer my tongue with pretense:
Feel differently, speak differently,
And I am like being a vile deceiver.
This is what you should do if the king is unrighteous and evil
(D. II, Rev. 1)
Sumarokov justified the benefits of silence in the then political conditions as follows:
If you can't answer with the truth,
It is most useful to remain silent.
(Parable "The Lion's Feast")
And if you can’t tell the truth clearly,
To be silent out of necessity, even if it is hard, is not inglorious.
(Satire “On Honesty”)
Therefore, when reading Sumarokov’s odes, one should not take at face value all the compliments forced by circumstances to Catherine, on whose mercy he, always financially constrained, who annually turned to her with requests to give him a pension in advance, depended literally words. Let us remember that writers did not receive royalties at that time and income from the sale of Sumarokov’s books went to the treasury.
It is worth paying attention to one more way Sumarokov expressed his literary and political views in the late 1760s and early 1770s. So, for example, when reprinting his early works, he shortened in them, in particular in the odes dedicated to Elizabeth and Catherine, stanzas that were especially saturated with flattery. However, the reductions often had aesthetic reasons.
A certain method of Sumarokov’s political struggle at this time was the insertion of topical content into earlier works. Thus, reprinting his tragedy “Khorev” in 1768, 21 years after the first publication, Sumarokov at the beginning of Act V replaced Kiya’s previous monologue related to the content of the play with a new one, completely unnecessary for the development of the plot and outlining the character of the hero, but representing an obvious, an understandable attack against Catherine: at this time, the Empress was especially proud of her Commission for the drafting of the New Code, which was supposed to give the country new laws, and Catherine’s personal life, her ongoing love affairs with her favorites were well known in St. Petersburg and beyond. Therefore, it is understandable how topical the new text of Kiya’s monologue sounded in such conditions:
Oh, the heavy burden of purple and crown!
For the legislator his laws are most difficult.
The monarch's passion thunders throughout the sunflower,
And strict power turns into tyranny...
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If he wants to wear a crown without reproach
And if he wants to be strong in glory,
Must be righteous, and strict, and merciful,
Be like the rulers of nature,
How should his people imitate him...
(D. V, Rev. 1)
Sumarokov also expressed his moral and political views in the so-called “spiritual odes.”
In European literatures of the XVII- In the 18th century, the spiritual ode was not so much an expression of religious views as a way of solving ethical problems of a certain nature. Often using the form of translation of psalms or transcriptions of prayers, the poets of that time had the opportunity to touch upon topics that in other cases could cause censorship objections. Sumarokov followed the same path. He translated almost the entire Psalter, including the famous Psalms 81 and 145, which are works criticizing the power of the king and therefore were sometimes perceived as anti-monarchical; but in Sumarokov’s translation their ideological sound is greatly muted. Subsequently, the translation of Psalm 81, published by Derzhavin under the title “To Rulers and Judges,” brought upon him the wrath of Catherine; Lomonosov's translation of Psalm 145 was much more dramatic.
Sumarokov’s other “spiritual poems” were an expression of his spiritual experiences, fear of death, thoughts about the frailty of human life. Perhaps the abundance of poems on these topics is due to the fact that Sumarokov was a Freemason; at least it is known that at one time (in the mid-1750s) he was a member of the Masonic lodge.
Like other classics, Sumarokov widely used mythological names and subjects. This feature of classicism is usually understood as a purely external decoration, only as an artificial “imitation” of ancient antiquity. Meanwhile, for Sumarokov, mythology had a certain, fundamentally aesthetic meaning.
Characterizing the “magnificent” style of the ode in the “Epistole on Poetry” and contrasting it with the simplicity of epic works, Sumarokov wrote:
This verse is a complete pretense...
That is: the ode’s verse is full of what must be “transformed,” transformed, remade, rethought:
...in him is virtue boldly
Transforms into a deity, accepts spirit and body.
Minerva is the wisdom in him, Diana is the purity,
Love is Cupid, Venus is beauty.
Further, Sumarokov reveals in more detail the meaning of mythological references in the works of classics:
Where there is thunder and lightning, there is rage
Angry Zeus frightens the earth too.
When the seas rise in turmoil and roar,
It is not the wind that makes noise, but Neptune shows anger.
And an echo is not a sound that repeats voices -
Then the nymph remembers Narcissus in tears.
These verses represent almost accurate translation“Poetic art” Boileau introduces the base, concrete, repeated in different prosaic versions into art as sublime, detached from local, random features, unchangeable; mythology generalizes everything private, discards the individual and replaces it with the “eternally beautiful.”
Thus, everything in the art of classicism was subordinated to the main task - the creation of an ideal world of beautiful rationality, which should further “enlighten” readers, bring them closer to the knowledge of the truth, lead them to “good”, to “immaculate life”.
This made classicism a meaningful, “ideological” art. Sumarokov is especially characterized by the struggle against formalistic trends in the art of the 18th century. In accordance with his noble positions, Sumarokov demanded content, “reason,” and enlightenment from writers. Characterizing “meaningless creators,” he wrote in one of his last works:
No one will cloud these people's minds:
Brainless locusts fly without reason.
Such a piet does not think,
Only numbers the syllables.
(“Letter to Prince A. M. Golitsyn”)
At the same time, Sumarokov was resolutely against cold, rational poetry. He demanded from the poet genuine feeling and sincerity. In the poem “Lack of Image” this idea is expressed as follows:
He works in vain
Who infects only the mind with his mind:
He's not a poet yet,
Who only depicts a thought,
Having cold blood;
But the poet is the one who infects the heart
And the feeling depicts
Having hot blood.
3.8. EVOLUTION IN SUMAROKOV'S WORK
Remaining a poet of the nobility throughout his literary career, Sumarokov nevertheless made a noticeable evolution; at first he was the poetic exponent of the entire “noble corps” as a whole, he was the literary ideologist of the entire ruling class, and then, from about the end of the 1750s, in his work, which had not lost any of its noble character, features of criticism towards to the court noble circle, to the arrogant and insolent “nobles”. Sumarokov ends as a poet, although a nobleman, but, with all the outward expressions of his loyalty, clearly hostile towards Catherine II.
Sumarokov’s work, as well as other phenomena of noble culture of those years, reflected the changes that occurred in the Russian nobility in the 1750-1760s.
The period after the death of Peter I is characterized by frequent changes of rulers, mostly through palace coups. In a report at the Second Congress of Trade Unions in 1919, V.I. Lenin, speaking about the nature of the coups that preceded the Great October Revolution socialist revolution, said: “Take the old feudal noble society. There, coups were ridiculously easy, as long as it was a matter of taking power away from one group of nobles or feudal lords and giving it to another.” 1
Palace revolutions XVIII centuries were not affected at all social basis feudal state, but only led to a change in the “little groups” of the ruling class. The coup of 1741, which removed from power a large group of German courtiers and Russian nobles associated with them and installed Elizabeth on the throne, seemed to contemporaries a triumph of the entire Russian nobility as a whole, although power was seized by a “handful” of court businessmen, led by Bestuzhev, Shuvalov, Vorontsov and partly the Razumovsky . Within a very short time, at Elizabeth’s court, from the listed members of the “handful,” a new strong “nobles” was formed, pushing the middle nobility out of power and relying on the rapidly growing bureaucratic apparatus (clerks). The thefts that were carried out in the 1740s, especially the 1750s by the Shuvalovs, Vorontsovs, Chernyshevs and other nobles, the arrogance and swagger of this court elite strongly set the cultural nobility against it. Bribery and arbitrariness of officials also caused outrage.
On the other hand, the transformation of the nobles from the service class into a class that does not have any responsibilities and has only rights and privileges, the development of luxury among the nobles, extravagance, the exorbitant increase in the exploitation of the serf peasantry - all this aroused Sumarokov’s indignation at the uncultured local and metropolitan nobility.
That is why in the works of Sumarokov, even in the early period, when he still felt himself a spokesman for the interests of the entire nobility, there was already criticism of the courtier, “proud, bloated like a frog” and high-society dandy, on the one hand, and bribe-taking clerks, on the other. Over time, the less the cultural appearance of the ruling stratum of the nobility corresponded to Sumarokov’s ideal image of a “son of the fatherland,” the more he felt obliged to oppose the orders of Elizabethan rule that outraged him.
At the end of Elizabeth’s reign, Sumarokov, under the influence of the described circumstances, transferred his political sympathies to the wife of the heir to the throne, Ekaterina Alekseevna, the future Catherine II, around whom more cultured courtiers were grouped, dissatisfied with Elizabeth and the “handful” that ruled on her behalf. In 1759, Sumarokov published the magazine “Hardworking Bee,” which he defiantly dedicated to Catherine. The magazine, replete with attacks on nobles and clerks, was closed after a year. In various forms, Sumarokov continued to fight in subsequent years.
The accession to the throne of Catherine II disappointed Sumarokov. The new “bunch” of nobles who carried out a coup and were led by the Orlov brothers, rude, uncultured and arrogant, disgusted Sumarokov even more. Catherine’s “policy” turned out to be aimed not at the “common good,” as Sumarokov understood the latter, but at satisfying the personal interests of the empress and her entourage. Seeing the sharp discrepancy between the reality of that time and his noble ideal, Sumarokov decisively stood in opposition to Catherine and the new court “handful”. Almost from the very moment Catherine seized the throne, he showed his dissatisfaction with her, reflecting the position of many of his cultured noble contemporaries. For a number of personal and social reasons, Sumarokov’s negative attitude towards the Empress especially intensified in the late 1760s - early 1770s and was clearly expressed in the tragedy “Dimitri the Pretender”. And even Pugachev’s uprising, which extremely excited Sumarokov and pushed him to create works in which his noble views were most manifested - the stanza “To the City of Sinbirsk on Pugachev” and “Poems on Pugachev” - did not force him to change his attitude towards Catherine: in in the second poem her name is not mentioned at all, and in the first it is accompanied by cold, official compliments.
Sumarokov’s works reflected a third of a century of the history of the Russian nobility before Pugachev’s uprising. At the same time, without familiarity with the history of Russia of this period, it is impossible to understand a number of features of Sumarokov’s poetic creativity.
3.9. SPONTANEOUS USE OF SPOKEN RUSSIAN LANGUAGE IN SUMAROKOV’S WORK
The requirement to follow the “rules,” characteristic of classicism, led to the fact that, along with the generally recognized poetic code of that time, the “Epistle to the Piso” (“On the Art of Poetry”) of the Roman poet Horace, in every major European literature The 17th-18th centuries arose its own set of rules for the art of classicism. Due to the special significance of French culture at that time, Boileau’s “Poetic Art” enjoyed universal authority, which was quite widely popular in Russia: in 1752 it was published in a not entirely successful translation by Trediakovsky.
However, a few years earlier, Sumarokov, hardly having ten years of poetic work behind him, came up with a theoretical and literary document that played a big role in the history of Russian poetry. This was the brochure he published in 1748 “Two epistles of Alexander Sumarokov. The first one is about the Russian language, and the second one is about poetry.”
In his epistles, Sumarokov solved a question that was important for that era and seems incomprehensible now: can the Russian language be used as a language of literature? The historical significance of this problem can be correctly understood if we remember that for several centuries the literary language in Russia was a language that some scholars consider Church Slavonic, although heavily influenced by spoken Russian, and others consider it Old Russian, which has assimilated a huge number of Church Slavonicisms.
Just twenty years before the appearance of Sumarokov’s epistol, the satirist A.D. Kantemir, whose works were written in the Church Slavonic-Russian language, began his literary activity.
In 1731, Trediakovsky published his translation of the popular French novel “Riding to the Island of Love,” representing the first example of this literary genre on Russian soil. In the preface to the translation, Trediakovsky indicated that in this work he was making an experiment in the use of spoken Russian as the language of a literary work. This was a conscious rejection of archaic linguistic traditions.
The spontaneous use of the spoken Russian language for literary purposes took place in practice even before the appearance of “Ride to the Island of Love,” especially among translators of foreign adventure stories and writers of original Russian works of this genre. Trediakovsky emphasized the conscious nature of his
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beginnings. Trediakovsky’s attempt, from our point of view today, seems unsuccessful. Its historical significance was enormous. From now on, Russian fiction and in theory rejects the Church Slavonic language as the only acceptable language in poetic creativity, but in practice the Russian language was used in the 1730-1740s only in high lyrical genres. Prose (oratory) in the vast majority of cases is written in Church Slavonic.
Setting his goal, following Trediakovsky and Lomonosov, to substantiate and prove the possibility of using the Russian language in literature, Sumarokov does not nihilistically reject everything created in Russian culture in the Slavic language; he, from his usual point of view of “reason,” asserts:
Since “even”, “even” the custom has destroyed,
Who is forcing you to introduce them into your language again?
And what remains from antiquity is irreplaceable,
That may be what you should be everywhere.
Do not imagine that our language is not the same as in books,
Which you and I call non-Russians.
He is the same, but if he were different, as you think,
Just because you don't understand it,
So what would be left with the Russian language?
Your thought is much farther from the truth.
Although in both epistles Sumarokov considers many different issues, the main idea runs through the entire brochure, completing this entire single work:
Our beautiful language is capable of everything.
At the same time, Sumarokov demanded that the writer not just write:
Whoever writes must clear his thoughts in advance
And first of all, show yourself the light...
There is no secret to writing crazy.
Art - to correctly offer your style,
So that the creator's opinion is clearly imagined
And speeches would flow freely and in harmony.
Sumarokov believed that
To explain reason and passions,
So that you can enter the hearts and attract people, -
The writer must have natural talent and read a lot and carefully:
To us in this<в творчестве. - П. Б.>happy nature shows the way,
And reading opens the door to art.
Considering natural talent an indispensable condition for the fruitful activity of a writer, Sumarokov at the same time pays exceptionally great attention to special literary education:
And if nature has gifted you with this,
Try to let art decorate this gift.
And in the first place he puts forward the aspiring writer’s mastery of the basic rules of the theory of literary genres and the corresponding style:
Know the difference between genders in poetry
And when you start, look for decent words,
Without annoying the muses with your bad success, -
that is, do not deviate from accepted literary principles.
The next part of the second Sumarokov epistole represents an independent and very interesting reworking of Boileau’s “Poetic Art”. In order to correctly understand Sumarokov’s attitude towards his French model, it should be remembered that Boileau’s didactic poem, consisting of four songs, is devoted to the characteristics of literary genres only in the two middle songs. Both of these songs contain 604 verses; the corresponding section of Sumarokov’s second epistole consists of only 294 verses, that is, it is half as large. Therefore, the number of poems devoted by both poets to the characteristics of the same genres, the sequence of consideration of genres and the presence in Sumarokov of characteristics of genres that are absent in Boileau, and vice versa, are very indicative. This comparison shows that in Sumarokov we do not have a simple imitation, but that his deviations from Boileau were caused by the state and needs of Russian literature of that time.
Like the French literary legislator, Sumarokov begins his consideration of literary genera with a description of the idyll and eclogue (he has 22 verses, Boileau has 37); followed by elegy (16-12) and ode (44-20); then Boileau has a series of literary forms, to which Sumarokov assigns a place at the end of his “poetic art”, paying immeasurably less attention to them. Thus, the sonnet, which was extremely widespread in France both then and later, which Boileau placed in fourth place and to which he dedicated 21 verses, is in Sumarokov’s tenth place and, together with the characteristics of the rondo, ballad and madrigal, received only 8 verses, and the sonnet itself is given one line:
The sonnet demands that the warehouse be very clean.
He allocated 5 verses to the epigram (it is in seventh place by Sumarokov), Boileau - 32; satire (in sixth place by Sumarokov) has approximately the same number of verses (31-36); but to the song, which Boileau speaks with obvious disdain (14 poems, including 4 about the song itself), Sumarokov devoted 38 lines. The attitude of both authors to dramatic genres is different: in Sumarokov they come immediately after the ode, in Boileau almost the entire third song is specially dedicated to them; the Russian theorist dedicated 60 poems to tragedy (epistles in two places), and 26 to comedy; French respectively - 155 and 86.
Finally, each of the authors under consideration has genres that the other does not; the presence of some and the absence of others, as mentioned above, is explained by the historical conditions of the development of French and Russian literature.
Thus, Sumarokov omitted vaudeville (in Boileau - 10 poems), novel (in Boileau - along with tragedy), epic (in Boileau - 175 poems, in Sumarokov - cursory mentions, no characteristics). At the same time, Sumarokov devotes 10 verses to the fable, 30 to the heroic poem; Boileau, the author of the heroic-comic poem “Naloy” and a contemporary of the great French fabulist La Fontaine, did not find room to characterize these genres. Both lack the characteristics of a “spiritual ode,” epistle, “inscription,” didactic poem, etc.
Sumarokov’s independence was also evident in his understanding of the essence of a number of problems. Although he uses Boileau’s text in places, he sometimes polemicizes with his predecessor (“The poems of large sonnets are perfect... This phoenix was not given to anyone dearly” - Boileau; “Sonnet, rondo, ballads - playing poetically... Their composition is cunning in trifles are vanity: poetic simplicity is pleasant to me” - Sumarokov). Thus, Sumarokov’s “Two Epistles,” for all its general and particular dependence on Boileau’s “Poetic Art,” represented an undoubted result of the independent development of Russian literature and that is why, as we have already noted, they played an exceptional role in subsequent times. It is worth noting that a quarter of a century after the publication of “Two Epistles,” Sumarokov combined them, significantly shortening them, into one work, which he published in 1774 under the title “Instructions for those who want to be writers.” In addition to its general significance for Russian literature and especially its part of the nobility, “Two Epistles” is interesting in that it well explains the literary activity of Sumarokov himself. To a certain extent, we can say that here the poet published a literary program, which he subsequently followed without any significant deviations.
The lack of precise dating of so many of Sumarokov’s works deprives us of the opportunity to fully recreate the gradual development of his poetic creativity. There is no doubt, however, that the intensive writing of songs, eclogues and elegies in the 1740s helped Sumarokov to develop a relatively easy, for that time even musical, verse, a living language close to the then spoken language, the ability to quite accurately, albeit superficially, convey mental states . Sumarokov mastered Alexandrian verse (iambic hexameter with paired rhymes), which was used to write his eclogues and elegies, as well as epistles, satires and nine tragedies. Usually one is surprised by the smoothness and fluency of the verse of even Sumarokov’s earliest tragedies, as well as the sufficient skill in conveying the psychological states of the heroes of these works. However, if we take into account how many songs, eclogues and elegies he wrote during this period, the well-known artistic maturity of his tragedies should not seem incomprehensible.
Although Sumarokov has repeatedly stated that he did not have any leaders in poetry, there is no doubt that at the beginning of his poetic activity, in the second half of the 1730s, he was a convinced follower of Trediakovsky. According to the latter, Sumarokov greeted the appearance of Lomonosov’s innovative poetry with unfriendly epigrams unknown to us. However, soon Sumarokov, like Trediakovsky, for that matter, learned the new principles of versification and literary language introduced by Lomonosov.
3.10. TRAGEDIES OF SUMAROKOV
In the second half of the 1740s, Sumarokov began to write poetic tragedies, a genre that had been absent in Russian literature until that time. Attention to the inner world of a person, to his experiences, changes of feelings, manifested in Sumarokov’s numerous songs, eclogues and elegies, and his confident mastery of verse allowed him to immediately create dramatic works that were highly artistic for that time.
In total, he wrote nine tragedies: “Horev” (1747), “Hamlet” (1747), “Sinav and Truvor” (1750), “Artistona” (1751), “Semira” (1752), “Dimiza” (1756; later revised under the title “Yaroslav and Dimiza”), “Vysheslav” (1770), “Dimitri the Pretender” (1771), “Mstislav” (1774).
Political position Sumarokova of these years suggested to him the themes and problems of tragedies. In his tragedies of the 1740s-1750s, Sumarokov promoted the ideas of subordinating “passions” - “reason”, “reason”, “feelings” - “duty”. Monarchs in his contemporary tragedies are portrayed mainly as “ideal sovereigns”; their deviation from the ideal, “enslavement” to their “passions”, for example their suspicion, distrust, entail a tragic outcome (“Horev”). Such tragedies at that time had an undoubted educational value for the noble society, accustomed to the despotism of its rapidly changing monarchs.
Tragedies brought literary fame to Sumarokov. He was the first to introduce this genre into Russian literature. Admiring contemporaries called him “the Racine of the north.” In total, he wrote nine tragedies. Six - from 1747 to 1758: “Khorev” (1747), “Hamlet” (1748), “Sinav and Truvor” (1750), “Artistona” (1750), “Semira” (1751), “Yaropolk and Demiza "(1758). Then, after a ten-year break, three more: “Vysheslav” (1768), “Dmitry the Pretender” (1771) and “Mstislav” (1774).
Sumarokov widely used the experience of French playwrights of the 17th-18th centuries in his tragedies. - Corneille, Racine, Voltaire. But for all that, Sumarokov’s tragedies also had distinctive features. In the tragedies of Corneille and Racine, along with political ones, there were also purely psychological plays (“Cid” by Corneille, “Phaedre” by Racine). All of Sumarokov’s tragedies have a pronounced political overtones. The authors of French tragedies wrote plays based on ancient, Spanish and “oriental” subjects. Most of Sumarokov’s tragedies are based on domestic themes. In this case, an interesting pattern is observed. The playwright turned to the most distant eras of Russian history, of a legendary or semi-legendary nature, which made it possible to freely vary certain facts. What was important for him was not the reproduction of the color of the era, but political didactics, which the historical plot allowed for to be carried out to the masses. The difference was also that in the French tragedies the monarchical and republican mode of government were compared (in “Zinna” by Corneille, in “Brutus” and “Julius Caesar” by Voltaire), in the tragedies of Sumarokov there is no republican theme. As a convinced monarchist, he could oppose tyranny only with enlightened absolutism.
Sumarokov's tragedies represent a kind of school of civic virtues, designed not only for ordinary nobles, but also for monarchs. This is one of the reasons for the unkind attitude towards the playwright of Catherine II. Without encroaching on the political foundations of the monarchical state, Sumarokov touches on its moral values in his plays. A conflict of duty and passion is born. Duty commands the heroes to strictly fulfill their civic duties, passions - love, suspicion, jealousy, despotic inclinations - prevent their implementation. In this regard, two types of heroes are presented in Sumarokov’s tragedies. The first of them, entering into a duel with passion that gripped them, eventually overcome their hesitation and honorably fulfill their civic duty. These include Khorev (the play “Khorev”), Hamlet (a character from the play of the same name, which is a free adaptation of Shakespeare’s tragedy), Truvor (the tragedy “Sinav and Truvor”) and a number of others.
The problem of curbing, overcoming personal “passionate” principles is emphasized in the remarks of the characters. “Overcome yourself and ascend even more,” the Novgorod boyar Gostomysl teaches Truvor, “Take your love and master yourself” (Part 3. P. 136), his daughter Ilmena echoes Gostomysl.
Sumarokov decisively reworks one of Shakespeare's best tragedies, Hamlet, specifically emphasizing his disagreement with the author. “My Hamlet,” wrote Sumarokov, “barely resembles Shakespeare’s tragedy” (Part 10, p. 117).
Indeed, in Sumarokov’s play, Hamlet’s father is killed not by Claudius, but by Polonius. Carrying out retribution, Hamlet must become the murderer of the father of the girl he loves. In this regard, Hamlet’s famous monologue, which begins in Shakespeare with the words “To be or not to be?” changes beyond recognition:
What should I do now?
Don't know what to conceive?
Is it easy to lose Ophelia forever!
Father! Mistress! Oh dear names...
...Who will I be trespassing against? You are equally kind to me (Part 3. pp. 94 -95).
The second type includes characters in whom passion triumphs over public debt. These are, first of all, persons vested with supreme power - princes, monarchs, i.e. those who, according to Sumarokov, must especially zealously fulfill their duties:
The monarch needs a lot of insight,
If he wants to wear the crown without reproach.
And if he wants to be strong in glory,
He must be righteous and strict and merciful (Part 3, p. 47).
But, unfortunately, power often blinds rulers, and they, more easily than their subjects, turn out to be slaves to their feelings, which most sadly affects the fate of the people dependent on them. Thus, his brother and his brother’s fiancée, Osnelda (“Khorev”), become victims of Prince Kiy’s suspicion. Blinded by love's passion Novgorod prince Sinav drives Truvor and his beloved Ilmena to suicide (“Sinav and Truvor”). The punishment for unreasonable rulers is most often repentance and pangs of conscience that come after a belated insight. However, in some cases, Sumarokov allows more formidable forms of retribution. The most daring tragedy in this regard turned out to be the tragedy “Dmitry the Pretender” - the only one of Sumarokov’s plays based on reliable historical events. This is the first tyrant-fighting tragedy in Russia. In it, Sumarokov showed a ruler convinced of his right to be a despot and absolutely incapable of repentance. The Impostor declares his tyrannical inclinations so openly that it even harms the psychological persuasiveness of the image: “I am accustomed to horror, furious with villainy, //Filled with barbarism and stained with blood” (Part 4, p. 74).
Sumarokov shares the educational idea of the right of the people to overthrow a tyrant monarch. Of course, the people do not mean commoners, but nobles. In the play, this idea is realized in the form of an open performance of soldiers against the Pretender, who, in the face of imminent death, stabs himself with a dagger. It should be noted that the illegality of False Dmitry’s rule in the play is motivated not by impostor, but by the tyrannical rule of the hero: “Whenever you reigned in Russia maliciously, // Whether you are Dmitry or not, this is the same for the people” (Part 4, p. 76).
Sumarokov's merit to Russian drama is that he created special type tragedies, which turned out to be extremely stable throughout the 18th century. The constant hero of Sumarokov's tragedies is a ruler who has succumbed to some destructive passion - suspicion, ambition, jealousy - and as a result of this causes suffering to his subjects. In order for the tyranny of the monarch to be revealed in the plot of the play, two lovers are introduced into it, whose happiness is prevented by the despotic will of the ruler. The behavior of lovers is determined by the struggle in their souls of duty and passion. However, in plays where the despotism of the monarch acquires destructive proportions, the struggle between duty and passion of lovers gives way to the struggle with the tyrant ruler. The outcome of tragedies can be not only sad, but also happy, as in “Dmitry the Pretender”. This indicates Sumarokov’s confidence in the possibility of curbing despotism. The heroes of Sumarokov's plays are little individualized and correlate with that social role, which is assigned to them in the play: an unjust monarch, a cunning nobleman, a selfless military leader, etc. The lengthy monologues attract attention. The high structure of the tragedy corresponds to the Alexandrian verses (iambic hexameter with paired rhyme and caesura in the middle of the verse). Each tragedy consists of five acts. The unity of place, time and action is observed.
At the same time, Sumarokov's tragedies of the 1740s - 1750s attracted the then noble audience with their ability to reveal the spiritual world of the heroes, in particular, to show the rich range of their experiences associated with the feeling of love. For his students and admirers, Sumarokov was in the early 1750s
The discoverer of the sacrament of love for us, the lyre,
Creator of the glorious and magnificent “Semira”
In the tragedies of the 1760s - 1770s, maintaining the same basically educational goals and the same dramatic technique, Sumarokov led the fight against the policies of Catherine II. Instead of the “ideal sovereigns” of his early tragedies, in the plays of the last period he began to depict “tyrants on the throne,” with the clear intention of causing the audience to compare these negative heroes with Catherine II. This is especially clearly seen in the tragedy “Dimitri the Pretender”.
In his tragedies, Sumarokov not only followed the already existing rules of classicism with particular rigor, but, as he himself pointed out, he also set himself additional ones.
First of all, the famous three “unities” were observed here - time (a plot point was chosen when the entire development of the action fit into the conditional “one day”, but in reality - even less), place (with the same scenery) and action ( when the intrigue was not complicated by side episodes). Then the division of characters into heroes (positive and negative) and confidantes or characters that replaced them was maintained; This was done in order to avoid a large number of monologues and at the same time give the characters the opportunity to express their plans, experiences and talk about their actions. In the tragedies of the early period, Sumarokov also used the figures of “messengers,” whose duty was to inform the heroes about the events taking place behind the scenes.
Sumarokov strictly followed the rules of composition of tragedies: the first act, which necessarily began with an exposition, a conversation between the hero or heroine and his confidante or confidante (sometimes the father, as in “Sinav and Truvor,” or the mother, as in “Khorev”), was the beginning of the play; the second action was to serve to escalate the conflict; the third represented the climax dramatic content plays; the fourth summed up everything that preceded it and outlined the denouement, usually short, which took place in the last, fifth act.
Since the task of the tragedy was formulated by Sumarokov in the form of the proposition: “the creator finds a way to touch the mind of his caretakers through action,” he took the subjects for his tragedies to be striking, exciting, but not overwhelming the viewer, not leaving a gloomy impression. The tragedy “Dmitry the Pretender” was considered the most powerful play by Sumarokov in this genre. In describing the “characters” of his heroes, Sumarokov basically followed Voltaire’s position: “Characters must always retain their qualities... Art consists in showing all the character and all the feelings of the character through<того>, how they force him to speak, and not by how this character speaks for himself.”1 In Sumarokov, the first part of this formula is fully observed (“characters” remain unchanged, do not develop), but the “character” of the hero is not always revealed from actions (from “the way he is made to speak”); often the character characterizes himself. So, Demetrius the Pretender says about himself from the very first words:
The evil fury in my heart is gnawing in confusion,
A villainous soul cannot be at peace...
I know that I am a merciless spectator of evil
And the creator of all these shameless deeds in the world.
(D.I, Rev.1)
And this “villainous” “character” of the hero is maintained by Sumarokov until Dimitri’s last tirade, which evoked wild applause from the public in honor of his favorite tragic actors:
Go, soul, to hell and be forever captured!
(He hits himself in the chest with a dagger and, dying, falls into the hands of the guards.)
Oh, that the whole universe would perish with me!
(D. V, the last one)
1 Voltaire. General rules of the theater. Transl. A. Pisareva, St. Petersburg, 1609, p. 76.
37
Sumarokov complied with the requirement that the heroes' remarks (most often in monologues) contain clear phrases - formulas, aphoristically constructed and therefore easily remembered. In addition to the above passages, the following are noteworthy:
Fiends sometimes rise on magnificent thrones,
A respectable man is respectable even without a crown.
(“Mstislav”, d. III, iv. 6)
Unhappy is the country where there are many nobles,
The truth is silent there, lies reign.
(“Dimitri the Pretender”, d. III, iv. 5)
As I reign, I want to be more human.
(“Vysheslav”, d. V, yavl. 2)
From the above materials it is clear that under the pen of Sumarokov, tragedy, especially in the last period of his literary activity, represented a means of political struggle. Hints of an ambitious woman who did not hide her love affairs For Catherine, Sumarokov’s tragedies were so obvious that the Empress had only one thing left to do - pretend that she did not understand them, and allow them to be staged and published. Thanks to this, Sumarokov's tragedies became a means of political education for the then - again, primarily noble - audience, as well as wider, democratic circles. This explains the great theatrical and reader success of Sumarokov’s tragedies: some of them went through 4 or even 5 editions. It’s not a stretch to say that Sumarokov’s tragedies were a kind of political school Russian spectator of the second half of the 18th century.
Sumarokov's tragedies marked the beginning of a political trend in Russian dramatic literature.
(Ya. B. KNYAZHNIN)
Ya. B. Knyazhnin with his “Vadim Novgorodsky” and N. P. Nikolev with “Sorena and Zamir,” tragedies that contained the most harsh anti-monarchist tirades in Russian literature of the 18th century, were only the logical conclusion of what Sumarokov began.
3.11. SUMAROKOV'S COMEDIES
Of all the literary genres in which Sumarokov wrote, he and his contemporaries valued his comedies the least. In the poetic code of classicism, comedy was given a place in the lowest row; comedy usually enjoyed the success of the least enlightened and demanding theater audience. Sumarokov looked at his comedies as a necessary, traditional appendage to the serious part of the performance: after the tragedy, a “nachspiel” or “petipiesa” - a one-act, rarely two-act comedy - had to be staged. These were Sumarokov’s first comedies - “Tresotinius”, “Quarrel between Husband and Wife”, “Arbitration Court”. All of them were more reminiscent of farcical farces than classic comedies. Comedy more late period Sumarokov already wrote taking into account new theatrical tastes and trends. He openly admitted that “Melpomene” (the muse of tragedy) was “more kind” to him than “Thalia” (the muse of comedy). Sumarokov’s comedies had one more feature that brought them down in the eyes of his contemporaries - they were portraits and lampoons: in Tresotinius he portrayed Trediakovsky, in Dowry by Deceit, Guardian and Covetous - his son-in-law A. I. Buturlin ( under the name “Kashcheya” Sumarokov depicts the latter both in satires and parables), in “Narcissus” - I. I. Shuvalov.
Nevertheless, Sumarokov’s comedies also had their positive significance, if only in that they served as a starting point for the formulation of new aesthetic requirements among young playwrights - V. I. Lukin, D. I. Fonvizin, etc.
Sumarokov owns twelve comedies. According to the experience of French literature, a “correct” classical comedy should be written in verse and consist of five acts. But in his early experiments Sumarokov relied on another tradition - on interludes and commedia dell'arte, familiar to Russian audiences from the performances of visiting Italian artists. The plots of the plays are traditional: the matchmaking of several rivals to the heroine, which gives the author the opportunity to demonstrate their funny sides. The intrigue is usually complicated by the favor of the bride's parents towards the most unworthy of the applicants, which, however, does not interfere with a successful outcome. Sumarokov’s first three comedies “Tresotinius”, “An Empty Quarrel” and “Monsters”, consisting of one act, appeared in 1750. Their heroes repeat the characters of the comedy dellarte: a boastful warrior, a clever servant, a learned pedant, a greedy judge. The comic effect was achieved using primitive farcical techniques: fights, verbal altercations, dressing up.
So, in the comedy “Tresotinius”, the scientist Tresotinius and the boastful officer Bramarbas woo the daughter of Mr. Orontes, Clarice, Mr. Orontes is on the side of Tresotinius. Clarice herself loves Dorant. She feignedly agrees to submit to her father’s will, but secretly from him, she writes Dorant, not Tresotinius, into the marriage contract. Orontes is forced to come to terms with what has happened. The comedy Tresotinius, as we see, is still very much associated with foreign models. heroes, the conclusion of a marriage contract - all this is taken from Italian plays. Russian reality is represented by satire on a specific person
(POET TREDIAKOVSKY)
The poet Trediakovsky is depicted in the image of Tresotinius. In the play, many arrows are aimed at Trediakovsky, even to the point of parodying his love songs.
The next six comedies - “The Dowry by Deception”, “The Guardian”, “The Covetous Man”, “Three Brothers Together”, “Poisonous”, “Narcissus” - were written between 1764 and 1768. These are the so-called comedies of character. The main character in them is given a close-up. His “vice” is narcissism (“Narcissus”), slander
(“Poisonous”), stinginess (“The Covetous Man”) - become the object of satirical ridicule. The plot of some of Sumarokov’s character comedies was influenced by the “philistine” tearful drama; it usually depicted virtuous heroes who were financially dependent on “vicious” characters. A major role in the denouement of tearful dramas was played by the motive of recognition, the appearance of unexpected witnesses, and the intervention of representatives of the law. The most typical play for character comedies is The Guardian (1765). Its hero is the Stranger - a type of miser. But unlike the comic versions of this character, Sumarokov’s miser is scary and disgusting. As the guardian of several orphans, he appropriates their fortune. He keeps some of them - Nisa, Pasquin - in the position of servants. Sostrate is prevented from marrying her loved one. At the end of the play, the intrigues of the Stranger are exposed, and he must stand trial.
The "everyday" comedies date back to 1772: "Mother - Daughter's Companion", "Crazy Woman" and "Cuckold by Imagination". The last of them was influenced by Fonvizin’s play “The Brigadier”. In “The Cuckold,” two types of nobles are contrasted with each other: the educated, endowed with subtle feelings, Florisa and Count Cassander, and the ignorant, rude, primitive landowner Vikul and his wife Khavronya. This couple eats a lot, sleeps a lot, and plays cards out of boredom.
One of the scenes picturesquely conveys the features of the life of these landowners. On the occasion of the arrival of Count Cassandra, Khavronya orders a festive dinner from the butler. This is done with passion, inspiration, and knowledge of the matter. An extensive list of dishes colorfully characterizes the uterine interests of village gourmets. Here are pork legs with sour cream and horseradish, a stuffed stomach, pies with salted milk mushrooms, pork “frucasse” with prunes and “mauble” porridge in an “ant” pot, which, for the sake of the noble guest, is ordered to be covered with “Venice” (Venetian) plate.
Khavronya’s story about her visit to the St. Petersburg theater, where she watched Sumarokov’s tragedy “Khorev” is funny. She took everything she saw on stage as a real incident and after Khorev’s suicide she decided to leave the theater as soon as possible. “Cuckold by Imagination” is a step forward in Sumarokov’s dramaturgy. Unlike previous plays, the writer here avoids too straightforward condemnation of the characters. In essence, Vikul and Khavronya are not bad people. They are good-natured, hospitable, touchingly attached to each other. Their trouble is that they did not receive proper upbringing and education.
It should be mentioned that Sumarokov also acted as a prose journalist. He has articles on philosophy, economic issues, history, philology, education, etc. that were not bad for that time. He was a versatile, fairly educated writer for that time. He was proud of his library, which gave him the opportunity to fill in the gaps in the meager knowledge acquired in the Land Noble Corps.
It was also significant for the development of Russian literature that Sumarokov wrote in a variety of genres, in a variety of meters, created sapphic, Horatian, anacreontic odes, stanzas, sonnets, tried to write an epic poem, etc. He paid great attention to issues of verse: he tried make it more flexible, more musical and expressive. Sumarokov’s Alexandrian verse, which he most often used, is not at all monotonous. Sumarokov moved the caesura, allowing it after the fourth, fifth, seventh and even eighth syllable. Along with the dactylic stresses before the caesura in the first hemistich of Alexandrian verse, which aroused objections from his opponents (like “Unexpected...”, “And unhindered...”), at the end of his activity (in the “Eclogues” of 1774) Sumarokov quite consciously became use in the first hemistich stress on the second syllable from the beginning of the verse (for example, “Thought”, “Strengthened”, “Most merciless”, “Felt by me”, etc.). (Single cases of such stresses are found in “Horev” (1747) and in “Two Epistles” (1748).) He also allowed “transfers” (enjambement).
In contrast to the principles of Lomonosov’s “loud odes,” Sumarokov developed the doctrine of “decent simplicity” and “naturalness” of poetry. However, the apparent correctness of his judgments should not hide from the Soviet reader the noble, conventional content of them and the poetic practice of Sumarokov based on them. His struggle with Lomonosov in appearance concerned issues of literary theory, but in essence it was a defense of the noble content of poetry against the national, democratic content of Lomonosov.
Lomonosov promoted the ideas of statehood, national culture, education; For such big questions, he chose the appropriate vocabulary, grandiose figurative constructions, majestic, fantastic pictures. Sumarokov, touching on the same problems, solved them from a purely noble position; he sought to educate with his poetry “sons of the fatherland,” noble patriots, who, both by their “nature,” origin, and by their culture, should occupy leading positions in the state apparatus. For the “sons of the fatherland,” “reason,” “reason,” always governs “passions.” “A sober mind,” says Sumarokov in “Ode to V.I. Maikov,” “always shuns dreams.”
Thus, under seemingly correct theoretical principles, Sumarokov in practice pursued class-limited noble views. In his struggle with Lomonosov, historical righteousness was not on Sumarokov’s side.
With all this, in the literature of the mid-18th century, Sumarokov was the largest representative of Russian noble classicism. This type of classicism had a number of features that made it unlike French classicism, such as the acceptance of certain aspects of folk art (in songs), the rejection of the stiffness of language and everyday sketches of a realistic nature (in parables), and an appeal to Russian history (in tragedies) etc.
3.12. THE INFLUENCE OF CHARACTER ON SUMAROKOV’S WORK
Being by nature very irritable and nervous (he had a nervous tic), Sumarokov was not a very pleasant person in everyday life. These features left a well-known individual imprint on his literary activity. This, apparently, can explain the large number of polemical speeches of Sumarokov, his epigrams and parodies. However, there is no doubt that in general Sumarokov’s position - political and literary - was determined by the demands put forward in the middle of the 18th century by history to the nobility of Russia as ruling class. It was this historical necessity that dictated the noble “ideological” nature of Sumarokov’s poetry and instilled in him a critical and satirical attitude towards the noble-bureaucratic Russian reality, which threatened the strength of the position of the nobility as the ruling class.
In the then conditions of the class struggle in Russia, criticism of the serfdom state, even from the limited positions on which Sumarokov stood, had a positive meaning. Sumarokov’s readers from among the progressive nobles and from the democratic strata put deeper content into his criticism and rethought his noble ideology in a democratic direction. Novikov, publishing his anti-Catherine satirical magazines, took for them epigraphs from Sumarokov’s parables - “They work, and you eat their labor” and “Strict instruction is dangerous, where there is a lot of atrocity and madness,” - putting into these poems, which Sumarokov had pure literary content(see below notes on the parables “The Beetles and the Bees” and “The Satyr and the Vile People”), a harsher, anti-serfdom meaning. Radishchev generally rated Sumarokov very highly, calling him “an excellent poet”; Speaking about Lomonosov’s services to Russian culture, Radishchev noted with particular emphasis: “A great husband can give birth to a great husband; and behold your victorious crown. ABOUT! Lomonosov, you produced Sumarokov.”
Ardently loving his native language and proud of its beauty and wealth, Sumarokov was sincerely indignant, seeing on the part of the nobles disdain for the Russian language and preference for the French language. He wrote a number of parables on this topic (“Mischief”, “Corruption of the Language”, etc.), a satire “On the French Language”; in the comedy “An Empty Quarrel” he placed a caricature-parody dialogue between the “petimeter” Duliz and the “petimeter” Delamide, representing a sharply satirical ridicule of the Russian-French jargon of the court nobility of the 1740s - 1750s.
Sumarokov's treatment of the Russian literary language was of great importance. Lacking the school education that distinguished Trediakovsky and Lomonosov and which was based on a deep and serious study of church books, Sumarokov used in his work the ordinary colloquial language of the cultured metropolitan nobility. He freely violated the norms of the Church Slavonic language, which were outdated by that time, and placed Russian accents and endings where, in Trediakovsky’s opinion, this was a manifestation of literary ignorance and “common usage.” Trediakovsky reproached Sumarokov for what he wrote
“further”, not “further”, “destroyed”, not “destroyed”, “swear”, not “maple”, “unknown beauty”, not “unknown beauty”, etc. When you read the works of Sumarokov , especially his poems, one gets the impression that they were written in a literary language closer to our time than even the language of Lomonosov, not to mention the language of Trediakovsky.
4. CONCLUSION
Pushkin, with all his negative attitude towards the artistic value of Sumarokov’s legacy, wrote: “Sumarokov knew Russian perfectly, better than Lomonosov, and his critics (in grammatically) are thorough." In this contrast between Sumarokov and Lomonosov there is undoubtedly an element of exaggeration, but in one respect Pushkin was right: Sumarokov knew the living literary Russian language perfectly, and studying Sumarokov’s language is not useful even now.
Sumarokov practically sought to prove this; he wrote, as already indicated above, in all literary genres possible at that time, setting as his goal the enrichment of Russian literature. There was a lot in this childish desire to be the first in everything, to be the “father of Russian poetry.” However, this vanity was based on Sumarokov’s deep assessment of the social significance of literature, a deep understanding of its educational role. Pushkin noted as his merit that at that time of ignorance and disdain for literature, “Sumarokov demanded respect for poetry.”2
In Sumarokov’s work, in all his literary activities, there were many contradictions; in the class-limited, sometimes reactionary content of his poetry there were significant progressive elements. Without turning a blind eye to these contradictions, to the noble class limitations of Sumarokov’s legacy, Russian literary science takes the positive in his literary work and gives it a proper historical assessment.
4.1. CONCLUSIONS
CONCLUSION ONE:
The creative range of Alexander Petrovich Sumarokov is very wide. He wrote odes, satires, fables, eclogues, songs, but the main thing with which he enriched the genre composition of Russian classicism was tragedy and comedy.
CONCLUSION TWO:
Sumarokov’s worldview was formed under the influence of the ideas of Peter the Great’s time. But unlike Lomonosov, he focused on the role and responsibilities of the nobility. A hereditary nobleman, a graduate of the gentry corps, Sumarokov did not doubt the legality of noble privileges, but believed that high office and ownership of serfs must be confirmed by education and service useful to society. A nobleman should not humiliate the human dignity of a peasant or burden him with unbearable exactions. He sharply criticized the ignorance and greed of many members of the nobility in his satires, fables and comedies.
CONCLUSION THREE:
Sumarokov considered the monarchy to be the best form of government. But the high position of the monarch obliges him to be fair, generous, and able to suppress bad passions. In his tragedies, the poet depicted the disastrous consequences resulting from the monarchs’ forgetfulness of their civic duty.
CONCLUSION FOUR:
According to their own philosophical views Sumarokov was a rationalist. Although he was familiar with Locke’s sensualist theory (see his article “On Human Understanding According to Locke”), it did not lead him to abandon rationalism. “Logical and mathematical proof,” he wrote, “is not pedantry, but the path to truth.”
CONCLUSION FIFTH:
Sumarokov looked at his work as a kind of school of civic virtues. Therefore, they put moralistic functions in first place. At the same time, Sumarokov acutely felt and purely artistic tasks, which faced Russian literature, he outlined his thoughts on these issues in two epistles: “On the Russian Language” and “On Poetry.” Subsequently, he combined them in one work entitled “Instruction for those who want to be writers” (1774). The model for the “Instructions” was Boileau’s treatise “The Art of Poetry,” but in Sumarokov’s work there is an independent position dictated by the urgent needs of Russian literature. Boileau's treatise does not raise the question of creating a national language, since in France XVII V. this problem has already been resolved. Sumarokov begins his “Instructions” precisely with this: “We need a language like the Greeks had, // Like the Romans had, And following them in that // As Italy and Rome now speak” (Part 1. P. 360).
5. LITERATURE
Sumarokov A. P. Full. collection all op. Part 4. Footnotes for this edition are given in the text.
Novikov N.I. Favorite Op. M., L., 1951.
Sumarokov A.P.: Russian Poetry, P. 366 (Sumarokov: Selected Works, P. 80)
V. G. Belinsky. Complete collection works, published by the USSR Academy of Sciences, vol. 10, M., 1956, p. 124.
V. I. Lenin, Works, vol. 17, p. 47
Collection of the Russian Historical Society, vol. X. St. Petersburg, 1872, p. 84.
A. I. Khodnev. History of the imp. Free Economic Society. St. Petersburg, 1865, pp. 24-25.
V. G. Belinsky Complete Works, ed. USSR Academy of Sciences, vol. 6, M., 1955, p. 316.
N. L. Stepanov. Quote article, pp. XXIII,42
A. P. Radishchev. Travel from St. Petersburg to Moscow (Tale about Lomonosov). Selected works. M., GIHL, 1952, p. 196.
A. S. Pushkin. Complete Works, ed. USSR Academy of Sciences, vol. 11. M., 1949, p. 59.
Alexander Petrovich Sumarokov (1718 – 1777). The son of a general and an aristocrat. At the age of 14 he entered the Gentry Cadet Corps, opened in 1732 by the government of Anna Ioannovna. Art, including literature, occupied a significant place in the corpus. Sumarokov was the first to take up literary work professionally.
Sumarokov's life was extremely sad. He was a nervous man who reacted sharply to the surrounding savagery of morals; had extraordinary ideas about serving the Fatherland, honor, culture, virtue. He was the creator of a new type of drama, the first director, and theater director.
Sumarokov’s first poems are odes from 1739 in a brochure entitled: “To Her Imperial Majesty, the most merciful Empress Anna Ivanovna, the All-Russian autocrat, congratulatory odes on the first day of the new year 1740 from the cadet corps, composed through Alexander Sumarokov.
He was influenced by the work of Trediakovsky, and then Lomonosov, with whom he was friends. Late 40s - early. 50x – discrepancy with Lomonosov.
Sumarokov believed that his poetic activity was a service to society, a form of participation in the political life of the country. According to his political views, he is a noble landowner. He considered serfdom necessary, believed that the state was based on two classes - the peasantry and the nobility. Nevertheless, the nobleman, in his opinion, does not have the right to consider the peasants his property, to treat them as slaves. He must be the judge and commander of his vassals and has the right to receive food from them. Sumarokov believed that the tsar must obey the laws of honor embodied in state laws.
In January 1759, Sumarokov began publishing his own magazine, “The Hardworking Bee.” Published monthly, published in the Academy of Sciences. Published mainly by one person. In the eyes of the government, such a body of independent noble public opinion was undesirable, and the magazine had to be closed.
Being one of Nikita Panin’s friends, after the coup that brought Catherine the Second to power, Sumarokov was close to the palace and received support as a writer. However, by the end of the 60s he found himself in disgrace, because Catherine began to crack down on all kinds of freethinking. Sumarokov gradually made enemies for himself. There was also unhappy love in Sumarokov’s life. He fell in love with a simple girl - his serf, and married her. Relatives of Sumarokov's first wife began a process against him, demanding that his children from his second marriage be deprived of the rights. Although the case ended in Sumarokov’s favor, it caused damage to his health, he began to drink; He became so poor that when he died, there was no money even for a funeral. The writer's coffin was carried in their arms to the cemetery by actors from the Moscow Theater. Besides them, two people came to see him off.
As a poet and theorist, Sumarokov completed the construction of the style of classicism in Russia. The basis of Sumarokov’s concrete poetics is the requirement of simplicity, naturalness, and clarity of poetic language. Poetry should avoid the fantastic and vaguely emotional. Preaches simplicity in verse and prose.
Sumarokov polemicizes a lot with Lomonosov, does not agree with his grammar and word usage. Sometimes he turns directly to the analysis of Lomonosov’s works. Sumarokov considered changing the meaning of a word as a violation of grammatical correctness.
In 1747, Sumarokov published his first tragedy, Horev, and the following year, Hamlet. "Khorev" was installed in the cadet corps in 1949. A kind of cadet troupe was created that played at court. Her soul was Sumarokov. Later he was the director of the theater organized by F. Volkov. (see ticket about the tragedy)
Sumarokov wrote tragedies and comedies. He was a brilliant comedian, but he was soon surpassed in this by Fonvizin, Knyazhnin, and Kapnist. As an author of tragedies he was unsurpassed. In total, Sumarokov wrote 12 comedies: “Tresotinius”, “An Empty Quarrel” and “Monsters”, written in 1750. Then, after 14 years - “Dowry by Deception”, “Guardian”, “Reddy Man”, “Three Brothers Together”, “Poisonous”, “Narcissus”. Then three comedies from 1772 - “Cuckold by Imagination”, “Mother Companion to Daughter”, “Crazy Woman”. Sumarokov's comedies have minimal connection to the traditions of French classicism. All of his comedies are written in prose; none has the full volume and correct arrangement of the composition of the classical tragedy of the West in five acts. Eight comedies have one act, four have three. These are small plays, almost sideshows. Sumarokov very conditionally maintains three unities. There is no unity of action. In the first comedies there is a rudimentary plot in the form of a couple in love, who at the end get married. The composition of the comic characters in them is determined by the composition of the stable masks of Italian folk comedy. They are enlivened by Sumarokov’s language - lively, sharp, cheeky in its unvarnishedness.
The six comedies of 1764–1768 were noticeably different from the first three. Sumarokov switches to the type of comedy of characters. In each play, the focus is on one image, and everything else is needed either to shade it or to create a fiction of the plot. The undoubted masterpiece of Sumarokov’s entire comedic work is his comedy “Cuckold by Imagination.” (In general, I think there’s no need to go into much detail about the comedy, because we were mostly going through tragedy, so I think that’s enough.)
Sumarokov’s poetic creativity amazes with its diversity, richness of genres and forms. Considering himself the creator of Russian literature, Sumarokov sought to show his contemporaries and leave for his descendants examples of all types of literature. He wrote exceptionally a lot and, apparently, quickly. Sumarokov wrote songs, elegies, eclogues, idylls, parables (fables), satires, epistles, sonnets, stanzas, epigrams, madrigals, solemn, philosophical odes, etc. He also translated the Psalter.
In total, Sumarokov wrote 374 parables. It was he who discovered the fable genre for Russian literature. He borrowed a lot from La Fontaine. Sumarokov's parables are often topical, aimed at ridiculing specific disorders in Russian social life of his time. Sometimes they were very small in volume. The most important theme of the fables is the Russian nobility. The language of fables is lively, bright, interspersed with sayings and colloquial expressions... In the mid-18th century, the main direction in the development of fables was determined. 1st model: the fable is written in the middle style, Alexandrian verse. Moral story. 2nd model (Sumarokov model): offers mixed verse, elements of low style - a fable story. In Sumarokov’s satirical works one can feel bile, conceit, and scandalous temperament.
In Lyrics, Sumarokov strives to give a generalized analysis of man in general. The love face gives an image of love in its “pure form.” In songs and elegies, Sumarokov speaks only about love, happy or unhappy. Other feelings and moods are not allowed. We will also not find individual characteristics of lovers and loved ones. There are no facts or events of real life in lyrical poems. Sumarokov wrote songs from the perspective of a man and a woman. The text consists of repeated formulas, devoid of specific character expression. Sumarokov created the language of love as a high feeling. Sumarokov did not publish his songs. Pastoral motifs appear in a number of songs and idylls. Elegies and eclogues are written in iambic hexameter, and songs give all kinds of rhythmic combinations.
1747 “Epistole on Language”, “Epistole on Poetry”. The “Epistole on Language” gives general principles for the assimilation of antiquity. The “Epistole on Poetry” has its own theory, exemplary writers, genres. (first general characteristics, then main samples, then characteristics of individual genres.)
The tragedy of Sumarokov.
Sumarokov, the author of the first Russian tragedies, took advantage of the example of French tragedians of the 17th and 18th centuries. A number of characteristic features of their system are Alexandrian verse (iambic hexameter with a caesura on the 3rd foot), 5 acts, the absence of extra-plot insertions and digressions, the absence of comic elements, “high syllable”, etc. Sumarokov transferred it to his tragedies. However, it cannot be said that Sumarokov borrowed the tragedy from the French, since there it was constantly developing, and, by borrowing, he would have to transfer the final version to Russian soil, i.e. Voltaire's version. Sumarokov built his tragedy on the principles of extreme economy of means, simplicity, restraint, and naturalness. The simplicity of the dramatic plot of his plays does not allow us to talk about intrigue, because... there is no hub of events, the whole action tends to be limited to one peripeteia. The initial situation stretches through the entire tragedy and is lifted at the end. Sumarokov's roles are also usually motionless. The tragedy is filled to a large extent by revealing the main situation in its significance for each pair of heroes separately. Dialogues, especially those of the central characters (lovers), receive a lyrical coloring. No narrative inserts. The central place of the drama, the third act, is marked mainly by an extra-plot device: the heroes draw swords or daggers from their scabbards. (because there is no plot climax). The action of most of Sumarokov's tragedies is attributed to ancient Rus'; here Sumarokov breaks the custom of depicting distant eras and distant countries in tragedy. Unlike the French tragedy, Sumarokov has almost no confidants, their role is extremely small. He either turns into a messenger, or, on the contrary, becomes a separate hero. The departure from the confidante system led to the development and abundance of monologues, since a monologue can replace a false dialogue with a confidant. Monologue is used to communicate to the viewer the thoughts, feelings and intentions of the characters. The desire to reduce the total number of characters. Thus, Sumarokov created a very unified compositional system of tragedy, in which all elements are fused and conditioned by the principle of simplicity and economy.
Sumarokov believed that “tragedy is done in order... to instill in the caretakers love for virtue, and extreme hatred for vices.” Sumarokov’s plays strive to arouse in the viewer admiration for virtue, to influence his emotional sensitivity. She wanted to correct the souls of the audience, not the minds, not the state apparatus. Hence the predominance of happy endings. (Only “Khorev” and “Sinav and Truvor” end tragically for the heroes.) The presence of a clear moral and evaluative characteristic. Before us are either wise, virtuous heroes (Semira, Dimisa, Truvor) or black villains (Dimitri the Pretender, Claudius in Hamlet), the villains die, the virtuous heroes emerge victorious from disasters.
Conflict is understood as the conflict between a person's life and how he should live. (“Dimitri the Pretender”) is not a conflict between feeling and duty. The tragedy of a person who does not live the way he should live. A man's collision with fate. At these moments, the scale of the hero’s personality is revealed. In tragedies, the location of the action is not important. The heroes are devoid of characteristic features. Classicism negatively perceived everything concrete - it was perceived as a distortion of human nature. Existential image of life. A tragic hero must be unhappy. Kupriyanova writes that “the hero of a classical tragedy should be neither good nor bad. He must be miserable." Tragedy elevates viewers and readers (catharsis... blah blah blah ).
The tragedy of Sumarokov gave rise to a tradition. His successors - Kheraskov, Maikov, Knyazhnin - nevertheless introduced new features into the tragedy.
12. Sumarokov “Dmitry the Pretender”.
Since Dimitri tricked him into taking Russian throne, he committed many atrocities: he exiled and executed many innocent people, ruined the country, and turned Moscow into a prison for the boyars. But in 1606 his tyranny reached its limit. He wants to convert Russians to the false Catholic faith and, moreover, to give the entire people under the yoke of the Poles. In vain, the king's confidant Parmen turns to Demetrius with admonitions: the king does not repent of anything. “I despise the Russian people from the throne / And I involuntarily extend tyrant power,” he declares to his confidant. The only thing that makes him suffer is his love for Ksenia, the daughter of boyar Shuisky. However, Dimitri is going to soon achieve the possession of his beloved, despite the fact that he is already married; your spouse can be poisoned. Hearing this terrible confession, Parmen decides to protect the king’s wife.
Then the head of the guard comes with a message that the people are worried and that some even dare to say directly: the current sovereign is not the royal son, but a runaway monk Otrepiev, an impostor. “The rebellion is from Shuisky,” Dimitri guesses and demands that Shuisky and Ksenia be brought to him.
Shuisky assures the tsar that both the people and he himself, Shuisky, love Demetrius and are obedient to his will. Then, as proof of submission, the impostor orders Ksenia to be given for himself. But the girl proudly refuses him: even the threat of death cannot make her forget her fiancé George. Shuisky promises the king to change his daughter’s thoughts.
As soon as Ksenia is left alone with her father, he reveals to her that he intends to soon overthrow the tyrant from the throne; but until the time comes, you need to remain silent and hide. Shuisky asks his daughter to pretend to be submissive to Dimitri. Ksenia and then Georgy agree to deception for the good of the fatherland.
However, when Dimitri, believing their lies, begins to mock his rival (“Disappear, you petty creature to be sacrificed to the Tsar!”), George is indignant and, although Ksenia tries to restrain him, he calls the impostor to his face a murderer and a tyrant. When Dimitri orders George to be taken to prison, Ksenia also ceases to restrain herself. The angry tsar promises death to both of them, but Shuisky, who arrives in time, softens him and assures him that Ksenia will no longer resist. He even takes a ring from Dimitri to give it to his daughter as a pledge of royal love. Instilling in the tsar the idea that he is a faithful support for the throne, Shuisky also undertakes to calm the popular unrest caused by the imprisonment of George in chains. The impostor does not object, but at the same time gives orders to increase his guard.
Demetrius himself understands that with his bloodthirstiness he is turning his subjects against himself and is bringing the end of his reign closer, but he cannot help himself.
Thanks to Parmen's intervention, Demetrius frees George. In a conversation with Shuisky, Parmen says: “Even though he is Otrepiev, he is also among deception, / If he is a worthy king, he is worthy of the king’s dignity. / But does high rank benefit us alone? / Even if Dimitri is the son of this Russian monarch, / But if we don’t see this quality in him, / So we worthily hate the monarch’s blood, / Not finding in ourselves the love of our children for our father...” and adds that he would have remained faithful to the king if he was the true father of the people. However, Shuisky is not sure of the feelings of Dimitriev’s confidant and therefore does not reveal his thoughts to him.
Ksenia and Georgy promise Shuisky from now on to endure all the impostor’s curses and not give themselves away. The lovers vow again and again that they will belong only to each other. “And if I am not united with you, / I will be laid in the grave with you,” says Ksenia. And the young man is not inferior to her in nobility, tenderness and sublimity of feelings.
This time their deception is crowned with success. Although their faces turn pale and tears appear in their eyes, both firmly tell Dimitri that they strive to overcome love. The king is happy to look at their suffering, he likes that his subjects are in his complete power: “...submitting to me, seek my love... / And if not so, fear and tremble!” - he teaches Ksenia.
Suddenly the chief of the guard brings the news that both the nobility and the people are becoming embittered and, apparently, this night will be the night of treason. Dimitri immediately calls Parmen to him. Ksenia tries to intercede for the instigators of the riot - her father and lover, but in vain. And in vain the confidant shows the king the path to salvation - repentance and mercy. Dimitri's character is opposed to virtue; he has only new atrocities on his mind. Parmen receives the order to execute the boyars.
When Shuisky and Georgy are announced that they are condemned to execution, both are ready to proudly and without timidity accept death; Shuisky asks only that he be allowed to say goodbye to his daughter. The impostor agrees because he knows that by doing so he will increase their torment. They bring Ksenia. Her father and groom say goodbye to her touchingly. The girl, deprived of everything that made her happiness, in despair asks to hit her with a sword... But Parmen already wants to take the boyars to prison. Ksenia rushes to Parmen, asking if he “has really exchanged his pitiful disposition for atrocity?” He does not answer the prayers of the unfortunate woman, but sends prayers to heaven so that his dream of overthrowing the tyrant will come true.
At night, Dimitri is awakened by the ringing of a bell, and the impostor realizes that a popular revolt has begun. Seized with horror, he feels that both people and the sky have taken up arms against him, that there is no salvation for him anywhere. Demetrius then demands from the few surviving guards to overcome the crowd of people surrounding royal house, then he conjures not to leave him, then he thinks about escaping... But even now he is afraid not of approaching death, but of the fact that he will die without taking revenge on his enemies. He turns the rage that has seized him on Ksenia: “Mistress and daughter of my traitors! / When they were saved, then die for them!”
The warriors, led by Georgy and Shuisky, burst into the royal chambers just at the moment when the impostor raises a dagger over Ksenia. Both her lover and her father would be glad to die in her place. And Dimitri agrees to give the girl life only on one condition - if power and the crown are returned to him. Shuisky is forced to say: “For the fatherly city, taste fierce death!” Georgiy rushes at the villain, already knowing that he will not have time... Dimitri rushes to stab Ksenia... But at that moment Parmen with a drawn sword snatches the girl from the hands of the impostor. With a final curse on his lips, Dimitri pierces his own chest with a dagger and dies.
13. “Sumarokovsky” classicism and its representatives.
"Sumarokovsky" classicism. Sumarokov as a theorist of classicism; his programmatic poetic epistles “On the Russian Language” and “On Poetry”; “Be patient, my soul, endure various torments...”, “Tolithiness”, “Crow and Fox”, “Naughty”, “Ambassador Donkey”, “Axis and Bull”, “Beetles and Bees”, etc.
Sumarokov's participation in the reform of Russian versification; Sumarokov about the role of pyrrhichians and spondeans in verse. Sumarokovsky school of especially precise rhyming (“rhymes as smooth as glass”).
Sumarokov-playwright. Tragedies "Horev" (1747), "Hamlet" (1748), "Sinav and Truvor" (1750), "Dimitri the Pretender" (1771), etc. Comedies "Tresotinius" (1750), "Guardian" (1764 - 1765), “Cuckold by Imagination” (1772), etc.
Satires “On the French Language”, “On Bad Rhymers”.).
Thus, in Russian classicism the “Sumarokov” and “Lomonosov” movements stand out. Classicism is a literary movement that originated in the 17th century. but France in the conditions of the formation of an absolutist state. Classical writers chose ancient art as a role model, but interpreted it in their own way. Classicism is based on the principle of rationalism (racio). Everything must be subject to reason, both in the state and in personal life, and selfish feelings and passions must be brought within the framework of civil and moral duty by reason. The theorist of classicism was the French poet Nicolas Boileau, who outlined the program of the movement in the book “Poetic Art”. In classicism, certain creative rules (norms) were established: 1. The main conflict of works is the struggle between egoistic feeling and civic duty or between passion and reason. In this case, duty and reason always win. 2. In accordance with their attitude to public duty, the actors were divided into positive and negative. The characters were imprinted with only one quality, one dominant trait (cowardice or courage, deceit or nobility, etc.), i.e. the characters were one-line. 3. A strict hierarchy of genres was established in literature. All of them were divided into high (ode, heroic poem, tragedy) and low (fable, satire, comedy). Outstanding events were depicted in high genres; the heroes were monarchs, statesmen, and generals. They glorified deeds for the benefit of the state and the monarchy. The language in works of high genres was supposed to be solemn and majestic. In low genres, the life of people of the middle classes was depicted, everyday phenomena and individual character traits of a person were ridiculed. The language of fables and comedies was close to colloquial. Dramatic works in the aesthetics of classicism were subject to the requirement of three unities: time, place and action. The unity of time and place meant that the action in the play should take no more than a day and take place in one place. The unity of action dictated a plot line that was not complicated by side episodes. In France, the leading writers of classicism were playwrights P. Corneille and J. Racine (in the genre of tragedy), Moliere (comedy), J. Lafontaine (fable). In Russia, classicism developed from the 18th century. Although Russian classicism had much in common with Western European, in particular with French, national specificity was clearly manifested in literature. If Western European classicism turned to ancient subjects, then Russian writers took material from national history. In Russian classicism, a critical note sounded clearly, the denunciation of vices was sharper, and interest in vernacular and to folk art in general. Representatives of classicism in Russian literature - A.D. Kantemir, M.V. Lomonosov, A.P. Sumarokov, D.I. Fonvizin.
14. “Three paraphrastic odes” (poetic competition between Trediakovsky, Lomonosov and Sumarokov).
Paraphrase is a retelling, a presentation of the text in your own words. Paraphrases are different types of processing of a text (literary work): a detailed explanation of a short text, an abbreviated summary large text(adaptation), simplified presentation of a difficult-to-understand text with brief explanations, transcription prose text into poetry, translating poetry into prose. A paraphrase can also be called a partial retelling of a text.
An example of poetic paraphrase in Russian literature is numerous poetic transcriptions of psalms, one of the most famous is “Three Paraphrastic Odes” (1743, published 1744). In this book, V.K. Trediakovsky, M.V. Lomonosov and A.P. Sumarokov competed in writing a poetic transcription of the 143rd Psalm to find out which poetic meter is most suitable for works of high “calm”. Lomonosov and Sumarokov rearranged the psalm in iambic, Trediakovsky - in trochee.
After all, they compete precisely in the aesthetically individual “utterances” of paraphrastic odes. As we know, in a poetic competition the goal is to determine which plan of expression of which paraphrastic ode is “higher” and “more magnificent.” Therefore, in “Three Odes” (as, indeed, in later transcriptions) the goal of the poets is to improve the aesthetic quality of the verbal series. Their style is decorated with freely constructed figurative systems and tropes that serve the task of multiplying and increasing the meaning to which the reader is raised. Lomonosov in his translation uses the allegorical metaphor “horn”, quite traditional for the Bible, but by combining it with the verbal adjective “raised”, he creates
a conventionally pictorial image that transforms its previous meaning. Trediakovsky strives to increase the aesthetic quality of his transcription by using the technique of “amplification” (verbal dissemination): his paraphrastic ode consists of 130 poetic lines (Lomonosov - from 60, Sumarokov - from 66). Trediakovsky transforms the first four words of the psalm into a grandiose stream of words, which is deployed in ten lines of the odic stanza. Apparently, Sumarokov also had something similar (in the aspect of aesthetic quality and individuality of expression) in mind when he wrote to G.V. Kozitsky: “I am sure that my psalms are not made according to Lomonosov. And the last aspect. A text whose premise is its “spiritual benefit” cannot be used for a secular purpose. If the only function of the psalm text for medieval culture was “salvation,” then the participants in the first Russian poetry competition use this text for the knowledge of art as a tool for resolving the problem of the theory of verse.
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Alexander Petrovich Sumarokov (1717-1777), the third founder of Russian classicism, a younger contemporary of Trediakovsky and Lomonosov, belonged to an old noble family. The creative range of Alexander Petrovich Sumarokov is very wide. He wrote odes, satires, fables, eclogues, songs, but the main thing with which he enriched the genre composition of Russian classicism was tragedy and comedy. Having started out in poetry as a student of Trediakovsky, Sumarokov then changed his creative style, following in the footsteps of Lomonosov. Trediakovsky’s “wrong”, “non-exemplary” creativity began to be perceived by Sumarokov as a defeated idol, as a violation of the “eternal” canons of art, perhaps even as a desecration of the altar of the Beautiful. That is why Sumarokov attacks Trediakovsky with such fierce criticism: he seeks to bring down the false gods and glorify the only Deity - Truth. (Subsequently, for the same reason, Sumarokov would conduct a polemic with Lomonosov, meticulously analyzing almost every line of his, trying to completely prove that he was right.) With regard to the ode genre, the polemic with Lomonosov touched mainly on two questions: should there be a break in the discussion of the main topic? works (i.e. the so-called lyrical disorder) and what should be the style of a poet who has chosen this genre? First of all, the mind captivated by a “daring thought” is the mind of Lomonosov, not filled with delight (“the sudden delight captivated the mind”), which makes an inspired flight through the Universe, twists the edges of the veil of Time, in a moment overcomes the vast expanses of the Earth, i.e. . "mind-spirit", inspired mind. “The thought is delighted” Sumarokov moves in a strictly defined direction, it is “given”, verified; it is characterized by “ascents” and “descents” - but not free soaring.
Sumarokov’s ode is a strictly “complimentary” genre, formed as a result of the poet’s refusal to take a break in the disclosure of the main theme. If Lomonosov could insert into the ode a poetic adaptation of an excerpt from Cicero’s speech in defense of the poet Archias, subordinating it to educational goals (“Sciences nourish young men, give joy to the old...”), then Sumarokov “loses” the educational sound of the ode, deliberately abandoning the “inserted episodes", narrowing his poetic task to a clear "leading" a single theme. Sumarokov’s style, “gentle” as defined by his contemporaries, is also much simpler and more concise. Sumarokov's epithets are often accurate. The poet's metaphors are built on the use of already established image-symbols, a kind of poetic formulas: “bloody sword” (in Lomonosov - “sword washed in blood”), “loud noise of glorious deeds” (in Lomonosov “loud noise” of the Neva, announcing “that here in winter there is a golden spring" - "Ode on the arrival of Elizabeth Petrovna", 1752). The genre of the laudable ode, as Sumarokov himself admitted, was not the main thing in the poet’s work: not possessing Lomonosov’s versatile genius and his desire for enlightenment, Sumarokov considers this type of ode mainly as “complimentary.” “Spiritual” odes, or arrangements of psalms, opened up much greater prospects for Sumarokov’s creative gift. Since the time of Simeon of Polotsk, Russian poets have often used the Psalter as a basis for poetic transcriptions, seeing in the book of psalms ample opportunities for expression own feelings and thoughts. Like his predecessors, he translated, or rather, re-arranged psalms and Sumaroks into verse. Translations of the psalter were not something secondary for the poet, only paraphrastic exercises in versification - most likely, the poet turned to the psalter in difficult moments of life, in moments of grief, endowing biblical characters with autobiographical features in order to convey his own sorrow, anxiety, and excitement. So, perhaps, the vicissitudes of the personal life of the poet, who married a serf and as a result was forced to end all relations with noble relatives, were reflected in the lines of the arrangement of Psalm 145 about the natural equality of people. Mixed rhyme - aabccb. Rhyme aa, ss - masculine, bb - feminine. This kind of stanza construction is unusual in Russian poetry, but is often found in German. It is known that A.P. Sumarokov translated the psalms from the Slavic translation of the Bible. However, the poet was also interested in the Hebrew original, therefore, not knowing the Hebrew language, he used European translations and, above all, “a new and very close to the original translation in German.” Sumarokov was also familiar with German poetic transcriptions of psalms. Perhaps, when creating his “spiritual odes,” he was guided by the rhythmic structure of German works of this type. In general, Sumarokov was characterized by using the rich experience of ancient and Western European poetry in his work. As N. Bulich writes, “Sumarokov has... a whole department of odes, called different... This department includes the so-called anacreontic, sapphic, Horatian odes, written in imitation of the external form of these ancient poets.” Since Sumarokov did not know the languages of antiquity, he used prose translations by Kozitsky, which he translated into poetry.
A.P. Sumarokov, with his literary creativity, contributed to the establishment of classicism on Russian soil. He acted both as a theorist of classicism and as a writer who, in his literary practice, gave examples of the diverse genres provided for by the poetics of classicism. Sumarokov began by writing odes; the first two odes, dedicated to Anna Ioannovna, were published in 1740. In them, the aspiring poet imitated Trediakovsky. Since the appearance of Lomonosov's odes, Sumarokov has experienced strong impact his creative genius. However, the ode genre did not become dominant in the work of Sumarokov, who was destined to achieve fame as a great playwright and lyric poet, the creator of love songs, idylls, elegies, and eclogues.
An important literary event was the two poetic epistles published in 1748 by Sumarokov - “On the Russian Language” and “On Poetry”, in which Sumarokov acted as a theorist of classicism. In the first, he talks about the need to enrich the literary language with timeless Church Slavonic words and avoid foreign words. In this he gets closer to Lomonosov. In “Epistole on Poetry” (1747), unlike Lomonosov, Sumarokov, theoretically substantiating the genres of classicism, asserts the equality of all genres, without giving preference to any of them:
Everything is praiseworthy: whether a drama, an eclogue or an ode -
Decide what your nature draws you to...
Subsequently, both of these epistles were revised and made up one - “Instructions for those who want to be writers,” published in 1774.
To Trediakovsky’s reproach for borrowing epistles from Boileau’s “The Art of Poetry,” Sumarokov replied that he “didn’t take much from Boileau,” meaning his understanding of the aesthetic code and his independent development of individual genres. Nevertheless, Sumarokov does not deny his dependence on Boileau’s theory. “My epistle about poetry,” he says, “is all from Boalov, and Boalo took it from Horace. No: Boalo did not take everything from Horace, and I did not take everything from Boalo...”
The beginning of Sumarokov’s dramatic activity also dates back to the 40s, for he considered theater to be the strongest means of educating the nobility. In his tragedies, one of the most characteristic genres of classicism, Sumarokov stages great, social significant issues. Contemporaries highly appreciated this type of dramaturgy by Sumarokov, calling him “northern Racine,” the founder of the dramaturgy of Russian classicism.
Epistle “On Poetry”
Epistle about poetry. - The second epistole from A. Sumarokov’s book “Two Epistles”. The first epistole dealt with issues of the Russian literary language.
“Epistole on Language” and “Epistole on Poetry” were created in 1747 and later united under the title “Instruction for those who want to be a writer.” In “Epistole on Language” Sumarokov puts forward a demand for simplicity and clarity of language, and in “Epistole on Poetry” he briefly and unobtrusively retells Boileau’s “Poetic Art”, somewhat “adapting” this work for the domestic user:
a) the poet must write competently and think intelligently;
b) in order to create a good literary work, we must focus on the good examples that antiquity gives us (Homer, Pindar, Sophocles, Horace, Tibullus, etc.), French literature(Boileau, Corneille, Racine, Moliere, etc.) and ours from time to time (Lomonosov, Cantemir) - this point is most secondary in relation to the theory of French classicism with its Cartesian conviction that the laws of beauty are dictated by reason, therefore, they are eternal and are unchangeable, and, having analyzed a sufficient number of “good” works, you can create a canon, the implementation of which will ensure the “goodness” of your work;
c) a strict delineation of genres is introduced, each of which is assigned a specific theme, characters, style (idyl - shepherd theme; ode - scope and “thundering sound”; comedy should make you laugh and be useful; satire - make fun of vices; epigram - be short and “sharp”; the themes of the elegy are love and nature; the song must be written simple syllable; The heroic-comic poem must be a “reversal” of the epic poem; an epic poem, a fable, a sonnet, a rondo and a ballad are also mentioned, but they are mentioned somewhat in passing;
d) in relation to dramatic genres, the requirement of 3 unities is introduced, due to the necessary, according to the classicists, creation of stage illusion (if the viewer sees a palace on the scenery, then in the next act it will be difficult for him to be transported somewhere else; if the viewer came to the theater for 2 hours, then you shouldn’t pretend that he spent several years there; if he has taken into account one particular plot line, then you shouldn’t overload his mind and move away from this line) - also learned from old Boileau;
e) “independent activity” (in the sense of something that Boileau did not have): a constant return to the question of the purity of language; Russian authors are inscribed in the party line (Lomonosov - Russian Pindar and Malherbe, Kantemir - Russian Boileau); the genre system is slightly modified (the ones that took place in the original are missing eclogue, madrigal, vaudeville, but those missing in the original are present iroi-comic poem, song- a genre that has been super popular since the times of Peter the Great), i.e. he is not alien to the emerging national tradition.
Having briefly outlined the system of genres, Sumarokov hastily sets about creating samples and ends up creating almost everything.
However, in order for a classicist school to take shape, one more link is missing. Sumarokov built a system of genres not hierarchically, but descriptively, speaking about the importance and necessity of each genre in literature, but nevertheless, the idea of the correlation between genre and style is implicitly expressed in “Epistol”. Here is a style theory - the so-called. the theory of 3 styles, and Lomonosov develops in “Preface on the benefits of church books”: he divided all the words of the Russian language into three groups. To the first he included words common to the Church Slavonic and Russian languages ( god, glory, hand, now) To the second - those that have disappeared from colloquial use, but are common in the Church Slavonic written tradition ( I open, Lord, planted). Dilapidated and incomprehensible archaisms (obama, ryasny) Lomonosov was excluded from this group. The third group included native Russian words ( I say, a stream, which, bye). And for this group there was also an exception - crude vernacular vulgarisms. Based on this division of the lexical composition of the language into three layers, Lomonosov proposes a theory of styles: "high, mediocre[secondary] and low" High style involves the use of words of groups 1 and 2. This is the style of a heroic poem, ode, oratory. The middle style is formed on the basis of group 2, but allows for careful use of the other two. The middle style is the style of all prose theatrical plays, poetic messages, satire, eclogue and elegies, as well as scientific and literary prose. Low style is based on words of group 3, but the use of words of group 2 is acceptable. This is the style of epigram, song, comedy, epistolary and narrative everyday prose. In short, an orientation towards averaging the style norm.
Creativity of A.P. Sumarokova.
Alexander Petrovich Sumarokov (1718 – 1777). The son of a general and an aristocrat. At the age of 14 he entered the Gentry Cadet Corps, opened in 1732 by the government of Anna Ioannovna. Art, including literature, occupied a significant place in the corpus. Sumarokov was the first to take up literary work professionally.
Sumarokov's life was extremely sad. He was a nervous man who reacted sharply to the surrounding savagery of morals; had extraordinary ideas about serving the Fatherland, honor, culture, virtue. He was the creator of a new type of drama, the first director, and theater director.
Sumarokov’s first poems are odes from 1739 in a brochure entitled: “To Her Imperial Majesty, the most merciful Empress Anna Ivanovna, the All-Russian autocrat, congratulatory odes on the first day of the new year 1740 from the cadet corps, composed through Alexander Sumarokov.
He was influenced by the work of Trediakovsky, and then Lomonosov, with whom he was friends. Late 40s - early. 50x – discrepancy with Lomonosov.
Sumarokov believed that his poetic activity was a service to society, a form of participation in the political life of the country. According to his political views, he is a noble landowner. He considered serfdom necessary, believed that the state was based on two classes - the peasantry and the nobility. Nevertheless, the nobleman, in his opinion, does not have the right to consider the peasants his property, to treat them as slaves. He must be the judge and commander of his vassals and has the right to receive food from them. Sumarokov believed that the tsar must obey the laws of honor embodied in state laws.
In January 1759, Sumarokov began publishing his own magazine, “The Hardworking Bee.” Published monthly, published in the Academy of Sciences. Published mainly by one person. In the eyes of the government, such a body of independent noble public opinion was undesirable, and the magazine had to be closed.
Being one of Nikita Panin’s friends, after the coup that brought Catherine the Second to power, Sumarokov was close to the palace and received support as a writer. However, by the end of the 60s he found himself in disgrace, because Catherine began to crack down on all kinds of freethinking. Sumarokov gradually made enemies for himself. There was also unhappy love in Sumarokov’s life. He fell in love with a simple girl - his serf, and married her. Relatives of Sumarokov's first wife began a process against him, demanding that his children from his second marriage be deprived of the rights. Although the case ended in Sumarokov’s favor, it caused damage to his health, he began to drink; He became so poor that when he died, there was no money even for a funeral. The writer's coffin was carried in their arms to the cemetery by actors from the Moscow Theater. Besides them, two people came to see him off.
As a poet and theorist, Sumarokov completed the construction of the style of classicism in Russia. The basis of Sumarokov’s concrete poetics is the requirement of simplicity, naturalness, and clarity of poetic language. Poetry should avoid the fantastic and vaguely emotional. Preaches simplicity in verse and prose.
Sumarokov polemicizes a lot with Lomonosov, does not agree with his grammar and word usage. Sometimes he turns directly to the analysis of Lomonosov’s works. Sumarokov considered changing the meaning of a word as a violation of grammatical correctness.
In 1747, Sumarokov published his first tragedy, Horev, and the following year, Hamlet. "Khorev" was installed in the cadet corps in 1949. A kind of cadet troupe was created that played at court. Her soul was Sumarokov. Later he was the director of the theater organized by F. Volkov. (see ticket about the tragedy)
Sumarokov wrote tragedies and comedies. He was a brilliant comedian, but he was soon surpassed in this by Fonvizin, Knyazhnin, and Kapnist. As an author of tragedies he was unsurpassed. In total, Sumarokov wrote 12 comedies: “Tresotinius”, “An Empty Quarrel” and “Monsters”, written in 1750. Then, after 14 years - “Dowry by Deception”, “Guardian”, “Reddy Man”, “Three Brothers Together”, “Poisonous”, “Narcissus”. Then three comedies from 1772 - “Cuckold by Imagination”, “Mother Companion to Daughter”, “Crazy Woman”. Sumarokov's comedies have minimal connection to the traditions of French classicism. All of his comedies are written in prose; none has the full volume and correct arrangement of the composition of the classical tragedy of the West in five acts. Eight comedies have one act, four have three. These are small plays, almost sideshows. Sumarokov very conditionally maintains three unities. There is no unity of action. In the first comedies there is a rudimentary plot in the form of a couple in love, who at the end get married. The composition of the comic characters in them is determined by the composition of the stable masks of Italian folk comedy. They are enlivened by Sumarokov’s language - lively, sharp, cheeky in its unvarnishedness.
The six comedies of 1764–1768 were noticeably different from the first three. Sumarokov switches to the type of comedy of characters. In each play, the focus is on one image, and everything else is needed either to shade it or to create a fiction of the plot. The undoubted masterpiece of Sumarokov’s entire comedic work is his comedy “Cuckold by Imagination.” (In general, I think there’s no need to go into much detail about the comedy, because we were mostly going through tragedy, so I think that’s enough.)
Sumarokov’s poetic creativity amazes with its diversity, richness of genres and forms. Considering himself the creator of Russian literature, Sumarokov sought to show his contemporaries and leave for his descendants examples of all types of literature. He wrote exceptionally a lot and, apparently, quickly. Sumarokov wrote songs, elegies, eclogues, idylls, parables (fables), satires, epistles, sonnets, stanzas, epigrams, madrigals, solemn, philosophical odes, etc. He also translated the Psalter.
In total, Sumarokov wrote 374 parables. It was he who discovered the fable genre for Russian literature. He borrowed a lot from La Fontaine. Sumarokov's parables are often topical, aimed at ridiculing specific disorders in Russian social life of his time. Sometimes they were very small in volume. The most important theme of the fables is the Russian nobility. The language of fables is lively, bright, interspersed with sayings and colloquial expressions... In the mid-18th century, the main direction in the development of fables was determined. 1st model: the fable is written in the middle style, Alexandrian verse. Moral story. 2nd model (Sumarokov model): offers mixed verse, elements of low style - a fable story. In Sumarokov’s satirical works one can feel bile, conceit, and scandalous temperament.
In Lyrics, Sumarokov strives to give a generalized analysis of man in general. The love face gives an image of love in its “pure form.” In songs and elegies, Sumarokov speaks only about love, happy or unhappy. Other feelings and moods are not allowed. We will also not find individual characteristics of lovers and loved ones. There are no facts or events of real life in lyrical poems. Sumarokov wrote songs from the perspective of a man and a woman. The text consists of repeated formulas, devoid of specific character expression. Sumarokov created the language of love as a high feeling. Sumarokov did not publish his songs. Pastoral motifs appear in a number of songs and idylls. Elegies and eclogues are written in iambic hexameter, and songs give all kinds of rhythmic combinations.
1747 “Epistole on Language”, “Epistole on Poetry”. The “Epistole on Language” gives general principles for the assimilation of antiquity. The “Epistole on Poetry” has its own theory, exemplary writers, genres. (first general characteristics, then main samples, then characteristics of individual genres.)
The tragedy of Sumarokov.
Sumarokov, the author of the first Russian tragedies, took advantage of the example of French tragedians of the 17th and 18th centuries. A number of characteristic features of their system are Alexandrian verse (iambic hexameter with a caesura on the 3rd foot), 5 acts, the absence of extra-plot insertions and digressions, the absence of comic elements, “high syllable”, etc. Sumarokov transferred it to his tragedies. However, it cannot be said that Sumarokov borrowed the tragedy from the French, since there it was constantly developing, and, by borrowing, he would have to transfer the final version to Russian soil, i.e. Voltaire's version. Sumarokov built his tragedy on the principles of extreme economy of means, simplicity, restraint, and naturalness. The simplicity of the dramatic plot of his plays does not allow us to talk about intrigue, because... there is no hub of events, the whole action tends to be limited to one peripeteia. The initial situation stretches through the entire tragedy and is lifted at the end. Sumarokov's roles are also usually motionless. The tragedy is filled to a large extent by revealing the main situation in its significance for each pair of heroes separately. Dialogues, especially those of the central characters (lovers), receive a lyrical coloring. No narrative inserts. The central place of the drama, the third act, is marked mainly by an extra-plot device: the heroes draw swords or daggers from their scabbards. (because there is no plot climax). The action of most of Sumarokov's tragedies is attributed to ancient Rus'; here Sumarokov breaks the custom of depicting distant eras and distant countries in tragedy. Unlike the French tragedy, Sumarokov has almost no confidants, their role is extremely small. He either turns into a messenger, or, on the contrary, becomes a separate hero. The departure from the confidante system led to the development and abundance of monologues, since a monologue can replace a false dialogue with a confidant. Monologue is used to communicate to the viewer the thoughts, feelings and intentions of the characters. The desire to reduce the total number of characters. Thus, Sumarokov created a very unified compositional system of tragedy, in which all elements are fused and conditioned by the principle of simplicity and economy.
Sumarokov believed that “tragedy is done in order... to instill in the caretakers love for virtue, and extreme hatred for vices.” Sumarokov’s plays strive to arouse in the viewer admiration for virtue, to influence his emotional sensitivity. She wanted to correct the souls of the audience, not the minds, not the state apparatus. Hence the predominance of happy endings. (Only “Khorev” and “Sinav and Truvor” end tragically for the heroes.) The presence of a clear moral and evaluative characteristic. Before us are either wise, virtuous heroes (Semira, Dimisa, Truvor) or black villains (Dimitri the Pretender, Claudius in Hamlet), the villains die, the virtuous heroes emerge victorious from disasters.
Conflict is understood as the conflict between a person's life and how he should live. (“Dimitri the Pretender”) is not a conflict between feeling and duty. The tragedy of a person who does not live the way he should live. A man's collision with fate. At these moments, the scale of the hero’s personality is revealed. In tragedies, the location of the action is not important. The heroes are devoid of characteristic features. Classicism negatively perceived everything concrete - it was perceived as a distortion of human nature. Existential image of life. A tragic hero must be unhappy. Kupriyanova writes that “the hero of a classical tragedy should be neither good nor bad. He must be miserable." Tragedy elevates viewers and readers (catharsis... blah blah blah J).
The tragedy of Sumarokov gave rise to a tradition. His successors - Kheraskov, Maikov, Knyazhnin - nevertheless introduced new features into the tragedy.