LIFE AND WORK OF N. M. KARAMZIN
Introductory article by P. Berkov and G. Makagonenko
(Sections 1, 3, 6, 8 were written by P. Berkov; introduction, sections 2, 4, 5, 7, 9-11 - G. Makogonenko.)
The literary heritage of Karamzin is enormous. Diverse in content, genres and form, it captured the complex and difficult path of the writer's development. But of all the vast literary heritage of Karamzin, the attention of science has been drawn only to the artistic creation of the 1790s: Karamzin entered the history of Russian literature as the author of Letters from a Russian Traveler, stories (primarily, of course, Poor Liza) and several poems, like founder of the school of Russian sentimentalism and reformer of the literary language. The activity of Karamzin as a critic is hardly studied, his journalism is ignored. The "History of the Russian State" is regarded as a scientific work and, on this basis, is excluded from the history of literature. Excluded - contrary to its content and character, contrary to the perception of contemporaries, contrary to the opinion of Pushkin, who believed that Russian literature of the first two decades of the 19th century "can proudly present Europe" along with several odes of Derzhavin, Krylov's fables, Zhukovsky's poems, primarily "History" Karamzin.
Excluded, therefore, from the general process of the development of literature is precisely that part of Karamzin's legacy (criticism, journalism, and The History of the Russian State), which actively participated in the literary movement of the first quarter of the 19th century. Following a long tradition, our science, even speaking about the activities of Karamzin in the 19th century, still considers him only as the head of a school that brought the theme of man into literature and created a language to reveal the life of the heart, that is, persistently pulls a hare sheepskin coat over the shoulders of a mature Karamzin youthful sentimentality.
Yes, and this famous Karamzin sentimentalism is usually considered without taking into account the entire real content of the writer's enormous literary work in the 1790s, without historical concreteness, without taking into account the evolution of the young writer's artistic views.
The task of a concrete historical study of the entire heritage of this great writer has long been ripe. Without such a study, it is impossible to understand either the strengths or weaknesses of Karamzin's literary work, or the writer's important victories for literature, it is impossible to determine his real role and place in Russian literature.
1
Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin was born on December 1, 1766 in his father's small estate near Simbirsk. The childhood years of the future writer passed in the village. After a short stay in a boarding house in Simbirsk, Karamzin was taken to Moscow, where he was placed in a private boarding school by the university professor Shaden. Classes with Shaden were carried out according to a program very close to the university one, and in the last year of study Karamzin even attended different classes at the university. Karamzin left the boarding house as a humanitarianly educated person. A good knowledge of German and French allowed him to get acquainted with Western literary novelties in the original.
In 1783, Karamzin arrived in St. Petersburg: recorded, according to the noble customs of that time, as a boy for military service, he was supposed to enter the regiment after completing his education, in which he had long been listed. Army service weighed on him. An early awakened interest in literature determined his decision to try his luck in this field. The first literary experience of Karamzin that has come down to us is the translation of the idyll of the Swiss poet Gesner "Wooden Leg". The translation was printed in 1783.
The death of his father at the end of 1783 gave Karamzin a reason to ask for his resignation, and, having received it, he leaves for Simbirsk. Here he meets the translator, freemason I.P. Turgenev, who came from Moscow, who captivated the gifted young man with stories about the largest Russian educator, writer and well-known publisher N.I. Novikov, who created a large book publishing center in Moscow. Wanting to deeply and seriously engage in literature, Karamzin heeded Turgenev's advice and went with him to Moscow, where he met Novikov.
An active collector of literary forces, Novikov widely attracted young people who had graduated from the university to his publications. Karamzin was noticed by him, his abilities were appreciated: first, Novikov attracted him to translate books, and later, from 1787, he entrusted him with editing, together with the young writer A. Petrov, the first Russian magazine for children - Children's Reading. At the same time, the activities of Radishchev, Krylov and Knyazhnin unfolded in St. Petersburg. Fonvizin, sick and persecuted by Catherine, did not give up and in 1787 tried to publish his own satirical magazine, A Friend of Honest People, or Starodum.
Karamzin became friends with A. Petrov. They settled together in an old house that belonged to the publisher Novikov. Karamzin remembered the years of friendship with Petrov all his life. In 1793, Karamzin dedicated a lyric essay “A Flower on the Coffin of My Agathon” to his memory. The freemason A. M. Kutuzov, who lived in the same Novikov house, had a great influence on the development of Karamzin at that time. Kutuzov was closely associated with Radishchev, perhaps he told Karamzin a lot about his friend in St. Petersburg. However, Kutuzov's range of interests was different than that of the future author of Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow: he was attracted to philosophical, religious and even mystical questions, and not political, not social.
At this time of his life, Karamzin was deeply interested in various philosophical and aesthetic concepts of man. His letters to the famous and popular then Swiss philosopher and theologian Lavater (in 1786-1789) testify to the persistent desire to understand a person, to know oneself from the standpoint of religion. These letters are also curious about the reading circle of the novice writer: “I read the works of Lavater, Gellert and Haller and many others. I cannot afford to read much in my own language. We are still poor in prose writers (Schriftstellern). We have several poets worth reading. The first and best of them is Kheraskov. He composed two poems: "Rossiada" and "Vladimir"; his last and best work is still not understood by my compatriots. Fourteen years ago, Mr. Novikov became famous for his witty compositions, but now he wants to write nothing more; perhaps because he found another and more reliable means of being useful to his homeland. In the person of Mr. Klyucharev we now have a poet-philosopher, but he does not write much" ( Correspondence between Karamzin and Lavater. Reported by Dr. F. Waldman. Prepared for publication by J. Grot. SPb., 1893, pp. 20-21.).
Karamzin's conclusion: "We are still poor in prose writers" is fair. Indeed, by the mid-1780s, Russian prose had not yet emerged from its infancy. In the next decade, thanks to the activities of Radishchev, Krylov, and, above all, Karamzin himself, Russian prose will achieve remarkable success.
The work of Karamzin - a novice writer - in the Novikov children's magazine was of great importance to him. Addressing a children's audience, Karamzin managed to abandon the "high style", Slavic vocabulary, frozen phraseology and difficult syntax. Karamzin's translations in "Children's Reading" are written in the "middle style", in pure Russian, free from Slavonicisms, in simple, short phrases. Karamzin's efforts to update the style were most successful in his original, "truly Russian story" Eugene and Julia "(" Children's Reading ", 1789, part XVIII). The literary and pedagogical tasks of the children's magazine prompted the young Karamzin to create a new style. This was how his future stylistic reform was prepared.
In addition to active cooperation in "Children's Reading", Karamzin was seriously and enthusiastically engaged in translations. In 1786, he published Haller's poem The Origin of Evil, translated by him, in which he proved that the evil that causes suffering to people lies not in society, not in social relations, but in man himself, in his nature. The choice of material for translation was undoubtedly prompted by his Masonic friends Kutuzov and Petrov.
Living in Moscow, working hard, actively collaborating in Novikov's publications, Karamzin found himself embroiled in complex and conflicting relationships with his new friends. Their interest in literature, moral problems, diverse book publishing and journalistic activities were dear to him, he learned a lot from them. But the purely Masonic and mystical interests of Kutuzov and other members of the Novikov circle were alien to him. The trip abroad, which Karamzin went on in the spring of 1789, helped to finally part with the Masonic circle.
2
For about forty years Karamzin worked in literature. He began his activity at the formidable glow of the French Revolution, ended during the years of the great victories of the Russian people in the Patriotic War and the maturation of the noble revolution that broke out on December 14, 1825, a few months before the death of the writer. Time and events left their mark on Karamzin's convictions and determined his social and literary position. That is why the most important condition for a true understanding of everything Karamzin did is a concrete historical consideration of the writer's creative heritage in its entirety.
Karamzin went through a long and difficult path of ideological and aesthetic searches. First, he became close to the Freemasons-writers - A. M. Kutuzov and A. A. Petrov. On the eve of a trip abroad, he discovered Shakespeare. He was attracted by the powerful and wholesome characters he created of people who actively participated in the turbulent events of their time. In 1787 he completed the translation of Shakespeare's tragedy Julius Caesar. He read with enthusiasm the novels of Rousseau and the writings of Lessing. His tragedy "Emilia Galotti", in which the German enlightener punished "a bloodthirsty tyrant who oppresses innocence", he translated; in 1788 the translation went out of print. Since 1787, with the publication of a translation of Shakespeare's tragedy and the writing of the original poem "Poetry", in which the idea of the high social role of the poet was formulated, Karamzin's literary activity, freed from Masonic influences, began. The philosophy and literature of the French and German Enlightenment determined the features of the young man's aesthetic convictions. Enlighteners awakened interest in a person as a spiritually rich and unique personality, whose moral dignity does not depend on property status and class affiliation. The idea of personality became central both in Karamzin's work and in his aesthetic conception.
Karamzin's social convictions developed differently. As a true noble ideologist, he did not accept the idea of social equality of people - the central one in the educational ideology. Already in the journal "Children's Reading" a moralizing conversation between Dobroserdov and children about the inequality of conditions was published. Dobroserdov taught the children that it is only thanks to inequality that the peasant cultivates the field and thereby obtains the bread that the nobles need. “So,” he concluded, “through the unequal division of fate, God binds us closer in a union of love and friendship.” From his youth until the end of his life, Karamzin remained true to the conviction that inequality is necessary, that it is even beneficial. At the same time, Karamzin makes a concession to enlightenment and recognizes the moral equality of people. On this basis, at that time (the end of the 80s - the beginning of the 90s), Karamzin developed an abstract, dreamy utopia about the future brotherhood of people, about the triumph of social peace and happiness in society. In the poem “Song of the World” (1792), he writes: “Millions, embrace, as a brother embraces a brother”, “Make a chain, millions, children of one father! You have been given one law, you have been given one heart!” The religious and moral doctrine of the brotherhood of people merged in Karamzin with the abstractly understood ideas of the enlighteners about the happiness of a free, unoppressed person. Drawing naive pictures of the possible "bliss" of the "brothers", Karamzin persistently repeats that this is all a "dream of the imagination." Such a dreamy love of freedom opposed the views of the Russian enlighteners, who selflessly fought for the realization of their ideals, opposed, above all, the revolutionary convictions of Radishchev. But under the conditions of Catherine's reaction in the 1790s, these beautiful-hearted dreams and the constantly expressed belief in the beneficence of enlightenment for all classes alienated Karamzin from the camp of reaction and determined his social independence. This independence manifested itself primarily in relation to the French Revolution, which he had to observe in the spring of 1790 in Paris.
That is why Karamzin admitted to the optimistic nature of his beliefs in the early 1990s. “The end of our century,” he wrote, “we considered the end of the main disasters of mankind and thought that it would be followed by an important, general connection of theory with practice, speculation with activity; that people, morally convinced of the elegance of the laws of pure reason, will begin to fulfill them to the fullest extent and, under the shade of the world, in the shelter of peace and tranquility, will enjoy the true blessings of life.
This faith did not waver when the French Revolution began. Naturally, Karamzin could not welcome the revolution. But he was in no hurry to condemn her, preferring to carefully observe the events, trying to understand their real meaning.
Unfortunately, the question of Karamzin's attitude to the French Revolution has been incorrectly elucidated by science. It was customary, with the light hand of MP Pogodin, to characterize Karamzin's position according to his fifth part of the Letters of a Russian Traveler, published in 1801, where a sharply negative assessment of the revolution was given. However, for a long time V.V. Sipovsky ( See V. V. Sipovsky. N. M. Karamzin is the author of Letters from a Russian Traveler. SPb., 1899.) established that the fifth part of the "Letters" was created at the very end of the 1790s, that Karamzin consciously passed off his late view of the revolution as the convictions of the time when he was in France. Karamzin clearly did not want the reader to know his true attitude to the revolution, which he witnessed and watched closely. And all those, no matter how dark this question is by Karamzin himself, and then by the researchers of his work, we have at our disposal both direct and indirect evidence that quite definitely characterizes Karamzin's true attitude to the French Revolution.
What are these testimonies? In 1797, Karamzin published the article "A Few Words on Russian Literature" in the French magazine "Northern Spectator" ("Spectateur du Nord") (published in Hamburg). At the end of it, in order to show foreign readers "how we see things," he published a part previously written (probably in 1792-1793), "Letters of a Russian Traveler", dedicated to France, but not included by him in Russian edition of "Letters", published in the same 1797. “He heard about the French Revolution,” writes Karamzin about himself in the third person, “for the first time in Frankfurt am Main: he is extremely worried about this news.”
Cases detain Karamzin for several months in Switzerland. “Finally,” this part of the “Letters” says, “the author says goodbye to the beautiful Lake Geneva, attaches a tricolor cockade to his hat, and enters France.” For some time he lives in Lyon, then “stops for a long time in Paris”: “Our traveler attends stormy meetings in the national assembly, admires Mirabeau’s talents, pays tribute to the eloquence of his opponent Abbé Maury and compares them with Achilles and Hector.” Further, Karamzin writes about what he was going to tell Russian readers about the revolution: “The French revolution is one of those phenomena that determine the fate of mankind for many years. A new era is opening. It was given to me to see her, and Rousseau foresaw her ... "After many months in Paris, Karamzin, leaving for England," sends France his last forgiveness, wishing her happiness. Karamzin returned to Moscow in the summer of 1790.
Since January of the following year, Karamzin began publishing the Moscow Journal, in which a special section was occupied by reviews of foreign and Russian political and artistic works, performances of the Russian and Parisian theaters. It was in these reviews that Karamzin's social position, his attitude to the French Revolution, was most clearly manifested. Among the numerous reviews of foreign books, it is necessary to single out a group of works (mainly French) devoted to political issues. Karamzin recommended to the Russian reader the work of an active participant in the revolution, the philosopher Volney, “The Ruins, or Reflections on the Revolutions of the Empire”, Mercier's book about Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Wary of censorship, Karamzin briefly but expressively characterized them as "the most important works of French literature in the past year" ( "Moscow Journal", 1792, January, p. 15.). Reviewing the translation of Thomas More's Utopia, Karamzin, noting the poor quality of the translation, sympathized with the content of the world-famous work: "This book contains a description of an ideal or imaginary republic, similar to Plato's Republic ..." Although Karamzin believed that "many the ideas of "Utopia" can never be put into action", such reviews taught the reader at a time when the young French Republic was looking for ways to its real assertion, to reflect on the characteristic features of the "thought republic".
Karamzin calls Franklin's autobiography "notes a worthy book." Its value is instructive. Franklin - a real historical person - tells about himself, how he, a poor typographer, became a politician and, together with his people, "humbled the pride of the British, granted liberties to almost all of America, and enriched the sciences with great discoveries." This review is important, first of all, as an expression of Karamzin's ideal of a man of the 90s: the writer admires Franklin precisely because he was active, lived in political interests, because his soul was seized with an active love for people, for liberty.
The propaganda of sharply political writings during the years when turbulent events unfolded in France testifies to Karamzin's deep attention to these events. That is why he never condemned the revolution in the pages of his journal.
The appearance of a special critical department in the journal stemmed from Karamzin's conviction that criticism helps the development of literature. Criticism, according to Karamzin, was supposed to teach taste, demand diligent work from authors, instill a sense of pride in artistic achievements and disdain for ranks. But in Karamzin's understanding of the era of the Moscow Journal, criticism is, first of all, a review. The reviewer set himself two goals. Firstly, to popularize the ideas of new compositions, to widely inform the reader. Guiding the reader's reading, Karamzin argues, is one of the most important tasks of a critic. Foreign books were subjected to such review, first of all. Secondly, the task of the reviewer is to teach the author. Most of the reviews devoted to Russian books were frankly instructive.
In the reviews, Karamzin's aesthetic views were most fully and clearly captured. On the pages of the Moscow Journal, he established himself as an active spokesman for sentimentalism. By the early 1790s, European sentimentalism had reached a remarkable height. Russian sentimentalism, which began its history in the 1770s, only with the advent of Karamzin became a rich and dominant trend in literature.
Sentimentalism, an advanced art inspired by the ideology of the Enlightenment, was established and won in England, France and Germany in the second half of the 18th century. Enlightenment as an ideology that expresses not only bourgeois ideas, but ultimately defends the interests of the broad masses of the people, brought a new look at the person and the circumstances of his life, at the place of the individual in society. Sentimentalism, extolling the person, concentrated the main attention on the depiction of spiritual movements, deeply revealed the world of moral life. But this does not mean that sentimentalist writers are not interested in the outside world, that they do not see the connection and dependence of a person on the mores and customs of the society in which he lives. Enlightenment ideology, defining the essence of the artistic method of sentimentalism, opened up to a new direction not only the idea of personality, but also its dependence on circumstances.
The man of sentimentalism, opposing the richness of his individuality and inner world to the wealth of property, the richness of the pocket - the wealth of feelings, was at the same time deprived of a fighting spirit. This is due to the duality of the ideology of the Enlightenment. Enlighteners, putting forward revolutionary ideas, resolutely fighting feudalism, themselves remained supporters of peaceful reforms. This manifested the bourgeois limitations of the Western Enlightenment. And the hero of European sentimentalism is not a Protestant, he is a fugitive from the real world. In cruel feudal reality, he is a victim. But in his solitude he is great, for, as Rousseau said, "man is great in his feelings." Therefore, the hero of sentimentalism is not just a free person and a spiritually rich person, but he is also a private person, fleeing from a world hostile to him, not wanting to fight for his real freedom in society, staying in his solitude and enjoying his unique "I". This individualism of both French and English sentimentalism was progressive at the time of the struggle against feudalism. But already in this individualism, in this indifference to the fate of other people, in focusing all attention on oneself and in the complete absence of a fighting spirit, the features of egoism clearly emerge, which will flourish in a magnificent flower in the bourgeois society established after the revolution.
It was these features of European sentimentalism that allowed the Russian nobility to adopt and master its philosophy. Developing primarily the weak aspects of the new trend, that which limited its objective revolutionary character, a group of writers, in the conditions of reaction after the defeats of the peasant war of 1773-1775, approved sentimentalism in Russia. The ideological and aesthetic rearmament of the nobility was already carried out in the 70s and 80s by M. Kheraskov, M. Muravyov, A. Kutuzov, A. Petrov. In the 90s, sentimentalism became the dominant trend in noble literature, and the school was headed by Karamzin.
The philosophy of a free man, created by the French Enlightenment, was close and dear to Russian enlighteners. But in their doctrine of man, they were original and original, expressing those features of the ideal that were formed on the basis of the living historical activity of the Russian people. Not a “natural”, not natural, not a private person, devoid of his national conditioning, but a real historical person, a Russian person who has done infinitely much for his fatherland, a person whose patriotic feeling determines his human dignity - this is who attracted the attention of enlightenment writers .
Even Lomonosov defined the main features of the ideal of a person as a citizen. The hero of Fonvizin's "Undergrowth" Starodum, expressing the essence of his moral code, says: "I am a friend of honest people." Traveler Radishcheva in the introduction to the book "Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow" writes about himself: "I looked around me - my soul became wounded by the suffering of mankind." It is this ability to “be wounded” by the sufferings of mankind, to live the life of the whole society, to be able to sympathize and act for the benefit of people and the fatherland, and was declared by Russian writers-enlighteners as the main personality trait.
Karamzin in the 1790s becomes the leader of the Russian sentimentalists. Around the constant Karamzin publications, his literary friends - old and young, students and followers - united. The success of the new direction, no doubt, contributed primarily to the fact that it met the living needs of its time. After many years of fruitful activity of French and Russian writers-enlighteners, after artistic discoveries that changed the face of art, on the one hand, and after the French Revolution, on the other, it was impossible to write without relying on the experience of advanced literature, not to take into account and not to continue, in particular , the traditions of sentimentalism. It should be remembered that Karamzin was closer to the sentimentalism of Stern and - understood in his own way - Rousseau (in him he valued primarily a psychologist, lyricist, poet in love with nature) than the artistic experience of Russian enlightenment writers. That is why he could not accept their ideal of a man-actor, asserting his dignity in a generally useful activity. He was alien to their militant citizenship, their selfless service to the noble cause of the struggle for the liberation of man.
But in the specific historical conditions of Russian life in the 1790s, at a time when an important need of the time was the need for a deep disclosure of the inner world of the individual, for understanding the “language of the heart”, for the ability to speak this language, the activity of Karamzin as an artist was of great importance. , had a serious and profound influence on the further development of Russian literature. Karamzin's historical merit lay in the fact that he was able to satisfy this need. No matter how political conservatism weakened the strength of the artistic method of the new art, Karamzin and the writers of his school renewed literature, brought new themes, created new genres, developed a special style, and reformed the literary language.
Karamzin's critical speeches in the Moscow Journal cleared the way for a new direction. There are few reviews of Russian books in the journal. But it is characteristic that, while evaluating the works of his time, Karamzin first of all notes as their significant drawback the lack of fidelity, accuracy in depicting the behavior of the characters, the circumstances of their lives. A kind of generalization of Karamzin's position as a critic is his statement: "Drama should be a true representation of the hostel." Rousseau's position on this issue was close to Karamzin, who in the novel "Emil, or On Education" devoted a special chapter to the role of travel in the knowledge of the objective existence of peoples. Karamzin's "Letters from a Russian Traveler", published at the same time in the "Moscow Journal", painted not only a portrait of the soul of their author - the reader found in them an objective picture of society, accurate information about the culture, social life of several European countries, real biographies of famous writers, many specific information and facts. In the article “A Few Words about Russian Literature”, Karamzin perhaps expressed his position on this issue more fully and most definitely: “I saw,” he wrote, “the first nations of Europe, their customs, their customs, and those smallest character traits that are formed under the influence of climate, the degree of civilization and, most importantly, the state structure.
One of the first Russian books reviewed by Karamzin in the Moscow Journal was a separate edition of Kheraskov's poem Cadmus and Harmony. After retelling its content, paying attention to its merits, the reviewer carefully notes its imperfections, errors and "malfunctions". The lack of fidelity in the depiction of the era is the main reproach of the reviewer. The poem, he writes, "responds with novelty, it is contrary to the spirit of those times from which the fable is taken."
Most reviews of Russian books are devoted to translations of foreign works into Russian. They focus on the quality of the translation. Such reviews are a new and interesting phenomenon in the history of Russian criticism, they visually taught taste, taught a lesson in stylistics.
The appearance of the Russian translation of Richardson's novel The Memorable Life of the Maid Clarissa Garlov forced Karamzin to analyze the translation in detail. The critic asks the question: what is the merit of the novel, so loved by the public? And he answers: "in the description of ordinary scenes of life", that the author is distinguished by "excellent art in describing details and characters." Such a judgment not only stated the dignity of the sensational novel, but also drew the attention of Russian authors to the need to “describe ordinary scenes of life”, to master the skill of depicting details and characters.
"Poor Lisa" by Karamzin himself was a kind of artistic realization of these demands of the critic, and the fact that the story was to the taste of the general reader testifies to the timeliness of Karamzin's struggle for the democratization of literature, which he understood very limitedly.
With the greatest frankness, Karamzin expressed his attitude to the normative poetics of classicism in a review of Corneille's tragedy "Sid". While recognizing the poetic merits of The Sid, Karamzin resolutely rejects Corneille's aesthetic code, giving preference entirely to Shakespeare in the past and Lessing in the present.
In 1788 Lessing's tragedy "Emilia Galotti" was published in Karamzin's translation. Four years later, he published a large critical article on the production of "Emilia Galotti" on the Russian stage. The tragedy attracts criticism by the fact that the playwright, revealing the intimate life of his heroes, showed at the same time that a person cannot separate from society, from the social and political circumstances surrounding him, that happiness is not inside a person, but depends both on laws and on actions of the monarch. Analyzing the tragedy, Karamzin directly states that the hope of her hero Odoardo for the justice of the monarch is illusory: “What means were left for him to save her (his daughter Emilia. - G. M.)? To resort to the laws where the laws spoke through the mouth of the one whom he should have asked against? Appreciating Lessing for his deep “knowledge of the human heart,” Karamzin speaks with approval of how circumstances force Emilia to “talk about the freedom of the soul in the language of Cato.” Karamzin leads the reader to the idea of the individual's right to resistance, to be sure, to passive resistance, but still resistance to a tyrant and, in general, to anyone who "wants to force another person." With approval, the critic cites the words of Odoardo: “It seems that I already hear the tyrant coming to steal my daughter from me. No no! He won't kidnap her, he won't dishonor her!" Fleeing from the violence of a tyrant, Odoardo stabs his daughter to death. It is for this that Karamzin praises tragedy, considering it "the crown of Lessing's dramatic creations."
Two articles written in the winter and spring of 1793, “What the Author Needs” and “Something about the Sciences, Arts and Education,” adjoin the critical works of Karamzin during the Moscow Journal. The experience of the reviewer suggested to Karamzin the need to determine the requirements that should be placed on the work and, consequently, on its author. "Syllable, figures, metaphors, images, expressions - all this touches and captivates when it is animated by feeling." But feelings are determined by the social position of the author. What are the writer's convictions, such are the feelings that he instills in the reader, because the author needs not only talent, knowledge, a vivid imagination, but "he must also have a kind, tender heart." Here Karamzin formulates his famous demand: the writer "paints a portrait of his soul and heart."
It is generally accepted that Karamzin's subjectivist position manifested itself in this demand. Such a conclusion is erroneous, because the words of Karamzin must be considered historically and concretely, based on his understanding of the soul. Recognizing, following the enlighteners, that it is not class affiliation that determines the value of a person, but the wealth of his inner, individually unique world, Karamzin thereby had to decide for himself what distinguishes one person from another, in what way a person expresses himself. As a young man, Karamzin thought about the question - what is the soul? After all, the properties of the soul should constitute special, unique qualities of a person. Experience taught Karamzin, and much was revealed to him. In the 90s, he already knew that the main thing in a person, in her soul, is the ability to "rise to a passion for good", "the desire for the common good." As you can see, the public interests of the individual are important for Karamzin. The writer is also an individually unique personality, and by the nature of his activity, the “desire for the common good” should be all the more characteristic of him. Such a soul does not separate him from the world of people, but opens the way "to the sensitive chest" "to all that is sorrowful, to all that is oppressed, to all that weeps."
In the spring of 1793, the article "Something about the sciences, arts and education" was written. This is a hymn to a man, his successes in the sciences and arts. Karamzin is deeply convinced that humanity is on the path of progress, that it was the 18th century, thanks to the activities of the great enlighteners - scientists, philosophers and writers - that brought people closer to the truth. Errors have always been and will always be, but they, like "alien growths, will sooner or later disappear," for a person will certainly come "to the pleasant goddess of truth." Having mastered the advanced philosophy of his time, Karamzin believes that "enlightenment is the palladium of good manners." Enlightenment is beneficial for people of all conditions.
Those legislators are mistaken who think that the sciences are harmful to anyone, that "some state in civil society" should "grovel in gross ignorance." “All people,” continues Karamzin, “have a soul, have a heart: consequently, everyone can enjoy the fruits of art and spiders, and whoever enjoys them becomes a better person and a calmer citizen.” True, Karamzin immediately stipulates his understanding of the role of education, and this reservation is typical for a figure who, due to the limitedness of the nobility, does not accept the idea of equality of states: grumble at fate and complain about your fate.
In the article, Karamzin polemicized with Rousseau, who, in his treatise "On the Influence of Sciences on Morals", not accepting contemporary society based on the inequality of people, came to the erroneous conclusion that the development of sciences does not improve, but corrupts morals, that a person, once , at the dawn of civilization, who enjoyed natural freedom, has now lost it. The pathos of Rousseau is in the denial of the system of inequality. These democratic views of Rousseau are alien to Karamzin. But he does not enter into polemics on the social question, but simply does not agree with the extreme conclusions of the great thinker and considers it his duty to confirm the enlightening faith in the fruitful influence of the sciences on morals. That is why he declares so resolutely that enlightenment is the palladium of good manners, since the more intensively enlightenment develops, the sooner all states will find happiness. No matter how limited Karamzin's position, the writer's speech in defense of enlightenment, the recognition of its beneficence for all classes, the praise of the sciences and the great ideologists of the 18th century, expressed during the years of the ongoing revolution in France, were of great social importance.
This article is also interesting because it indirectly characterizes Karamzin's attitude to the French Revolution. The fact is that the article was written in the spring of 1793, after the execution of Louis XVI (he was executed on January 21, 1793). As you can see, neither the trial of the French king, nor the death sentence passed by the convention, nor the execution itself shook Karamzin's faith in the Enlightenment, did not arouse in him indignation at the revolution. On the contrary, he ended the article with a direct appeal to the legislators and, judging by the terminology, entirely borrowed from revolutionary journalism, to non-crowned legislators: “Legislator and friend of mankind! You want the public good: let enlightenment be your first law!”
The French Revolution and especially the execution of Louis XVI, as you know, caused the activation of Russian reaction, led by Catherine. Karamzin, in 1791, in "Letters from a Russian Traveler", talking about his visit to a professor at the University of Leipzig Platner, names his student Radishchev, who was convicted by Catherine and sent to Ilim prison. In 1792, when, by order of the Empress, Novikov was imprisoned without trial in the Shlisselburg Fortress, Karamzin wrote and printed the ode "To Mercy", urging Catherine to grant amnesty to Novikov. In 1793, after the execution of Louis XVI, Karamzin wrote praise to the great educators who helped humanity move towards the truth. All this is not only facts of personal nobility and courage, but also evidence of the convictions of a person who is far from the camp of reaction.
3
The Moscow Journal differed from the Russian "periodical works" of the second half of the 18th century. Here were not only the original and translated artistic prose, poems and dramatic works, traditional for the then Russian journalism, but also the permanent departments of literary and theatrical criticism introduced into our periodicals for the first time, interesting "jokes" ( Anecdoton - unpublished (Greek).), that is, previously unknown facts, "especially from the life of glorious new writers", diverse in content and curious "mixture". The young publisher categorically refused to publish works with political, religious and Masonic themes, either out of unwillingness to be subjected to censorship persecution or even simple nit-picking, or out of fear that his magazine, conceived as an exclusively literary undertaking, could gradually turn into a grandiloquent philosophical, a religious and moral organ, like the most boring Conversations with God, the first books of which, on the instructions of the Moscow Freemasons, Karamzin translated in the mid-1780s and which were published in separate editions as a “periodical essay”.
Published for only two years (1791-1792), The Moscow Journal was a great success with readers, although at first Karamzin had only three hundred subscribers. Later, during the period of special glory of Karamzin as a writer, a new edition of the Moscow Journal (1801-1803) was required. It published the then largest poets of the older generation - M. M. Kheraskov, G. R. Derzhavin, as well as Karamzin's closest friends - the poet I. I. Dmitriev and A. A. Petrov. In addition, prominent writers of those years - poets and prose writers - Yu. A. Neledinsky-Meletsky, N. A. Lvov, P. S. Lvov, S. S. Bobrov, A. M. Kutuzov and others took part in it. The participation of such significant literary forces undoubtedly gave luster to Karamzin's journal.
However, the most valuable thing in all departments of the magazine belonged to the publisher himself. Here were printed "Letters of a Russian Traveler" (not completely), the novels "Liodor", "Poor Lisa", "Natalya, Boyar's Daughter", short stories and essays ("Frol Silin", "The Village", "Palemoya and Daphnis. Idyll ”), a dramatic passage “Sofia” and a number of poems by Karamzin. The departments "Moscow Theatre", "Paris Performances", "About Russian Books", "Mixture", "Anecdotes" were, apparently, directed by Karamzin alone. He also made numerous translations - from "Tristram Shandy" by L. Stern, "Evenings" by Marmontel, etc.
Despite the participation in the publication of Karamzin by writers of various literary trends and schools, the Moscow Journal nevertheless entered the history of Russian culture as an organ of noble sentimentalism that had been determined by that time, which is primarily due to the decisive role in the journal of Karamzin himself.
The most important in its social and literary significance and the largest work of Karamzin in the Moscow Journal were Letters of a Russian Traveler, printed from issue to issue and ending with the first letter from Paris. For a long time in Russian literary criticism, the opinion was held that this work of Karamzin represents his very real letters to the familiar Pleshcheev family. Now this point of view, under the influence of a number of evidence, has been rejected, and "Letters of a Russian Traveler" is considered a work of art with many episodic characters and the main character - a "traveler", and no matter how autobiographical and close to reality, it is still not "letters" and not a "travel journal" kept by the author abroad and then literary processed.
The great and undoubted success of the Letters of a Russian Traveler among readers is due primarily to the fact that Karamzin managed to combine in this work the transmission of his experiences, impressions and moods, that is, the material is purely personal, subjective, with lively, vivid and interesting for those who have not been boundary presentation of the actual materials. Landscapes, a description of the appearance of foreigners that the traveler met, folk customs, customs, various topics of conversation, the fate of people that the author learned about, characteristics of writers and scientists he visited, excursions into the field of painting, architecture and history, analyzes of theatrical performances, the very details of the journey, sometimes amusing, sometimes prosaic, sometimes touching - all this, written in a relaxed, lively manner, was fascinating for readers of Catherine and Paul's time, when, due to revolutionary events in France, travel abroad was prohibited.
Although the image of the author, the image of the “traveler” always stands at the center of the “Letters”, it does not, however, obscure the objective world, countries, cities, people, works of art, everything that the reader was, if not more interesting, then, in any way case, but less interesting than the experiences of the hero. Of course, for the author of a sentimental description of a real journey, the outside world was often valuable only in so far as it was an occasion for the "self-revealing" of the traveler; this determined the selection of factual material included in the "Letters", its coverage, the language in which it was described, any detail of style - up to punctuation, designed for an underlined expression of emotions.
This objective, historical significance of the "Letters of a Russian Traveler", in contrast to the author's relatively weak subjective tendencies, was later noted by Belinsky.
However, one circumstance that is usually not taken into account should be noted: when analyzing the Letters of a Russian Traveler, literary critics perceive this work as a whole, in the form in which it was published later, at the end of the 18th and even at the beginning of the 19th century, when the last parts were published. books (England). A little more than half of the Letters was published in the Moscow Journal, and the holistic intention of the work was not yet clear - to show the traveler's perception of European reality in its three main manifestations: the police statehood of the German kingdoms, which stifled the political freedom of the nation and determined the development of the intellectual life of the people - philosophy and literature; revolutionary France, which destroyed the high culture of the past and seemed to give nothing in return, and, finally, the “reasonable” constitutionality of Switzerland and England, which, according to Karamzin, ensured the interests of both the individual and the people as a whole.
The magazine text “Letters from a Russian Traveler” highlights the stay of the hero of the work in Germany (more precisely, not in Germany, which did not yet exist as a unified state, but in Prussia and Saxony) and in Switzerland, his journey through southeastern France and arrival in Paris. It is possible that the idea of the book was still unclear to Karamzin himself, who at first simply narrated about what he had seen, heard, experienced and rethought during his travels to foreign lands. But he told in such a captivating way, so interestingly and in such a language that, judging by the memoirs and letters of readers of those years, it was Letters of a Russian Traveler that were read first of all in the Moscow Journal. No matter how entertaining were the vicissitudes of the wanderings of the hero of the Letters, but they alone were the case: someone else's life, other people's customs, a new circle of concepts from the field of state, philosophical, literary - all this was of great cognitive importance, "Letters" not only entertained, but taught, led to comparisons, comparisons, reflections, forced to think.
The incompleteness of the journal text of "Letters of a Russian Traveler" deprived readers of the opportunity to understand another feature of this work, perhaps the most important - the national position of the author. Although the title indicated that these were letters not of a traveler in general, but of a Russian traveler, although in a number of places the hero, in conversation with foreign writers and scientists, speaks of Russian literature, of translations of their works into Russian, reflects on Russian history, on Peter the Great, about the changes that have taken place in the Russian language over some fifty years - however, all this is not given in close-up, but imperceptibly, in the course of presenting the material. In one place, though not in the text of the Moscow Journal, Karamzin even contrasts the universal and the national, he says that one must first be a man and then become Russian. We do not know how Karamzin's contemporaries reacted to this statement, but many literary scholars believe that Karamzin's "noble cosmopolitanism" manifested itself here. However, such a judgment is completely erroneous: those who express it forget when, under what conditions and for what purpose these words were written by Karamzin. If we remember that they were uttered (or printed) at a time when the reactionary policy of the Catherine's government in relation to revolutionary France was especially aggravated, the progressive significance of Karamzin's then position becomes clear.
An equally significant role among the works of Karamzin, placed in the Moscow Journal, was played by his novels on modern topics ("Liodor", "Poor Liza", "Frol Silin, a beneficent person"), as well as the historical story "Natalya, the boyar's daughter" , dramatic excerpt "Sofia", fairy tales, poems.
Karamzin's stories were of particular importance in the development of Russian narrative prose. In them, Karamzin turned out to be a major innovator: instead of processing traditional old stories taken from ancient mythology or ancient history, instead of creating new versions of “oriental stories” already bored by readers of either utopian or satirical content, Karamzin began to write works mainly about modernity, about ordinary, even "simple" people like the "villager" Lisa, the peasant Frol Silin. In most of these works, the author is present as a narrator or a character, and this, again, was an innovation, this created in readers, if not the confidence that they were being told about a real event, then at least the impression of the reality of the facts being narrated.
Karamzin's desire to create in his stories an image or even images of modern Russian people - men and women, nobles and peasants - is very significant. Already at that time, the principle dominated his aesthetics: “Drama must be a true representation of the hostel,” and he interpreted the concept of “drama” broadly - as a literary work in general. Therefore - even with some unusual plot, for example, in the unfinished "Liodor", - Karamzin built the image of the characters, trying to be "faithful to the hostel." He was the first - or one of the first - in Russian literature to introduce biography as a principle and condition for constructing the image of a hero. Such are the biographies of Liodor, Erast and Lisa, Frol Silin, even Alexei and Natalya from the story "Natalya, the Boyar's Daughter". Considering that the human personality (character, as Karamzin continued to say after the writers of the 18th century) is most revealed in love, he built each of his stories (with the exception of "Frol Silin", which is not a story, but an "anecdote") he built on love story; Sophia was built on the same principle.
The desire to give a "correct representation of the hostel" led Karamzin to the interpretation of such a burning problem for the noble society of Catherine's time as adultery. Sofia is dedicated to her, later the novels Julia, Sensitive and Cold, and My Confession. As a contrast to contemporary violations of marital fidelity, Karamzin created "Natalia, the Boyar's Daughter" - an idyll projected into bygone times.
The greatest success fell to the lot of the story "Poor Lisa".
The seduction of a peasant or bourgeois girl by a nobleman - a plot motif that is often found in Western literature of the 18th century, especially in the period before the French Revolution of 1789 - was first developed in Russian literature by Karamzin in Poor Lisa. The touching fate of a beautiful, morally pure girl, the idea that tragic events can also occur in the prose life around us, that is, that facts representing poetic plots are also possible in Russian reality, contributed to the success of the story. Of considerable importance was the fact that the author taught his readers to find the beauty of nature, and, moreover, at his side, and not somewhere far away, in exotic countries. An even more important role was played by the humanistic tendency of the story, expressed both in the plot and in what later became known as lyrical digressions - in the remarks, in the narrator's assessments of the actions of the hero or heroine. These are the famous phrases: “For even peasant women know how to love!” or: “My heart bleeds this minute. I forget a man in Erast - I'm ready to curse him - but my tongue does not move - I look at the sky, and a tear rolls down my face. Oh! why am I writing not a novel, but a sad story?”
Literary critics note that Karamzin condemns the hero of the story from an ethical, rather than a social point of view, and in the end finds a moral justification for him in his subsequent mental anguish: “Erast was unhappy until the end of his life. Having learned about the fate of Lizina, he could not be consoled and considered himself a murderer. This remark of literary critics is true only up to a certain limit. For Karamzin, who in those years thought about the problem of love as a feeling invested in a person by nature, and about the contradictions that arise when this natural feeling collides with laws (see below about the story "Bornholm Island"), the story "Poor Lisa" was important as a starting point for this issue. In Karamzin's mind, the story of a young nobleman, a person by nature not bad, but spoiled by secular life and at the same time sincerely - even if only for a few minutes - striving to go beyond the feudal morality of the society around him, is a great drama. Erast, according to Karamzin, "was unhappy until the end of his life." Condemnation of his crime against Liza, constant visits to her grave - a life sentence for Erast, "a nobleman with a fair mind and a kind heart, kind by nature, but weak and windy."
Even more difficult than the attitude towards Erast is Karamzin's attitude towards the heroine of the story. Lisa is not only beautiful in appearance, but also pure in thought, innocent. In the image of Karamzin, Liza is an ideal, "natural" person, not spoiled by culture. That is why Erast calls her his shepherdess. He tells her: "For your friend, the most important thing is the soul, a sensitive, innocent soul - and Lisa will always be closest to my heart." And the peasant woman Liza believes his words. She lives completely with pure, sincere human feelings. The author finds a justification for this feeling of Liza for Erast.
What is the moral idea of the story? Why should a beautiful human person who has not committed any crime against the laws of nature and society perish?
Why, in the words of the author, “Integrity must perish at this hour!”? Why, following tradition, Karamzin writes: “Meanwhile, lightning flashed, and thunder roared”? However, the traditional interpretation of the storm after any event as a manifestation of the wrath of the deity Karamzin softens: "It seemed that nature was lamenting about Liza's lost innocence."
It would be wrong to say that Karamzin condemned his heroine for losing a sense of "social distance", for forgetting her position as a peasant woman (apparently not a serf), or "for violating virtue". If “chasteness should have died at this hour,” then Lisa’s fate is predetermined from above and the beautiful girl is not to blame for anything. Why did “nature complain”?.. Most likely, the idea of the story is that the structure of the world (not modern, but in general!) Is such that the beautiful and fair cannot always be realized: some can be happy, like, for example, idyllic Lisa's parents or the characters of "Natalia, the Boyar's Daughter", others - she, Erast - cannot.
This is essentially the theory of tragic fatalism, and it pervades much of Karamzin's stories.
The story “Natalia, the Boyar’s Daughter” is important not only because, as noted above, it contrasts the violations of family fidelity common in the time of Catherine in noble families with “old virtuous love”.
Karamzin called "Natalya, the boyar daughter" "a true story or history." Remember, he also called "Poor Lisa" by the past. For him and after him, for many years in Russian literature, the word "reality" became a term-definition of the narrative genre with a non-fictional plot and gradually replaced the old term "fair story", "true story", etc. It is difficult to assume that, naming a series his stories were true stories, Karamzin resorted in this case to a literary device, in order to arouse readers' special interest in his works.
The main significance of "Natalia, the Boyar's Daughter" was that in this story Karamzin turned to the problem that attracted the attention of Russian writers - if not always, then certainly since the time of Peter the Great - the problem of "national - universal".
For the readers of Karamzin, who declared in Letters from a Russian Traveler that one must feel first of all a man and then a Russian, the author’s words were probably somewhat unexpected that he loves “these times”, “when Russians were Russians, when they were in dressed up in their own dress, walked with their own gait, lived according to their own custom, spoke in their own language and according to their heart, that is, they spoke as they thought. These words sounded an unveiled reproach to contemporaries that they had ceased to be themselves, to be Russians, that they did not say what they thought, that they were ashamed of their historical past, in which the “national” and “universal” were harmoniously combined and in which there is something complete my studies. The plot of "Natalya, the Boyar's Daughter" is constructed in such a way that in it the "universal" problem received a "national", "Russian" solution. By this, the writer again, but already on historical material, showed that in an artistic, poetic sense, Russian reality and history are not inferior to the reality and history of European peoples.
However, the interest and significance of "Natalia, the Boyar's Daughter" is only in the fact that Karamzin created a historical idyll in a sentimental and romantic spirit. Even more significant was the fact that from the depiction of the "life of the heart" in a narrowly personal or ethical sense, as was the case in his other works, he moved on to the interpretation of the old theme of Russian literature of the 18th century - "the man (nobleman) and the state." Hiding in the Volga forests, the hero of the story Alexei Lyuboslavsky, the son of a boyar, innocently slandered before the sovereign (young! - Karamzin notes as an extenuating circumstance), learns about the attack on the Russian kingdom by external enemies; Alexei immediately matures the decision to "go to war, fight the enemy of the Russian kingdom and win." He is driven solely by his noble concept of honor - loyalty to the sovereign and the consciousness of the obligation to serve the fatherland: "The Tsar will then see that the Lyuboslavskys love him and faithfully serve the fatherland." Thus, in Natalya, the Boyar's Daughter, Karamzin showed that the "personal" is often inextricably linked with the "general", "state" and that this connection can be no less interesting for the artist and for the reader than the "life of the heart" in pure , so to speak, the form.
The literary activity of Karamzin during the period of the Moscow Journal is characterized by great stylistic diversity, testifying to the persistent search of the young author. Along with the "Letters of a Russian Traveler" and the stories "Poor Liza", "Natalya, the Boyar's Daughter", "Liodor" - on the one hand, and works with antique flavor - on the other, there are also translations from Ossian into the original dramatic passage "Sophia ”, Written completely in the spirit of the playwrights of Sturm und Drang and partly Shakespeare (cf. Sophia’s last monologue “Stormy winds! Break the black clouds of the sky” and King Lear’s monologue “Revite, winds!”). But, at the same time as the “stormer” tendencies, in Karamzin’s dramatic passage one feels an organic connection with the old dramaturgical tradition of the Russian XVIII century: the positive characters of the play have standard “talking” names, for example, Dobrov; the heroine, like the female characters in the comedies of Fonvizin, Kapnist and other Russian playwrights of the last third of the 18th century, is called Sophia.
4
The poetic activity of Karamzin in our science is covered one-sidedly. Usually only one group of poems relating to the second half of the 1790s is considered. This makes it possible to declare Karamzin the creator of subjective, psychological lyrics that capture the subtlest states of the soul of a person who has become separated from society. In reality, Karamzin's poetry is richer. In the first period, the poet did not stand on subjectivist positions, and therefore he was not alien to the social connections of a person, interest in the objective world around him.
Karamzin's manifesto of this time is the poem "Poetry", written back in 1787 and published in 1792 in the Moscow Journal. Somewhat straightforwardly, without poetic independence, Karamzin formulates the idea of the great educational role of poetry:
In all, in all countries, holy poetry was the mentor of people, their happiness was.
Political and civil-patriotic poems appear on the pages of the Moscow Journal. In the summer of 1788, Sweden declared war on Russia. Karamzin dedicated his poem "War Song" to this event. Following Derzhavin's patriotic odes, Karamzin appeals to the "Russians", "in whose veins the blood of heroes flows"; “Hurry there, O son of Russia! Smite countless enemies”, Karamzin knows how to subordinate his humane-sentimental feeling to a keenly realized patriotic duty. The end of this poem is:
Ruin! When the enemy dies, Struck by your courage, Wash away the blood from yourself with the tears of your heart! You have amazed your brothers!
The political program of Karamzin is expressed in the poem "Once upon a time there was a good king in the world." As the author points out, this is a translation of Lefort's "Song" from the melodrama "Peter the Great" by Jean Bouillet, which he saw during his stay in Paris in the spring of 1790. Retelling the content of the melodrama, Karamzin cites Peter's words that the purpose of his reign is "to exalt the dignity of man in our fatherland", that he seeks "to be a father and educator of millions of people." The "Song" tells about how Peter "gathers good", "the soul, the heart adorns the Enlightenment with flowers" in order to "illuminate the minds of people with his wisdom." For Karamzin, Peter is an example of an enlightened monarch who, relying on the wisdom of philosophers, benefactors of mankind, makes the life of his subjects happy.
Another attitude of Karamzin to Catherine. He did not glorify her. And when, at her command, Nikolai Novikov was arrested, the poet performed an ode “To Mercy” (1792), where he not only calls on the Empress to show mercy to a person known throughout Russia, but, based on his concept of enlightened absolutism, determines the conditions, the fulfillment of which will allow consider her autocratic rule enlightened. He wrote: “As long as you don’t forget the right with which a person was born ... as long as you give freedom to everyone and do not crowd light in the minds, as long as the power of attorney to the people is visible in all your affairs, until then you will be sacredly revered ...”
In the 1980s, when Karamzin's talent was taking shape, Derzhavin was the greatest and brightest poet, closely connected with his time. The innovative nature of Derzhavin's poetry was manifested in the fact that, having mastered the enlightening ideal of man, he led his hero onto the high road of life, making his mind and heart able to enjoy the joys of the living human being of the individual and quiveringly respond to the sorrow of fellow citizens, rebel with indignation against untruth, enthusiastically glorify the victories of their fatherland and its brave sons - Russian soldiers.
Derzhavin's poetry, precisely because of its persistent interest in man, was close to Karamzin. Only the hero of most of Karamzin's poems lived quieter, more modest, he was deprived of the civic activity of Derzhavin's heroes. Karamzin was incapable of angrily indignant, menacingly reminding "rulers and judges" of their high duty to their subjects, loudly and noisily rejoicing. He, as it were, listens to what is happening in his heart, captures his unknown, but in his own way great life. Here the friend and poet A. Petrov died - the pain and groans of the grieving soul were captured in the poem "To the Nightingale". Autumn has come: “Yellow leaves fall noisily on the ground in the gloomy oak forest”, “late geese tend to the south in the village”. An aching melancholy creeps into the heart when looking at “pale autumn” (“Autumn”). The poem "Cemetery" is a dramatic dialogue of two voices. "It's scary in the grave, cold and dark!" - says one; “Quiet in the grave, soft, calm,” convinces another. Death is terrible for an earthly person who is in love with life, he, “feeling horror and awe in his heart, hurries past the cemetery.” He is consoled by the one who trusted God and in the grave "sees the abode of eternal peace." Life is not hopeless suffering - "but God gave us joy." This is how the program poem of this time “Merry Hour” is written. Knowing sadness and melancholy, grief and suffering, the lyrical hero of Karamzin exclaims: “Brothers, pour glasses!” “We will forget all the sad things that embarrassed us in life; let us sing and rejoice in this pleasant, sweet hour. To sing and rejoice, and not to give in to despair, and not to be alone, but to be with friends - this is what the human soul seeks. That is why the general tone of the poem is bright, not clouded by fear, mysticism, despair: “Let our heart brighten, let peace shine in it,” the poet proclaims.
Faith in life, despite all the suffering and sorrow that it brings down on a person, the spirit of optimism also permeates the wonderful ballad “Count Gvarinos”. Karamzin's ballad about the knight Gvarinos is a hymn to a man, praise to courage, convictions that make him invincible, able to overcome misfortunes.
Attention to man determines the poet's interest in the world around him, and above all - in nature: dying nature in "Autumn", the picture of the revival of spring in the "Spring Song of the Melancholic", a description of the Volga, on the banks of which the poet was born ("Volga"), and etc. But the concentration on the fluid and changing spiritual movements prevented Karamzin from seeing the beauty of the objective world. The poet's intention did not receive artistic realization - his nature is conditional, devoid of the unique features of the living and rich world, accuracy and objectivity. Karamzin was not helped by the experience of Derzhavin, who at that time discovered Russian nature in his poems in all its originality, brightness and poetry.
Stopping the publication of the Moscow Journal, Karamzin enthusiastically gave himself up to new plans and ideas. He prepared a new almanac "Aglaya", wrote novels, poems, worked on the continuation of "Letters of a Russian Traveler". And at this time, unexpected political events caused an ideological crisis, which became a frontier in his creative life.
5
It happened in the summer of 1793. In July, Karamzin went to the Oryol estate to rest. In August, new news about French events confused the writer's soul. In a letter to Dmitriev, he wrote: "...the terrible events in Europe excite my whole soul." With bitterness and pain, he thought "about the destroyed cities and the death of people." At the same time, the essay “Athenian Life” ended with an autobiographical confession: “I am sitting alone in my rural office, in a thin dressing gown, and I see nothing in front of me but a burning candle, a smeared sheet of paper and Hamburg newspapers that ... inform me about terrible folly of our enlightened contemporaries."
What happened in France? The struggle between the right-wing deputies of the convention (the Girondins), who expressed the interests of the bourgeoisie, who were frightened by the scope of the people's revolution, and the Jacobins, representatives of the truly democratic forces of the country, reached its climax. In the spring, an uprising raised by counter-revolutionaries broke out in Lyon. He was supported by the Girondins. A grand uprising against the revolution began in the Vendée. Saving the revolution, relying on the uprising of the Parisian sections (May 31 - June 2), the Jacobins, led by Robespierre, Marat and Danton, established a dictatorship. These are the events that unfolded in June - July 1793, which Karamzin learned about in August, and plunged him into confusion, frightened him, pushed him away from the revolution. The former system of views collapsed, doubts about the possibility of mankind to achieve happiness and prosperity crept in, a system of frankly conservative beliefs took shape. The expression of the new ideological position of Karamzin, full of confusion and contradictions, were the article-letters - "Melodor to Philaletus" and "Philalet to Melodorus". Melodor and Filalet are not different people, they are the “voices of the soul” of Karamzin himself, they are the confused and confused old Karamzin and the new Karamzin, looking for other, different from the former, ideals of life.
Melodor sadly admits: “The Age of Enlightenment! I don't recognize you - I don't recognize you in blood and flame, I don't recognize you among murder and destruction! The fatal question arises: how to live on? Seek salvation in selfish happiness? But Melodor knows that "for good hearts there is no happiness when they cannot share it with others." Otherwise, Melodorus asks, “what should I, you and everyone live on? What did our ancestors live on? What will the offspring live on? The collapse of faith in the humanistic ideals of the Enlightenment was the tragedy of Karamzin. Herzen, who was keenly experiencing his spiritual drama after the suppression of the French Revolution of 1848, called these hard-won confessions of Karamzin "fiery and full of tears" ( A. I. Herzen. Sobr. op. in 30 volumes, vol. VI. M., publishing house of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, 1955, p. 12.).
Since Karamzin-Melodor could not cope with his doubts, he had to live according to the system of Philaletus, who continued to seek "the source of bliss in our own breasts." In the autumn of 1793, a new period of Karamzin's work began. Disappointment in the ideology of the Enlightenment, disbelief in the possibility of freeing people from vices, since passions are indestructible and eternal, the conviction that one should live away from society, from a life full of evil, finding happiness in enjoying oneself, determined new views on the tasks of the poet.
The philosophy of Philaletes pushed on the path of subjectivism. The personality of the author became the center of creativity; autobiography found expression in the disclosure of the inner world of the yearning soul of a man running away from public life, trying to find solace in egoistic happiness. New views were most fully expressed in poetry.
In 1794, Karamzin wrote two friendly messages - to I. Dmitriev and A. Pleshcheev, in which, with journalistic sharpness, he outlined new, deeply pessimistic views on the problems of social development. Once he was “deceived by dreams”, “loved people with ardor”, “wished good for them with all his soul”. But after the revolution that shook Europe, the crazy dreams of philosophers became clear to him. “And I see clearly that with Plato we cannot establish republics.” Conclusion: if a person is not able to change the world in such a way that it would be possible to “reconcile the tiger with the lamb”, so that “the rich make friends with the poor and the weak forgive the strong”, then he must leave the dream - “so, we will extinguish the lamp”. New, subjective poetry diverted the reader's attention from political problems to moral ones. Man is weak and insignificant, but he can find his happiness in this sad world.
Love and friendship - that's how you can console yourself under the sun! We should not seek bliss, But we should suffer less.
Having immersed a person in the world of feelings, the poet makes him live only the life of the heart, since happiness is only in love, friendship and enjoyment of nature. This is how poems appeared that revealed the inner world of a self-contained personality (“To oneself”, “To the poor poet”, “Nightingale”, “To the unfaithful”, “To the faithful”, etc.). The poet preaches the philosophy of "painful joy", calls melancholy a sweet feeling, which is "the most tender overflow from sorrow and longing to the pleasures of pleasure." The hymn to this feeling was the poem "Melancholia".
In the poem "The Nightingale" Karamzin, perhaps for the first time with such courage and determination, opposed the real world, the real world - the world of moral feelings, the world created by the human imagination.
Now Karamzin puts art above life. Therefore, the poet's duty is to "invent," and the true poet is "a skillful liar." He confessed: “My friend! materiality is poor: Play in your soul with dreams. The poet considers it his duty to "captivate hearts with harmony", he calls his poems "trinkets". The prepared collection of his works Karamzin calls "My trinkets"; he defiantly declares his intention to write for women, to be pleasing to "beauties" ("Message to Women").
In 1794, Karamzin wrote a “trinket” “The Heroic Tale “Ilya Muromets”. The appeal to Russian antiquity was carried out from an aesthetic standpoint. Wanting to forget "in the sorcery of red fictions", the poet turns to the new muse - "Lies, untruths, the ghost of truth - now be my goddess." The epic hero Ilya Muromets, with the help of a new muse, was turned into a lover, into a courtly knight. His love adventures develop in a conditional country of "red fictions".
The "Bogatyr's Tale" was written in white, unrhymed verse. Karamzin himself pointed out that he wrote after "our old songs", which are "composed in such a verse." And although the verse of the fairy tale was far from the verse of folk songs, Karamzin's experience attracted the attention of sentimental poets, and following Ilya Muromets, M. Kheraskov wrote the "magic story" "Bakharian", N. Lvov - "Dobrynya", etc. The stylistic manner of the “fairy tale” was also assimilated by Russian poetry - a free, unconstrained conversation of the poet with his reader.
Creating new lyrics, Karamzin updated Russian poetry. He introduced new genres, which later we will meet with Zhukovsky, Batyushkov and Pushkin: a ballad, a friendly message, poetic "little things", witty trinkets, madrigals, etc. Dissatisfied, like some other poets (for example, A. Radishchev) , the dominance of iambic, he uses a trochee, widely introduces an unrhymed verse, writes in three-syllable meters. In elegiac, love lyrics, Karamzin created a poetic language to express all complex and subtle feelings, to reveal the life of the heart. Phraseology of Karamzin, his images, poetic phrases (such as: “I love - I will die loving”, “glory is an empty sound”, “the voice of the heart is intelligible to the heart”, “love feeds on tears, grows from sorrow”, “friendship is a priceless gift”, “ joy of carefree youth”, “winter of sadness”, “sweet power of the heart”, etc.) were assimilated by subsequent generations of poets, they can be found in Pushkin’s early lyrics.
The meaning of Karamzin the poet is clearly and succinctly defined by Vyazemsky: “With him, poetry of feeling, love for nature, gentle ebb of thought and impressions was born in us, in a word, poetry is internal, sincere ... If in Karamzin one can notice some lack of brilliant properties of a happy poet, he had a feeling and consciousness of new poetic forms.
The collapse of faith in the possibility of the onset of the "golden age", when a person would find the happiness he so needed, led to Karamzin's transition to the position of subjectivism. But this flight from the pressing issues of social and political life weighed heavily on Karamzin. Persistently studying history and modernity, he seeks to find a way out of the impasse into which he was driven by the dramatic events of the French Revolution.
In 1797, Karamzin wrote "A Conversation about Happiness", where for the last time he confronts the heroes already familiar to us - Melodorus with Philalet. Melodor asks a question that is the most important question of enlightenment philosophy: "How to achieve happiness?" Philalethes teaches: "A person should be the creator of his well-being, bringing passions into a happy balance and forming a taste for true pleasures." Melodorus no longer obediently listens to his friend and, not wanting to accept egoistic happiness, objects: “But if I do not find good food for myself, then can I enjoy the most wonderful taste? Admit that a peasant living in his dark, stinking hut ... cannot find many pleasures in life. Melodorus poses, as we see, a cardinal social question in solving the problem of human happiness. Philaletes is trying to prove that a peasant can also be happy, because happiness “dwells in his heart”: “A peasant loves his wife, his children, rejoices when it rains at the right time ... True pleasures equalize people.”
Melodorus, but agreeing with the position of his friend, ironically answers him: "Your philosophy is quite comforting, but not many will believe it." Karamzin did not believe the first. He firmly decided to break with his subjectivist aesthetics, which justified the social passivity of the writer. This decision indicated that the overcoming of the ideological crisis had begun.
6
Two volumes of the almanac "Aglaya" (1794-1795) replaced the "Moscow Journal". They published poems and stories of the period of the ideological crisis.
In The Island of Bornholm, which in a certain sense can be considered one of the best works of Karamzin the prose writer, one can clearly see the artistic techniques of the author’s narrative manner that had developed by that time: the story is told in the first person, on behalf of an accomplice and a witness that - in an unspoken form - happened on a deserted, rocky Danish island; the introductory paragraph of the story presents a wonderful picture of early winter in a noble estate and ends with the assurance of the narrator that he is telling "truth, not fiction"; the mention of England as the extreme limit of his journey, naturally, prompts the reader to think about the identity of Karamzin, the author of the Letters of a Russian Traveler, and the character of the narrator in the story Bornholm Island.
In this story, Karamzin returned to the problem posed in Poor Lisa - the responsibility of people for the feelings invested in them by nature.
The drama "The Islands of Bornholm" Karamzin transferred to the bowels of a noble family. The incompleteness of the plot of the story does not interfere with the disclosure of its intention. In the end, it doesn’t really matter who Lila, a prisoner of the coastal dungeon, is a sister (most likely) or a young stepmother to a Grevezend stranger, the main thing is that in the drama that took place in an old Danish castle, two principles collide: feeling and duty. The Grewzende youth says:
Nature! you wanted me to love Leela.
But this is opposed by the lamentation of the owner of the castle, the father of a Grewzende stranger: “Why did the sky pour out the whole cup of its wrath on this weak, gray-haired old man, an old man who loved virtue, who honored his holy laws?”
In other words, Karamzin wanted to find an answer to the question that tormented him, whether “virtue” is compatible with the requirements of “Nature”, moreover, whether they contradict each other, and who, in the end, is more right - the one who obeys the laws of “sacred Nature", or one who honors "virtue", "the laws of heaven". The final paragraph of the story with strongly emotionally colored phrases: “in sorrowful thought”, “sighs squeezed my chest”, “the wind shone my tear into the sea” - should, apparently, in the end show that Karamzin puts “the laws of heaven”, "virtue" is higher than the "law of innate feelings." After all, in "Poor Liza" the narrator looks into the sky and a tear rolls down his cheek.
The action of the same theory of tragic fatalism is demonstrated by Karamzin in the short story Sierra Morena, which, as one might think, is a revision of the unfinished Liodorus.
When initially publishing The Sierra Morena, Karamzin accompanied the title with a later omitted subtitle - "an elegiac passage from the papers of N". In other words, the "Sierra Morena" is not an oral narrative, like "Poor Lisa", "Natalya, the Boyar's Daughter", "Bornholm Island", especially "Liodor", but the lyrical notes of a person who has suffered a tragic misfortune, but already who managed to overcome himself to some extent, partly get rid of his grief, who managed, if not to find peace of mind, then, in any case, to get out of a state of despair and plunge into cold indifference. This N, who returned from romantic sultry Spain to his homeland, “to the country of the sad north”, living in rural solitude and listening to storms, is also, like the heroes of “Poor Liza” and “Bornholm Island”, a victim of fate, a plaything of some fatal , unknown forces. He is seized by a spontaneous feeling of love for the beautiful Elvira, who, shortly before the appointed day of the wedding, lost her fiancé and in despair spends many hours at the monument erected by her to commemorate the death of Alonzo. And again the question arises about the "laws of nature", the "sacred laws of innate feelings." Elvira answered the hero of the story to his fiery feelings. But she is internally restless - she violated the "laws of heaven." And the punishment of heaven befalls her: during her wedding with the hero of the story, Alonzo appears in the church, who, as it turned out, did not die, but escaped from a shipwreck; learning about the betrayal of his fiancee, he immediately commits suicide. Shocked, Elvira leaves for the monastery. The hero of the story, having experienced moments of frenzy, dead and terrible stupor, after unsuccessful attempts to meet with Elvira, goes to travel, and in the East, on the ruins of Palmyra, “once glorious and magnificent”, “in the arms of melancholy” his heart “softened”.
The Sierra Morena stands somewhat apart from the prose works of Karamzin, reminiscent in style of the exotic stories of the German writers Storm and Onslaught, and at the same time anticipating Marlinsky thirty years before the latter appeared in print. For all its unusualness for the then Russian literature, starting with the title, the brilliance of the landscape, the lyrical excitement of the language, the swiftness and unexpectedness of the development of the plot, unusual for contemporary Russian readers of Karamzin's "stormy flames" of passions. "Sierra Morena" is interesting not only for these aspects, but also for the author's persistent desire to depict a quick, unprepared, albeit factually substantiated, change in the hero's mental states, the desire to reveal the psychology of a person who has undergone a difficult personal drama, overthrown from the heights of happiness into the abyss of grief and despair.
7
The Jacobin stage of the French Revolution, frightening Karamzin, led to his transition to conservative positions. But the revolution still continued its complicated and contradictory course. The leaders of the Jacobins, led by Robespierre, also ended their lives on the scaffold. Having firmly decided to call on history, and not philosophy, to help, Karamzin again began to carefully look at what was happening in France. He outlined his new opinion about the revolutionary events in the 1797 article “A Few Words on Russian Literature”: “I hear many magnificent speeches for and against, but I am not going to imitate these screamers. I confess that my views on this subject are not mature enough. One event follows another, like waves in a stormy sea, and people want to see the revolution as something completed. No no. We will still see many amazing phenomena - the extreme excitement of the minds speaks for it. The admission that his views on the revolution are not yet “matured enough”, that he does not want to “imitate the screamers”, is very significant: it is evidence that the crisis has begun to be overcome. Now Karamzin already recognizes his own judgments about the revolution of the Aglaya period as immature and premature. It was necessary to wait for the further development of the revolution, and he waited, preparing the collections of Aonides and translating for the Pantheon of Foreign Literature.
New events were not long in coming - on November 9 (Brumer 18 according to the revolutionary calendar), 1799, General Bonaparte staged a coup and declared himself the first consul of the French Republic. A period of strangulation of the revolution and liquidation of the republic began. The finale of the ten-year revolutionary war of the people was truly stunning. The revolution, having begun with the liquidation of the monarchy, as if having exhausted itself, embarked on the path of self-liquidation and the revival of a new monarchy. Karamzin immediately realized that Bonaparte was a “monarch-consul” and that, although he was still called “the savior of the republic” in France, he would undoubtedly revive a new empire, since everyone already “obeys the genius of one person.”
Such an outcome of the revolution required a theoretical explanation. Where was he to be found? Karamzin turned to the works of Montesquieu and Rousseau. In the history of mankind, Montesquieu saw the existence of three types of government - the republic, despotism and monarchy. Despotism - a state system that is contrary to human nature, humiliates and enslaves him - is subject to destruction. A republic (aristocratic or, better, democratic) is an ideal system, which the philosopher most of all likes, but is not feasible under present conditions, since the people are not yet enlightened. The Republic is a bright dream of mankind, a matter of the distant future. The monarchy remained. Monarchy, softened by enlightenment, inspired by philosophy, is recognized by Montesquieu as the best form of the modern state system of peoples.
Rousseau in The Social Contract put forward the democratic idea of popular sovereignty and defended as an exemplary government not a monarchy, but a republic. But at the same time, Rousseau also stipulates that “the democratic form of government is mainly suitable for small states, the aristocratic one for medium ones, and the monarchical one for large ones” ( J. J. Rousseau. Fav. op. in 3 volumes, M., Goslitizdat, volume I, 1961, p. 692.). These views have become widespread.
The majority of Russians (with the exception of Radishchev) and Western enlighteners accepted both Montesquieu's theory and Rousseau's additions. Karamzin accepted this political concept, too, because, as it seemed to him, it explained the course of development of the French revolution. The incomprehensible became clear. Tracing the course of development of advanced educational ideology in the 18th century, Karamzin wrote: “From the very half of the eighth to the tenth century, all extraordinary minds passionately desired great changes and news in the establishment of societies; they were all, in a sense, enemies of the present, lost in flattering dreams of the imagination. Everywhere some kind of inner displeasure was revealed, people were bored and complained of boredom, they saw only evil and felt the chains of goodness. Astute observers expected the storm; Rousseau and others predicted it with remarkable accuracy; thunder struck in France ... "
But the storm has already passed. The people, according to Karamzin, having paid dearly for trying to implement the ideas of equality and freedom within the framework of the republic, after many years of severe trials began to return to the government that had first been destroyed. France, he argues, is a large country, the monarchy in it has developed historically, and its destruction turned out to be disastrous for the nation. In accordance with these views, Karamzin writes: “France, in its grandeur and character, should be a monarchy” ( Vestnik Evropy, 1802, No. 17, p. 78.).
The political experience of the French Revolution, as Karamzin understood it, determined his assimilation of the political concept of the French Enlightenment. Russia is a vast country, “half of the world”, and therefore must also be ruled by a monarch. The monarchy will save the people from anarchy and anarchy, will provide the necessary benefits to the people and the nation and, above all, "reliable use of their liberty" by each subject. Having overcome the ideological crisis, Karamzin, developing new convictions, was filled even at that time with deep optimism. “The revolution explained ideas,” he writes, “we saw that civil order is sacred even in its most local or accidental shortcomings; that his power for the peoples is not tyranny, but protection from tyranny. The experience of the revolution taught both peoples and kings a lot. “But the ninth to the tenth century should be happier, having assured the peoples of the need for lawful obedience, and the sovereigns of the need for beneficent, firm, but paternal government.”
The political concept seemed to be supported by the events of the beginning of the century. Alexander I, who ascended the throne, marked his reign with a number of important political actions: he destroyed the Secret Expedition, gave amnesty to political "criminals" who were still imprisoned by Catherine and Paul in the fortress or exiled to various provinces of Russia, created a commission to draw up laws.
Karamzin wrote in Vestnik Evropy that all Russian citizens are already enjoying the “most important good,” which is “the current peace of mind.” The phrase is notable in that it is a quotation from Montesquieu. In The Spirit of the Laws we read: “The political freedom of a citizen is peace of mind, which comes from confidence in one’s own security” ( "The Spirit of Laws". The creation of the famous French writer de Montescu, part 1, St. Petersburg, 1839, p. 270.). The theory seemed to be confirmed by practice. Thus, the illusions were consolidated that the activities of Alexander would bring the benefit of Russia. At the same time, it must be said that in those years, in general, this illusion became widespread. Even the revolutionary Radishchev, without changing his convictions, but realistically considering the circumstances, found it possible to take part in the work of the commission for the drafting of laws and in the poem "The Eighteenth Century" to express gratitude to Alexander for his first manifestos.
In these specific political circumstances, Karamzin's decision was determined to do everything possible to become the voice of that "common opinion" of people who succumbed to illusions, who were looking for ways to influence Alexander, who wanted to help the tsar in his labors for the benefit of the people. The activity of a writer was to become the activity of a citizen - one should not indulge in the search for happiness in one's heart, separating oneself from people with the Chinese shadows of one's imagination. This had to be done all the more so because, as Karamzin himself noted, "we do not want to assure ourselves that Russia is already at the highest degree of goodness and perfection." Great works lay ahead, and Karamzin wanted to take part in them. That is why he appeared in 1801-1803 with a whole series of political essays: he wrote an ode-mandate on the occasion of the coronation of Alexander, “A historical eulogy to Catherine II”, publishes “Bulletin of Europe”, filled with political articles-recommendations.
In the "Historical eulogy to Catherine II" a deeply erroneous assessment of the reign of the empress is given. But the essay is interesting to others: it outlines the program of Alexander's reign. Karamzin outlined the program of laws defined by Montesquieu, hiding behind the "Order" of Catherine II, who, by her own admission, "robbed" the French enlightener, retelling in her essay the main articles of the "Spirit of the Laws". Directly following the author of The Spirit of Laws, Karamzin defines in the Lay both the understanding of the monarchy, the significance of monarchical rule for a large country, and the content of the concepts of "political liberty" and "equality". Contaminating two important articles of the "Instruction" (hence, "The Spirit of the Laws") and adding something on his own, Karamzin formulates the main provisions of his concept, which he wants to make the concept of Alexander. “The object of autocracy,” he writes, “is not to deprive people of their natural freedom, but to direct their actions to the greatest good.” Further, referring to Catherine's "Instruction", Karamzin develops an understanding of freedom and equality: "The monarch, having said that the autocracy is not the enemy of freedom in civil society, defines it as follows:" She is nothing but peace of mind, coming from security , and the right to do everything permitted by the laws, and laws must not prohibit anything except harmful to society; they must be so graceful, so clear that everyone can feel their necessity for all citizens: and this is the only possible civil equality. The substitution of the question of social equality for political equality, equality before the law led in the new conditions to a direct justification of serfdom. Special articles were devoted to this issue (for example, "Letter from a Villager").
Approving the intention of Alexander to prepare new laws (the creation of a commission and the definition of a program of its work by a special rescript), Karamzin connects their publication with the development of enlightenment: “When minds are not ready for better laws, then prepare them; lead by example." Enlightenment is also needed to prepare the people for new laws and to ensure that "people know how to enjoy and be content in every state of a wise political society."
Education should be twofold: moral education, "common in all countries", and "political education of a citizen, different in the form of government." Since Russia has a monarchical government, it should instill in citizens "love for the fatherland, for its institutions and all the properties necessary for their integrity." Therefore, it should “root in a person reverence for the monarch, who combines state authorities and, so to speak, the image of the fatherland.” Karamzin, as we have seen, arrived at the political concept of enlightened absolutism the hard way, overcoming the system of subjectivist convictions that pushed him to preach egoistic happiness. Now he sincerely believed in the salvation of the Russian autocracy, softened by enlightenment. That is why he actively and selflessly asserted his political ideal both in the journalistic articles of Vestnik Evropy, and in the works of art of that time, and later, in the History of the Russian State. Objectively, such a position ideologically strengthened Russian tsarism. In historical circumstances, when with each year of the new century the reactionary role of the autocracy, which used the immense power of power in order to keep Russia on the old, feudal-feudal paths of development, to protect the interests of the nobility and, above all, its right to own the peasants, became more and more obvious, such Karamzin's position, especially actively expressed in the 1810s, pushed the advanced camp away from him.
In full accordance with the political concept of the enlighteners, Karamzin not only proved the salvation of the monarchy for France and Russia, but with the same fervor defended the republican system and republican freedom for small countries and peoples. In the very first issue of Vestnik Evropy for 1802, Karamzin defends the rights of Switzerland, believing that freedom should be restored there. “A voice is heard in the Alps,” he writes, “demanding the restoration of the ancient Helvetic freedom destroyed by reckless French directors. Republican freedom and independence belong to Switzerland as well as its granite and snowy mountains. So, of course, the ideologue of the reaction could not write.
Immediately after the great and dramatic events of the French Revolution, Karamzin had the task of answering many important questions of the social and political existence of peoples raised by life itself. It was not his fault, but his misfortune, that he gave incorrect answers to some of them, and could not answer others. But the undoubted merit was his desire to understand everything. He boldly discussed emerging issues, offered his own solutions, thus educating Russian society. So, defending republican freedom for Switzerland, Karamzin later, at the end of that year, once again returned to her fate, since important events took place there: Bonaparte "respected the independence of the Swiss." And again, a historical surprise lay in wait for Karamzin - the beginning of an independent republic was at the same time the beginning of an “internecine war”: “This unfortunate land now represents all the horrors of an internecine war, which is the action of personal passions, evil and insane egoism. This is how the virtues of the people disappear.”
The great theoretician Rousseau asserted the possibility of the existence of a republic in small countries. Practice made an amendment - selfishness triumphs in the republics, which divides people, hardens them against each other, makes them indifferent to the fate of the fatherland, "and without high national virtue the republic cannot stand." It turned out that modern political events, as it were, reinforced Karamzin's conviction from a new side that the only salvation of the peoples was in the monarchy. He writes: “This is why monarchical government is much happier and more reliable: it does not require extraordinary things from citizens and can rise to that degree of morality at which republics fall.” But Karamzin is not satisfied with drawing such a conclusion - he wants to understand why virtues are being destroyed in the republics, why egoism, selfishness, and enmity of people triumph there. He is looking for an answer and offers it to the public, and it must be said that Karamzin's answer is of great importance, testifying to the writer's ability to notice new phenomena in social relations.
Karamzin comes to the conclusion: “The debauchery of Swiss morals began from the time when the descendants of Telev decided to serve other powers for money; returning to the fatherland with new habits and alien vices, they infected their fellow citizens with them. The poison acted slowly in the clear, mountainous air... The trading spirit, in the course of time, having taken possession of the Swiss, filled their chests with gold, but exhausted the proud, exclusive love of independence in their hearts. Wealth made citizens selfish and was the second reason for the moral decline of Helvetia.
Karamzin saw the corrupting role of the spirit of trade, showed how money-grubbing, the thirst for wealth, trade destroy virtues and destroy the true freedom of citizens even in the republics, how bourgeois relations turn the republic into an empty phrase and destroy the human personality. The note about Switzerland is not accidental. Following Switzerland, the attention of Karamzin is attracted by the North American Republic. A new article (translated) appears in Vestnik Evropy about the manners and way of life in the republic overseas. “The spirit of commerce,” it says, “is the main character of America. Everyone is trying to buy. Wealth with poverty and slavery are in striking contrast (contraste) ... People are rich and rude; especially in Philadelphia, where the rich live only for themselves, in a boring uniformity they eat and drink ”( "Herald of Europe", 1802, No. 24, pp. 315-316.). How quickly the virtues disappeared! After all, the North American republic was born quite recently, in front of the young man Karamzin. And two decades later, morals are corrupted here too, rich republicans turn out to be slave owners, wealth has made citizens selfish, “high popular virtue is falling”, and without it there can be no true republic ( Such judgments by Karamzin absolutely categorically reject the opinion of some researchers who attribute to him the idea that a person is by nature an egoist and therefore the nature of a person is antisocial. Karamzin repeatedly emphasized, and in this article he clearly states that circumstances change a person, that "wealth makes citizens selfish.").
8
A new flowering of Karamzin's literary activity begins in 1802, when he began publishing the journal Vestnik Evropy. Karamzin was already the largest, most authoritative of the writers of his generation, his name was pronounced in literary circles in the first place. Over the past decade, he has grown as a thinker, as an artist.
The governmental liberalism of the new reign, censorship indulgence allowed him to speak in the new journal more freely and on a wider range of issues, to speak out with an awareness of his role in modern literature, his place in the literary process, his right and even duty to publicly express his thoughts.
What in Catherine's time Karamzin had to obscure - his orientation towards European liberalism - now he could preach without fear, and this was expressed primarily in the name of the new journal - Vestnik Evropy. This was the whole program. At the same time, this did not mean a rejection of national traditions, disregard for Russian life, for domestic issues. Against. But everything was considered in relation to the "universal", "European" reality, history.
In Karamzin's works of art and literature published in Vestnik Evropy (1802-1803), two lines are clearly visible: the first is an interest in the inner world of modern man, in the "life of the heart", but complicated by the doctrine of "characters" coming from the literature of the 18th century; the other is historical, which was the result of understanding the historical events that he witnessed during 1789-1801. They were connected to some extent and in some respects explained one another. At the same time, these were a satirical line and a heroic line.
Even in his second letter from Lausanne, in Letters from a Russian Traveler, Karamzin expressed his opinion on the relationship between "temperament" and "character." Here he considers temperament to be the basis of the "moral being" of a person, and character - the "random form" of the latter. “We are born with a temperament,” continued Karamzin, “but without character, which is formed little by little from external impressions. Character depends, of course, on temperament, but only in part, depending, however, on the kind of objects acting on us. He further clarifies his understanding of these terms: “The special ability to receive impressions is temperament; the form that these impressions give to a moral being is character.
In Vestnik Evropy for 1803, Karamzin published a work that, in terms of genre, is neither a short story, nor a short story, nor an essay; most likely it can be called a psychological study. Karamzin titled it “Sensitive and cold. Two characters. This topic had attracted his attention for a long time, but only by the beginning of the 19th century, these “two characters” were defined in Karamzin’s mind as the main, perhaps the only, from his point of view, forms of manifestation of people’s inner life.
However, the most important feature of this small, very deep work is that neither the "sensitive" Erast, nor the "cold" Leonid are "positive heroes" for the author. Each of them is negative in its own way. Karamzin does not seem to want to prefer one to the other and is trying to show that neither the first nor the second gave people what they could give. And with all this, it is noticeable that Karamzin depicts the “sensitive” Erast with some irony, even with elements of satire.
An attempt to depict the formation of a "sensitive" "character" is Karamzin's unfinished novel "The Knight of Our Time" - a work that is not sufficiently appreciated in the history of literature and is interesting as an experience of a psychological novel based on autobiographical material.
At the same time, in this work, the author depicts with great sympathy a society of provincial nobles, honest, direct, imbued with a consciousness of their own and class dignity. The Knight of Our Time is also of interest because it was the first work in Russian literature in which child psychology was analyzed. In "My Confession" the formation of the "character" of the "cold", who was the victim of a bad upbringing, was analyzed. Karamzin quite deliberately wrote a satirical work. Everything here, starting with the title to a certain extent parodying the name of the famous work of Rousseau, is a satire - a satire on the upbringing of the nobility, on the dissolute behavior of young nobles, on fashionable noble marriages, etc.
The general egoism, seen by Karamzin in many of his contemporaries, disturbed and embarrassed the writer. The “cold” Leonid, who does everything “as it should”, in no way violates the norms of noble behavior, at the same time disgusts the writer: “His favorite thought was that everything is here for a person, and a person is only for himself.” But Leonid is also an example of a "modern man" who retains outward propriety and limits his desires to some semblance of morality. The hero of "My Confession" represents complete moral emptiness. After reading this work, one may even get the impression that Karamzin has no faith in the spiritual forces of the nobility, that his satire, as it were, draws a line under the history of the mental and moral development of this estate. The meaning of "My Confession" becomes especially clear when comparing this work with Karamzin's journalistic articles, which set out his views on the role and significance of the nobility in Russian life and history.
In the same 1802, when My Confession was created, Karamzin wrote: “The nobility is the soul and noble image of the whole people ... The glory and happiness of the fatherland should be especially precious to them, the nobles ... Not everyone can be warriors and judges, but everyone can serve the fatherland”, all activities for the good of the motherland are “useful”. Thus, Karamzin's satire in "Sensitive and Cold", "My Confession", and probably in "The Knight of Our Time" is a satire of the nobility and is directed against those nobles who, by their way of life, show that the glory and happiness of the fatherland do not represent for them any values that do not want to serve the fatherland, that do not want to be useful to it.
Analyzing the reality surrounding him, peering into the contemporary noble society, the mature Karamzin was convinced that the main social and educational line of Russian literature of the 18th century, satirical, had legitimate rights to exist in his time, and this explains his appeal to satire in " Sensitive and cold" and in "My confession". However, in accordance with the general aesthetic principles that he developed by the end of the 18th century, Karamzin's satire is very different from similar works of satirists of the previous period. Therefore, it so happened that historians of Russian literature did not notice the peculiar satire of Karamzin, believing that sentimentalism does not recognize satire at all.
Studying the social and educational experience of Russian literature of the 18th century, Karamzin could not fail to notice how much importance his predecessors attached to national heroic themes. From the beginning of the 19th century, Karamzin realized his role as the ideological leader of the Russian nobility and realized what a powerful means of education skillfully crafted heroic-historical material could be. It was as an objective and deeply emotional school of noble valor, noble patriotism that he began to understand history at that time.
If Karamzin's satire showed what a nobleman is and should not be - the owner of a vast country, then history and fiction with national heroic themes should have taught the noble reader what his ancestors were and what he himself should be.
One of the last works of fiction in prose written by Karamzin was the historical story "Marfa the Posadnitsa" (1803), written long before the fascination with the novels of Walter Scott began in Russia. Here, his attraction to the classics, to antiquity as an unattainable ethical model, which was determined in the mid-1790s in the “historical” utopian idyll “The Athenian Life”, reached its highest level. G. A. Gukovsky partly correctly noted that “Novgorod heroes in Karamzin ... are ancient heroes, in the spirit of classical poetics. And classical memoirs clearly gravitate over the story. It is not for nothing that Karamzin uses “legions” next to the “veche” and “posadniks”. Karamzin, describing republican prowess, admires them in aesthetic terms, the abstract beauty of the heroics captivates him by itself. G. A. Gukovsky. Karamzin. - "History of Russian literature", vol. V, M.-L., Publishing House of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, 1941, p. 79.).
Indeed, the struggle of the Novgorodians against Moscow is presented in "Marfa Posadnitsa" in a stylized antique form, just like other historical events in the program article "On cases and characters in Russian history that can be the subject of art." But this is not the classicism of Corneille and Racine, Sumarokov and Lomonosov. The "classicism" of Karamzin in "Marfa Posadnitsa" is a kind of parallel to the classicism of the tragedies of M.-J. Chenier, the elegies of A. Chenier, the paintings of David, with the only difference that the Russian writer's ancient plasticity served not the goals of the revolution, but the education of his noble compatriots.
In "Marfa Posadnitsa" the most important issues of Karamzin's worldview were resolved: the question of the republic and the monarchy, the leaders and the people, the historical, "divine" predestination and the struggle of the individual with it - in a word, everything that he was taught by the French Revolution that passed before his eyes , which ended with the transformation of the consul Bonaparte into the emperor Napoleon; everything that he found in ancient history, in Western literatures, everything that manifested itself, according to his concepts, in the doomed to failure struggle of republican Novgorod, behind which stands moral rightness, with monarchical Moscow - the embodiment of strength and political cunning. At the same time, this story by Karamzin revealed with renewed vigor his old concept of tragic fatalism, the doom of the “best” in this world. The theme of "Vadim of Novgorod", which was developed from different positions in Russian drama at the end of the 18th century, also found its new light in Karamzin in the form of the cult of Vadim depicted in passing. It is also characteristic that Karamzin often calls the inhabitants of Novgorod, Novgorodians, the word "citizens", the use of which as a translation of the French revolutionary term "citoyens" was strictly prohibited under Paul.
Karamzin pretended to be only the publisher of the manuscript of some Novgorod writer that he allegedly found, thereby separating his position from the position of the imaginary author. However, this does not save the situation. Karamzin's sympathies are clearly on the side of Martha and the Novgorodians; this is expressed not only in the magnificent, although not devoid of contradictions, image of Marfa Posadnitsa, but also in the deliberate weakness of the argument that Karamzin puts into the mouth of Prince Kholmsky, who demands obedience from Novgorod to Moscow. The writer's attitude to monarchical Moscow and republican Novgorod is most clearly formulated in the place in the story where he makes Michael the Brave talk about the battle of the "legions" of John with the troops of Miroslav: "Some fought for honor ( It is possible that in Karamzin's manuscript there was "authority", but either under pressure from censorship, or by his own decision, he put "honor".), others for honor and liberty.
At the end of the story, Prince Kholmsky reads John's oath promise on his own behalf and on behalf of all his successors to observe the good of the people; if the oath be broken, says John, "let his generation perish"; and here Karamzin, in a footnote, states that "the lineage of John has been cut short." Perhaps here is hidden a warning of historically thinking Karamzin to the young emperor Alexander - to remember the duties of an ideal sovereign "to observe the good of the people."
"Marfa Posadnitsa", revealing the tragedy of free Novgorod and Marfa Boretskaya, revealed contradictions in the writer's worldview. Historical correctness in his portrayal is undoubtedly on the side of Novgorod. And at the same time, Novgorod is doomed, gloomy omens portend the imminent destruction of the free city, and the predictions really come true. Why? Karamzin does not answer, cannot answer, just as he could not answer why poor Lisa must die, why Alonzo must commit suicide in the Sierra Morena, why misfortune must break out at Bornholm Castle.
The prose and poetry of Karamzin had a strong influence on contemporary and subsequent Russian literature. True, his closest disciples, with the exception of Zhukovsky and Batyushkov, were little talented, or even simply mediocre epigones, who picked up the purely external methods of the early period of their teacher's work and were unable to understand his complex, contradictory, unreconciled development in their contradictions.
First of all, the writers of the new generation learned from Karamzin the elegant and rich literary language, and this is one of his greatest merits, although soon after Pushkin's speech his language became outdated. However, it is precisely from Karamzin that Russian literature of the 19th century began to search for means for the exact expression of spiritual experiences, the “language of the heart”.
Historians of the Russian literary language and literary critics have long and insistently been talking about Karamzin's "language reform". At one time, all the changes that took place in the Russian literary language at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries were attributed entirely to Karamzin. In recent decades, the role of his predecessors - Novikov, Fonvizin and Derzhavin - has already been taken into account. The more closely the literature of the last quarter of the 18th century is studied, the clearer it becomes that many older contemporaries and peers of Karamzin - I. A. Krylov, A. N. Radishchev, M. N. Muravyov, V. S. Podshivalov, V. T. Narezhny, I. I. Martynov and others - prepared the ground for his “language reform”, working in the same direction with him both in the field of prose and in the field of verse, and that this general process found its most striking and authoritative embodiment in Karamzin.
The most valuable and important thing in what is called Karamzin's "language reform" was the rejection of the dilapidated Slavic vocabulary, traditionally used only in the written literary language and gradually ousted from the colloquial speech of the educated strata of Russian society. The rejection of Slavicisms began with Karamzin during his work in the "Children's Reading". Perhaps this refusal is due to the influence of Novikov, whose articles of this period are completely free from lexical and syntactic Slavicisms. The point of view learned by him in his youth became later on a consciously applied principle. Of course, the rejection of the Slavic vocabulary required Karamzin to create Russian language correspondences, which he almost always succeeded in doing.
No less important is the activity of Karamzin as the creator of a significant number of neologisms of a different order, partly created by him on the model of the corresponding foreign words, partly representing simply Russian translations - tracing paper, partly being foreign words, to which the writer gave a Russian appearance.
It is generally accepted that Karamzin destroyed the “division” of the Russian literary language established by Lomonosov into three styles - “high”, “mediocre” and “low” - and turned to the living colloquial language of the educated circles of contemporary society. This judgment is not entirely accurate.
Karamzin had before his eyes not the language of Lomonosov, but the language of the epigones of the author of the argument "On the Usefulness of Church Books in the Russian Language." These writers, inept, misunderstood the brilliant ideas of Lomonosov, contrary to his warnings, began to flood the literary language with rare Slavic words and phrases, flaunted ponderous grammatical constructions, turned literary works into something inaccessible to the "average" reader. Karamzin spoke not against Lomonosov, but against Elagin and other members of the Russian Academy, he quoted from their writings, fought against them.
It was not so easy for Karamzin to refute the stylistic principles of Lomonosov, and, most importantly, it was not at all necessary.
Following the ancient theorists of stylistics and applying their doctrine of three styles to the Russian (“Russian”) language, Lomonosov did nothing fundamentally new in this respect. The depth and grandeur, the genius of his discovery consisted in the fact that he determined the lexical and stylistic correlations of the two elements of the "Russian", that is, the literary Russian language - bookish Church Slavonic and colloquial Russian. Lomonosov connected the ancient doctrine of high, middle and low styles with his discovery of the relationship between the Slavic and Russian languages, and this was his great merit to Russian culture. Such styles, different in character, exist even now in the language of every highly cultured people, which has a large, developed artistic literature. And if we called one style of fiction "bookish", and not "high", and the other "literary-colloquial", and not "mediocre", and, finally, the third "colloquial", and not "low", then no cancellation, all the more so, the "destruction" of Lomonosov's doctrine of the three styles cannot be seen in this. The ancient theorists and Lomonosov were right: they discovered the objective patterns of style, depending on the subject matter, task, and purposefulness of a literary work.
Lomonosov did not at all give preference to high style, as is sometimes said, but quite reasonably and historically correctly indicated the scope of each style in the respective genres.
In turn, Karamzin did not write all his works in prose and verse in the same colloquial language of the literary educated strata of Russian society. "Marfa Posadnitsa" is resolutely unlike "Poor Lisa", "Sierra Morena" is stylistically sharply different from "Natalya, the Boyar's Daughter", "My Confession". And Karamzin had his own "high" style - in "Marfa Posadnitsa", "Historical eulogy to Empress Catherine II", "History of the Russian state". However, those genres - poetic and prosaic - which he cultivated, demanded an "average" style in every style. It can be said that Karamzin did not have a "low" style, this is correct; however, "My Confession" is still written in a "reduced" style compared to "Poor Liza", "Bornholm Island", "Athenian Life".
Karamzin, the master of the plot story, lyrical essay, psychological study, autobiographical novel, was studied mainly by people of the next generation, starting from A. Bestuzhev-Marlinsky and continuing with Pushkin, Lermontov and other writers of the 1830s.
9
Overcoming the ideological crisis led to a change in aesthetic beliefs. Karamzin abandons his former subjectivist position. Based on the experience of working in the Moscow Journal, after many years of silence, in the changed circumstances, he feels the need to set out in detail his new views. Thus, the need for criticism arises again. In 1797, Karamzin wrote two major articles: "A few words about Russian literature", which he published in a French magazine, and a preface to the second collection "Aonid". In the preface, he not only gives a critical assessment of poetic works that gravitate towards classicism, but also shows how the lack of naturalness and fidelity to nature makes them "puffed up" and cold. Karamzin began to assert again that the writer should find poetry in everyday objects that surround him and are well known to him: "... a true poet finds a piitistic side in the most ordinary things." The poet must be able to show "shades that hide from the eyes of other people", remembering that "one bombast, one thunder of words just deafens us and does not reach the heart", on the contrary - "a moderate verse cuts into memory."
Here Karamzin no longer confines himself to criticizing classicism, but also criticizes sentimentalist writers, that is, his followers, who persistently planted sensitivity in literature. For Karamzin, sensitivity, underlined sentimentality, are just as unnatural and far from nature, as are the rhetoric and "bombast" of classicism poetry. “It is also not necessary to constantly talk about tears,” he writes, “acquiring various epithets to them, calling them brilliant and brilliant, this way of touching is very unreliable.” Clarifying his position, Karamzin formulates the demand for the psychological truth of the image, the need to talk not about the feelings of a person in general, but about the feelings of a given person: which, being too ordinary, cannot produce a strong effect on the heart of the reader, but are special, having to do with the character and circumstances of the poet. These features, these details, and this, so to speak, personality assure us of the truth of the description and often deceive us, but such deception is the triumph of art. This judgment is not accidental for Karamzin in the late 1790s. In a letter to A. I. Vyazemsky dated October 20, 1796, he wrote: “It is better to read Hume, Helvetius, Mably, rather than complain in languid elegies about the coldness and inconstancy of beauties. Thus, soon my poor muse will either retire completely, or ... will shift metaphysics with the Platonic Republic into verse for Canton ”( Russian Archive, 1872, p. 1324.).
In the scientific literature, the opinion has long been established that during the period of publication of Vestnik Evropy, Karamzin abandoned criticism. The basis for such an opinion is the preface to the journal, in which Karamzin wrote: “But does criticism really teach you to write, don’t patterns and examples work much more strongly?” It is only through a misunderstanding that these words of Karamzin can be passed off as a denial of the importance and significance of criticism for literature. From all Karamzin's speeches in the new journal, it is clear that he refuses not criticism, but reviews of the type that he wrote in the Moscow Journal.
Instead of reviews, Karamzin began to write serious articles in Vestnik Evropy devoted to the urgent tasks of literature - about the role and place of literature in public life, about the reasons that slow down its development and the emergence of new authors, about language, about the importance of the national identity of literature, etc. e. Karamzin's articles in Vestnik Evropy raised criticism to a new level: from individual and private remarks about the books under review, the critic moved on to presenting a strictly thought-out, fundamentally new program for the development of literature. Literature, Karamzin now argued, “should have an impact on morals and happiness,” each writer is obliged to “help moral education of such a great and strong people as the Russian one, develop ideas, indicate new colors in life, nourish the soul with moral pleasures and merge it into sweet feelings for the benefit of others." Karamzin, as we see, was able to sensitively capture the needs of the time, to understand the needs of the reader.
But at the same time, since the late 1990s, voices of dissatisfaction with the activities of that Karamzin, most of whose works, written at the time of the ideological crisis, were collected in the collection My Trifles, began to be heard more and more often in society. Even in circles close to Karamzin, this discontent was expressed openly. Since 1801, meetings of the "Friendly Literary Society" began in Moscow, which united very young writers - Andrei and Alexander Turgenev, the Kaisarov brothers, Zhukovsky, Merzlyakov and others. At meetings, members of the society read reports. In a report on Russian literature, Andrei Turgenev, a young educator, an aspiring writer and critic, especially zealously attacked Karamzin: “I will say frankly: he (Karamzin. - G. M) is more harmful than useful to our literature ...” ( "Russian Bibliophile", 1912, No. 1, p. 29.) Karamzin's harm was seen in the fact that he asserted an interest in private topics, in "trinkets", and encouraged imitations. "... Let the Russians continue to write worse ... - it was said further, - but they would write more original, more important, not so much applied to petty births ..." ( There.) Karamzin, according to A. Turgenev, exhausts "the heat of his soul in trinkets", opposes "the good and success of all domestic" ( Ibid., p. 30.). And Karamzin hasn't exhausted his soul in trinkets for a long time. While his works, written at the time of the triumph of subjectivity, were scolded in various circles, he resolutely and boldly worked out a program for the development of literature along the path of national identity, wanting to contribute to "the good and success of everything national."
In a number of articles in Vestnik Evropy, Karamzin outlined his positive program for the development of literature. The "great subject" of literature is concern for the moral education of the Russian people. In this education, the main role belongs to patriotic education. “Patriotism,” says Karamzin, “is love for the good and glory of the fatherland and the desire to contribute to them in every way.” There are many patriots in Rus', but patriotism is not characteristic of everyone; insofar as it "requires reasoning", insofar as "not all people have it." The task of literature is to instill a sense of patriotic love for the fatherland in all citizens. We must not forget that Karamzin also included love for the monarch in the concept of patriotism. But at the same time, Karamzin's patriotism was not limited to preaching monarchism. The writer demanded that literature educate patriotism, because the Russian people still do not know themselves well, their national character. “It seems to me,” continues Karamzin, “that we are too humble in our thoughts about our national dignity, and humility in politics is harmful. Whoever does not respect himself, no doubt, others will not respect him either. The stronger the love for one's fatherland, the clearer the path of a citizen to his own happiness. Rejecting the cult of selfish solitary life, Karamzin shows that only on the path of fulfilling public positions does a person acquire true happiness: pillar of patriotism. That is why it is closest and most kind to Russian talent to glorify Russian things. “Russians should be taught to respect their own,” - such a task can only be performed by nationally original literature.
What is the path to this identity? Karamzin writes an article "On cases and characters in Russian history that can be the subject of art." This article should be regarded as a kind of manifesto of the new Karamzin. It opens the last, extremely fruitful, period of the writer's work. It is natural, therefore, that the former convictions in it are resolutely revised. Patriotic education can best be done through concrete examples. The history of Russia provides magnificent and invaluable material for the artist. The subject of the image should be real, objective reality, and not "Chinese shadows of one's own imagination", the heroes should be historically specific Russian people, and their characters should be revealed in patriotic deeds. The writer is no longer a "liar" who knows how to "invent pleasantly", forcing the reader to forget himself in the "magic of red fictions." An artist, sculptor or writer is, according to Karamzin, "an organ of patriotism." The basis of the writer's activity should be the conviction that "his work is not useless for the fatherland," that he, as an author, helps his fellow citizens "better think and speak."
The writer must portray the "heroic characters" that he can easily find in Russian history. Karamzin immediately offers some plots in which the character of a Russian person is clearly manifested. Such is Oleg, "the conqueror of the Greeks"; Svyatoslav, who "spent his whole life in the field, shared his needs and labors with faithful comrades, slept on damp earth, in the open air." Svyatoslav is also dear to Russians because he was "born from a Slav". His legendary courage serves as an expression of the Russian character traits that were formed in ancient times. Karamzin tells how, surrounded by Greek soldiers with his retinue, Svyatoslav did not flinch and, inspiring the combatants to fight, delivered a speech “worthy of a Spartan or Slav”: “... let us lie down here with our bones: the dead have no shame.”
Along with the description of the heroic male characters, Karamzin expresses a desire to create a "gallery of Russian women famous in history." One of these Russians - Marfa Posadnitsa - he made the heroine of the story of the same name. As if summarizing his new view of a person, Karamzin formulates one of the most important properties of the national Russian character, namely, his ability to emerge “from home obscurity to the folk theater”.
New tasks and new themes that Karamzin put forward for writers naturally required a new language. He urges authors to write in “simple Russian words”, to abandon their former focus on the salon, on the tastes of ladies, arguing that the Russian language, by its nature, has the richest possibilities that allow the author to express any thoughts, ideas and feelings: “Let's leave it to our kind secular ladies claim that the Russian language is rude and unpleasant.” Writers, Karamzin believes, “do not have such a kind right to judge falsely. Our language is expressive not only for lofty eloquence, for loud, picturesque poetry, but also for gentle simplicity, for the sounds of the heart and sensitivity. It is richer in harmony) than French, more capable of outpouring the soul in tones, presents more analogous words, that is, consistent with the action expressed: the benefit that only indigenous languages \u200b\u200bhave!
The program for the development of literature, proposed by Karamzin the critic, met the urgent needs of the new time. From the first years of the 19th century, literature faced the problem of national identity and nationality. It was raised in the last century, the ideology of the Enlightenment stood at its cradle.
In the 19th century, the ideas of nationality were further and deeply developed in the work of Krylov. Simultaneously with Krylov, a group of young writers associated with the enlightenment ideology of the last century (N. I. Gnedich, A. F. Merzlyakov, V. T. Narezhny and others) acted in literature. Differing in many respects from the fabulist - both in the degree of democracy and, most importantly, in the scale of talent, they, each in their own way, solved the same range of problems as Krylov. The motto of the new era was the demand for the originality of literature,
Karamzin's call to turn to history and look for the key to the originality of literature and art in it was met with enthusiasm by the literary community of that time. In the journal of the leading writer I. Martynov, associated with the sons of Radishchev, Gnedich and Batyushkov, a response immediately appeared that belonged to Alexander Turgenev. Welcoming the anonymous article (like many other critical articles by Karamzin, the article “On cases and characters in Russian history that can be the subject of art” was published without a signature), Turgenev at the same time tried to expand the range of plots, to challenge some of those proposed by Vestnik Evropy ".
In 1818, Karamzin, in connection with his acceptance as a member of the Russian Academy, delivered a speech at its solemn meeting; this speech was his last great critical speech. There is a lot of official, obligatory, even ceremonial in the speech. But it also contains Karamzin's own thoughts about the tasks of criticism in the new conditions and about some of the results of the development of literature along the path of originality.
At the end of his speech, Karamzin spoke about the special features of the Russian national character, which took shape over the centuries, and about the need for writers to portray this character. Evaluating literature for a decade and a half of the 19th century, Karamzin is optimistic about its further movement along the path of nationality. “The great Peter, having changed a lot, did not change everything that is fundamental Russian: whether for what he did not want, or for what he could not, for the power of the autocrats has limits,” such is Karamzin’s first initial thesis. “Resembling other European peoples,” he continues his thought, “we differ with them in certain abilities, customs, skills, so that although it is sometimes impossible to distinguish a Russian from a British, we will always distinguish Russians from British: in the multitude, folk ". Immediately following this, Karamzin gives his definition of the nationality of literature: “We will refer this truth to literature: being a mirror of the mind and feeling of the people, it must also have something special in itself, imperceptible in one author, but obvious in many ... There are sounds of the heart Russian, there is a game of the Russian mind in the works of our literature, which will be even more distinguished by them in its further successes.
10
Since 1804, Karamzin devoted himself entirely to work on the History of the Russian State. However, the study of chronicles, archival materials and book sources did not tear him away from the present: closely following Alexander's domestic and foreign policy, he became more and more worried about the fate of Russia. And when an unexpected circumstance (acquaintance and conversation with the emperor's sister Ekaterina Pavlovna) opened up the opportunity for him to exert a direct influence on Alexander, he, true to his political concept of enlightened absolutism, could not but take advantage of it. This is how the “Note on Ancient and New Russia” appeared (presented to Alexander in March 1811) - a complex, controversial, sharply political document. In fact, it contains two themes: the proof (for the umpteenth time!) that “autocracy is the palladium of Russia”, and the boldly expressed criticism of Alexander’s rule, the assertion that the government’s actions are characterized by disregard for the interests of the fatherland, as a result of which “Russia is filled with dissatisfied."
The first theme turned into a political lesson to the tsar, flavored with historical digressions. No longer hiding behind the "Instruction", but directly referring to Montesquieu, Karamzin taught what and how Alexander should do as an autocrat, and what he should not and dare not do. From the same position, it was argued that in the monarchy the support of the throne is the nobility, and therefore any infringement of its rights is unacceptable. Once again, Karamzin proves the need to preserve serfdom in Russia, arguing that “for the firmness of being a state, it is safer to enslave people than to give them freedom at the wrong time, for which it is necessary to prepare a person by moral correction; and the system of our wine farming and the terrible successes of drunkenness serve as a salutary preparation for this? A similar maxim belongs to the landowner. The Decembrist Nikolai Turgenev, having read the Note, conveyed his disagreement with Karamzin with surprising accuracy: “In this note, I was especially outraged by the fact that Karamzin sometimes appears here as the herald of a class that in Russia is called the nobility ( Nikolai Turgenev. Russia and Russians, vol. I. M., 1915, p. 341.).
The first theme of the "Notes" was not new. Karamzin personally stated to the tsar what he had already written about more than once. What was new was the critical attitude towards Alexander's reign. In the "Note" for the first time, anger made Karamzin's pen angry and merciless.
Based on facts, he paints a bleak picture of Russia's foreign policy situation, brought to humiliation by stupid diplomacy; analyzes in detail the government's helpless attempts to solve important economic problems. Karamzin openly declares: "... we will not hide evil, we will not deceive ourselves and the sovereign." Not wanting to deceive, Karamzin sharply condemns Alexander's latest reforms. Karamzin's criticism of Alexander-Speransky's reforms gave rise to the tradition of interpreting the "Note" as a reactionary document. By the way, none other than Baron Korf was one of the first in his work “The Life of Count Speransky” to express this opinion, which has become so firmly established in literature, that the “Note” was “the result of the talk of the then conservative opposition.” This judgment followed from the reactionary convictions of Korf, who believed that Alexander and Speransky in this activity "outstripped the age of their people" ( M. Korf. Life of Count Speransky, vol. I. St. Petersburg, 1861, p. 143.). Korf deliberately distorted the meaning of the Note. Beginning in 1801, Karamzin publicly demanded reforms, suggested ways to draw up new laws in the spirit of the "Instruction", welcomed Alexander for creating a commission to establish new laws. Karamzin responded to the manifesto on the organization of ministries with an article in Vestnik Evropy, in which, approving the reform of the state apparatus, he explained to his readers what to expect from ministers and ministries.
In fact, in his "Note" Karamzin opposes those transformations, "of which the beneficence remains hitherto doubtful." The government, for example, does not develop school education, does not want to promote the formation of all fortunes, focusing only on the nobility. What does Karamzin suggest? Let scientists be invited from abroad, but, most importantly, it is necessary to create "our own scientific fortune" from representatives of democratic circles. Karamzin urges Alexander not to spare “money to increase the number of state pupils in gymnasiums; meager parents, sending their sons there ... and despicable poverty in ten or fifteen years would have made a fortune in Russia. I dare say that there is no other real means for success in this intention.
Karamzin also speaks against the reform of the ministries carried out by Speransky in 1809. What is his objection? The inconsistency and insignificance of the reform. She, as Karamzin shows, does not pursue any state tasks. "The main mistake of the legislators of this reign" he sees "in excessive respect for the forms of state activity." All such actions, says Karamzin, "is to throw dust in the eyes." But isn't that fair? Concerning Speransky's reforms, N. Turgenev spoke of them almost in Karamzin's words: » ( Nikolay Turgenev. Russia and the Russians, vol. I, p. 384). Criticism of the reform of the ministry, the inaction of the commission for the drafting of laws, the government's policy in the field of education in Russia was Alexander's criticism. "Note" - a document designed for one reader. It was to him that Karamzin said that his reign not only did not bring the promised good to Russia, but even more rooted a terrible evil, gave rise to impunity for the actions of state embezzlers. These pages cannot be read without emotion.
Ministries, established according to the Western model, Karamzin says, have become the official patrons of bribe-takers, robbers, thieves and simply fools, which are the officials of the empire, from police captains to governors. The unwillingness of the government to deal with the interests of the people gave rise to "the indifference of local chiefs to all sorts of abuses, robbery in the courts, impudent bribery of police captains, chairmen of the chamber, vice-governors, and most of all, the governors themselves." Karamzin asks the question: "...what are the majority of governors now?" And fearlessly answers: “People without abilities and allow their secretaries to profit by all sorts of falsehood or without conscience and profit themselves. Without leaving Moscow, we know that such and such a governor is a fool - and for a very long time! such and such a robber - and for a very long time! The earth is full of rumors, but the ministers do not know it or do not want to know!”
Despite the monarchism of the author of the Note, it captured a true picture of the plight of Russia, at the mercy of the governors - fools and robbers, "bribery" police captains and judges. In the "Note" the ministers are evilly characterized, the truth is told about the tsar himself, who, according to Karamzin, turns out to be an inexperienced person who knows little about politics, a lover of external forms of institutions and busy not with the good of Russia, but with the desire to "splurge". Karamzin's misfortune was that he could not draw the necessary lesson for himself from real political experience. True to his political concept of enlightened absolutism, he again turned to Alexander, wanting to inspire him with the idea that he should become an autocrat in the image and likeness of the monarch from Montesquieu's Spirit of the Laws. The narrow-mindedness of the nobility kept him in these positions and cruelly took revenge on him, throwing him farther and farther away from revolutionary Russia, which was declaring itself louder and louder.
"Note", having got to Alexander, caused his irritation. For five years, with his coldness, Alexander emphasized that he was dissatisfied with the historian's way of thinking. Only after the publication of The History of the Russian State in 1818 did Alexander pretend to have forgotten his displeasure with the Note. Karamzin, true to his former political convictions, again began to use his position in order to teach Alexander to reign. In 1819, he wrote a new note - "The Opinion of a Russian Citizen", in which, condemning the tsar's plans for a new intervention in Polish affairs, he accuses Alexander of violating his duty to the fatherland and the people, indicating that his actions are beginning to take on the character of "autocratic arbitrariness." "Opinion" was read to Alexander by Karamzin himself. A long and difficult conversation ensued. Alexander, apparently, was extremely indignant at the historian, and he, no longer restraining himself, proudly declared to him: “Sir! You have a lot of self-love. I'm not afraid of anything. We are all equal before God. What I say to you, I would say to your father, sir! I despise the liberals of today, I love only that freedom, which no tyrant can take away from me ... I do not ask for your favor anymore, I am talking to you, maybe for the last time. Arriving home from the palace, Karamzin made a postscript to "Opinion" - "For posterity", where he spoke about this meeting, apparently preparing for any surprises. The voluntary work undertaken by the writer to be an adviser to the monarch turned out to be infinitely difficult. What could be done next when, Karamzin admitted, "my soul has cooled down? .."
On December 18, 1825, four days after the uprising on Senate Square, Karamzin wrote a "New Addendum" to the "Opinion", where he said that after a conversation with Alexander in 1819, he "did not lose his favor", which he again considered it necessary to use. Alexander, as Karamzin understood, “did not demand his advice,” but the writer considered it his duty to teach the tsar, draw his attention to the disasters of Russia, and insist on the fulfillment of the promise to give firm laws. In the face of posterity, Karamzin testified: “I was not silent about taxes in peacetime, about the ridiculous G (Uriyev) system of finance, about formidable military settlements, about the strange choice of some important dignitaries, about the ministry of education or eclipse, about the need to reduce the army, fighting only Russia, about the imaginary correction of roads, so painful for the people, and finally about the need to have firm laws, civil and state.
Such is Karamzin's last bitter confession about his relationship with Alexander. Until the end of his days, he courageously taught the king, gave advice, acted as an intercessor for the affairs of the fatherland, and all to no avail! Alexander, says Karamzin, listened to his advice, "although for the most part he did not follow them." A writer-historian and a citizen, Karamzin sought the trust and mercy of the tsar, animated by "love for humanity", but "this mercy and power of attorney remained fruitless for the dear fatherland."
A historically fair assessment of the place and role of Karamzin in the literary movement of the first quarter of the 19th century is possible only with an understanding of the complexity of his ideological position, the contradictions between the subjective intentions of the writer and the objective sound of his works. In many respects, Herzen's perception of Karamzin is instructive for us in this respect. Karamzin for him is a writer who "made literature humane", in his appearance he felt "something independent and pure." His "History of the Russian State" is "a great creation", it "greatly contributed to the conversion of minds and the study of the fatherland."
But, on the other hand, "it could have been predicted in advance that, because of his sentimentality, Karamzin would fall into the imperial nets, as the poet Zhukovsky later did." Outraged by despotism, seeking to alleviate the hardships of the people, advising the tsar, Karamzin remained true to the idea that only autocratic power would bring good to Russia. And “the idea of great autocracy,” Herzen wrote angrily, “is the idea of great enslavement” ( A. I. Herzen. Sobr. op. in 30 volumes, vol. VII, pp. 190-192.).
Seeing the monstrous vices of Alexander's autocracy, Karamzin at the same time condemned the Decembrists who raised the uprising from the standpoint of reaction. In the last year of his life, he was patronized by Nicholas I.
11
Karamzin worked for twenty-one years on "The History of the Russian State" - from 1804 to January 1826, when the disease began, which turned out to be fatal. On May 21 he died. "History" was not completed. The unfinished twelfth volume ended with the phrase: "Nutlet did not give up ..."
Until 1816, Karamzin lived alone in Moscow or in the Moscow region, busy with his work. For ten years he practically did not participate in literary and social life. By December 1815, the first eight volumes were completed, which the historian considered it possible to publish. The official position of the historiographer obliged him to present the work to Alexander. February 2
1816 Karamzin arrived in St. Petersburg. But the emperor was vindictive: he did not forget the Notes on Ancient and New Russia and did not receive Karamzin. For a month and a half Karamzin lived in the capital, humiliated and insulted by the tsar. “I just didn’t tremble with indignation at the thought that I was being kept here in a useless and almost insulting way…” he wrote to Dmitriev. - They choke me here - under the roses, but they choke me "( N. M. Karamzin according to his writings, letters and reviews of contemporaries. Materials for the biography. With notes and explanations by M. Pogodin, part II. M., 1866, p. 147.). Finally, he was told that it was necessary to bow to Arakcheev. Indignantly refusing at first, Karamzin was forced to pay a visit to the all-powerful temporary worker. Alexander accepted Karamzin for another tribute - and permission to publish the History was received.
Printing dragged on for two years; only in February 1818 eight volumes of the "History" were published. The success exceeded all expectations: a multi-volume essay with a scientific title, published in a circulation of three thousand copies, eight volumes of prose at the time of the triumph of poetic genres sold out in one month. At the end of the same year, the second edition began to appear. Educated Russia eagerly began to read the "History". Karamzin's entry into the literature of the 1910s turned out to be triumphant.
but the "History" was not only read and praised - it aroused lively, passionate disputes, it was condemned. The year of publication of the "History" is the year of gathering the forces of advanced Russia; noble revolutionaries were preparing to fight against the autocracy; at this time, the question was raised about the release of a serf in captivity. In "History" Karamzin, true to his convictions, wrote that only autocracy is beneficial for Russia. A clash between advanced Russia and Karamzin was inevitable. The future Decembrists did not want to reckon with all the richness of the content of the huge work and rightly rebelled against his political idea, which was expressed with particular clarity in the preface and in the letter of dedication of the "History" to Alexander. Nikita Muraviev, in a special note, analyzed the preface, dedication and first chapters of the first volume, severely condemning the political concept of their author. Muraviev showed his note to Karamzin, who, having become acquainted with it, agreed to distribute it.
And Karamzin continued to work and enthusiastically set to work on the ninth and tenth volumes, dedicated to the reigns of Ivan the Terrible and Boris Godunov. Without changing his ideological positions, Karamzin did not remain deaf to the turbulent political events of 1819-1820 and changed the emphasis in the "History" - the focus of the writer now turned out to be autocrats who had retreated from their high duties, embarking on the path of autocracy, tyranny and despotism. Trying to follow the example of the chroniclers in the first volumes - to describe, but not to judge, Karamzin in the ninth and tenth volumes followed the Roman historian Tacitus, who mercilessly condemned tyrants.
The ninth volume appeared in 1821. He made an even bigger impression than the first eight. Now the main admirers of Karamzin were the Decembrists: they immediately understood the enormous political significance of the work, which eloquently showed all the horrors of unlimited autocracy. Never before has a Russian book been read with such enthusiasm as the ninth volume of History. According to the testimony of the Decembrist N. Lorer, “there is such emptiness in the streets in St. Petersburg because everyone is deep in the reign of Ivan the Terrible” ( N. Laurer. Notes of the Decembrist. M., 1931, p. 67.). Noble and aristocratic circles associated with the court sounded the alarm. Karamzin was accused of helping the people to guess that there were tyrants among the Russian tsars. The Decembrists were in a hurry to use this work for their propaganda purposes. Ryleev, after reading the ninth volume, wrote with admiration: “Well, Grozny, well, Karamzin! - I don’t know what to be more surprised at, whether the tyranny of John, or the talent of our Tacitus ”( K. Ryleev. Complete collection of poems. Publishing house of writers in Leningrad, 1934, p. 418.). Using the materials of the ninth volume, Ryleev began to write a number of new works - historical thoughts, dedicating the first to Kurbsky. Karamzin's "History" gave many plots to Ryleev, suggested ways for the artistic depiction of some historical characters (for example, the psychologism of Godunov's image). Close and deep attention to the "History" was now shown by Pushkin.
The controversy surrounding the "History", the conflicting assessments of Karamzin's new work, the noisy success with the public, the close attention of writers to it - all this objectively testified that Karamzin's last work was a necessary work, that in the period from 1818 to 1826, while still alive author, he played an important, very special, still little-studied role in literary life. What was obvious to contemporaries, what Belinsky repeatedly confirmed (“History” “will forever remain a great monument of Russian literature”), turned out to be lost in subsequent times. Somehow it turned out that the "History of the Russian State" fell out of the history of literature. Literary critics study only the work of Karamzin in the 1790s. The multi-volume work, as it were, passed into the jurisdiction of historians. They replaced his study with a repetition of the Decembrist sharply critical assessments of the political concept of History.
Pushkin was the first to reconsider his view of History. In 1826, he expressed a new and profound opinion about this work and tried to explain how the denial of Karamzin's political conception by advanced Russia led to an underestimation of the entire truly enormous content of the honest writer's multi-volume work. Karamzin's work, according to Pushkin, was a new discovery for all readers. “Ancient Russia seemed to have been found by Karamzin, just as America was found by Colomb. They didn't talk about anything else for a while." But, Pushkin bitterly testifies, despite such popularity of the History, “in our country no one is able to investigate the huge creation of Karamzin - but no one said thanks to the man who retired to the study at the time of the most flattering successes and devoted as many as 12 years of his life to the silent and tireless work... The young Jacobins were indignant; several separate reflections in favor of the autocracy, eloquently refuted by a true account of events, seemed to them the height of barbarism and humiliation. They forgot that Karamzin published his History in Russia; that the sovereign, having freed him from censorship, by this sign of power of attorney in some way imposed on Karamzin the duty of all kinds of modesty and moderation. He spoke with all the fidelity of a historian, he always referred to sources - what more could be demanded of him? I repeat that the "History of the Russian State" is not only the creation of a great writer, but also the feat of an honest man "( A. S. Pushkin. Complete collection. op. in 10 volumes, vol. VIII. M.-L., Publishing House of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, 1949, pp. 67-68.). Pushkin's reproach that Karamzin's "huge creation" has not been investigated sounds modern and is addressed primarily to literary historians.
“The Russian autocracy,” modern historians admit, “once played a progressive role in the historical process, contributed to the unification of the main state territory of Russia and the rallying of the scattered Russian feudal lands into a single state entity, and later, in the person of Peter I, initiated important state reforms, which we are studying time (the reign of Alexander I. - G. M.) has long lost its progressive historical strength ”( History of the USSR, vol. II Ed. M. V. Nechkina. M., Gospolitizdat, 1949, p. 42.). The fundamental and irreparable mistake of Karamzin was the absolutization of this relatively progressive role of the autocracy. It seemed to him that the history of Russia confirms the concept of the enlighteners, and if autocracy was once progressive, then it should be preserved in the future. But Karamzin did not just want to repeat once again what he had already written about many times. His "History" was supposed to teach fellow citizens and the king.
"A simple citizen", according to Karamzin, understanding the experience of history "reconciles ... with the imperfection of the visible order of things, as with an ordinary phenomenon in all ages" ( H. M. Karamzin. History of the Russian state, vol. I. St. Petersburg, 1818, p. IX.). Denying the revolutionary path, not trusting the creative energy of the people, Karamzin naturally emphasized that a citizen from history will understand that everything necessary for the development of Russia and for his private good comes from the hands of the monarch. But history must also teach kings. “Rulers and legislators,” he writes, “act according to the instructions of history and look at its sheets, like navigators look at the blueprints of the seas.” On the examples of the reign of Russian monarchs, Karamzin wanted to teach to reign. Recognizing the right of the monarch to "bridle" "rebellious passions", he emphasizes that this curbing should be carried out in the name of an institution of such an order where it would be possible to "reconcile the benefits of people and grant them all happiness on earth" ( There.). The lesson for the tsar took on a sharply political, topical character when, using numerous examples, Karamzin showed how easily, simply, and, most importantly, how often Russian autocrats retreated from their high obligations, how they became autocratic rulers, betraying the interests of the fatherland and fellow citizens, as if for many years a bloody regime of despotism was established in Russia. The ninth and tenth volumes are an example of such an acutely topical political lesson, which was perceived by readers, due to the objective content of the facts collected by the writer, regardless of the general monarchist concept of the entire work.
But the content of the multi-volume "History" was far from being exhausted by this. Pushkin was the first to say that "several separate reflections in favor of the autocracy are eloquently" refuted by "a true account of events." These words of Pushkin should be understood in the sense that Karamzin's judgments about autocracy do not cover the entire vast content of the History, that the multi-volume work was not reduced to proving a meager political thesis that there was something in it that Karamzin could be called " great writer,” for which he should have said “thank you.” Belinsky wrote about the same: “... Karamzin captivated more than one Pushkin - several generations were completely captivated by his “History of the Russian State”, which had a strong influence on them not only with its syllable, as they think, but much more with its spirit, direction, principles. Pushkin so entered her spirit, was so imbued with it that he became a resolute knight of Karamzin's "History" ... "( V. G. Belinsky. Complete collection. cit., vol., VII. M., Publishing House of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, 1955, p. 525.). It is clear that when Belinsky wrote about the "spirit", "direction" and "principles" of "History", he did not mean the political concept of Karamzin, but something else, more important and significant. What exactly? What was Karamzin's "History" dear not only to readers, but also to writers - Pushkin, Belinsky?
"History" is a work of art, because its content is wider, richer than a scientific work, it captures not only the political ideal of Karamzin, but also his artistic conception of the national Russian character, the Russian people, his patriotic feeling for the fatherland, for everything Russian. In terms of genre, Karamzin's "History" is a new phenomenon: it was not a scientific work and did not resemble the usual genres of classicism and sentimentalism. Karamzin was looking for his way. For him now was the main desire to "depict the real world." The appeal to history convinced him that the real life of the nation is full of true poetry. So the first thing to do is to be precise. Hence the desire of Karamzin the artist to refer to the source - chronicle, document, memoirs. Karamzin collected and systematized thousands of facts, and many of them were new, which he personally discovered in chronicle sources; relying on all previous materials, he gave a coherent presentation of the course of Russian history over several centuries; finally, he provided his work with the most valuable notes, in which he used documents that later perished - all this gave Karamzin's work scientific value and scientific interest. Consideration of the "History of the Russian State" by Russian historiography is natural.
But with all the originality and, most importantly, the incompleteness of the search for a new genre, "History" is a major work of Russian literature. Based on historical material, it taught literature to see, understand and deeply appreciate the poetry of real life. The hero of Karamzin's work was the motherland, the nation, its proud fate, full of glory and great trials, the moral world of the Russian people. Karamzin enthusiastically glorified the Russian, "taught the Russians to respect their own." “Let us agree,” he wrote, “that some peoples are generally more enlightened than we are: for circumstances were happier for them; but let us feel all the blessings of fate in the reasoning of the Russian people; let us boldly stand along with others, say our name clearly and repeat it with noble pride.
The "History" tells about numerous events that were sometimes decisive for the existence of the state and nation. And everywhere, first of all, the character of a Russian person was revealed, living a high and beautiful life, the interests of the fatherland, ready to perish, but not reconcile before the enemy. Karamzin set himself the task of "reviving the great Russian characters", "raising the dead, putting life into their hearts and words into their mouths". Political convictions prevented the artist from seeing the true features of the national character in ordinary representatives of the people, in particular in the farmer, who not only plowed, but also created culture and fought for the glory of the fatherland. That is why the focus of Karamzin's attention is princes, monarchs, nobles. But when describing some eras under the pen of Karamzin, the people became the main character of the History; No wonder he pays special attention to such events as "the uprising of the Russians at the Donskoy, the fall of Novgorod, the capture of Kazan, the triumph of popular virtues during the interregnum" ( H. M. Karamzin. History of the Russian state, vol. I, p. XIV.), etc. Precisely because Karamzin felt like an artist when he wrote History, he managed to fulfill his intention and created a collective, generalized image of the people.
Karamzin's work enriched literature with new experience. Karamzin's writers found not only a lot of plots. He joined the general struggle for the nationality of literature, solving this problem in his own way, now as an artist, acting by example. In his "History" "there are sounds of the Russian heart, there is a game of the Russian mind." We know that Karamzin was alien to the democratic understanding of nationality. The social activity of the farmer was condemned by him. His capacity for a historically active life was understood in a limited way. And yet, as an artist, Karamzin managed to capture the features of the Russian character, to reveal the “secret of nationality”, which is expressed not in a suit, not in a kitchen, but in a mentality, in a moral code, in a language, in a manner of understanding things.
Karamzin was a stranger to historicism. He was not yet able to show the historical conditioning of human convictions. His heroes, whenever they live - in the 9th or 16th century - speak and feel like true patriots - Karamzin's contemporaries. But it is pointless to reproach Karamzin with anti-historicism: when he wrote his essay, the time of historicism had not yet arrived in Russia. At the same time, "History" in many ways cleared the way to historicism. And not only a collection of historical facts, not only a scrupulous restoration of entire epochs of people's life, but also a display of the historically changing mores, customs, tastes of the people, the developing culture of Rus'. The affirmation of the immutability of the moral code of a Russian person as a heroic character, always capable of a feat in the name of the common good, had its positive meaning precisely in the years of the rapid development of romanticism with its disappointed, morally ill hero, fleeing from public life into the world of his own soul.
An important artistic feature of the "History" was the entertaining narration. Karamzin proved to be a wonderful storyteller. As a subtle artist, he was able to select the necessary facts, dramatize the story, captivate the reader with the image of not fictional, but really past events. The “main advantage” of “History,” Belinsky noted, “consists in the amusingness of the story and the skillful presentation of events, often in the artistic depiction of characters ...” ( V. G. Belinsky. Complete collection. cit., vol. I, p. 60.) The main characters of the ninth and tenth volumes - Ivan the Terrible and Boris Godunov - are drawn as complex, contradictory characters. Using the experience of his literary work in the 1790s, Karamzin boldly and successfully introduced psychologism into literature as an important principle for revealing the inner world of a person.
"History" was of extraordinary interest from the side of language. In an effort to accustom the reader to respect for the national, Russian, Karamzin first of all taught him to love the Russian language. He is now alien to the fear of the "rudeness" of the Russian language, forcing him to listen more to the language of noble salons. Now he listens both to how they say on the street and to how ordinary people sing. He highly appreciated the folk song and just during the years of work on the History he was going to publish a collection of Russian songs. He gladly scooped up a new vocabulary from the annals, confident that many old Russians would adequately enrich the modern Russian language. In addition, while working on the "History", he successfully selected the best words for expressing the content, gave the old ones a new meaning, enriched the words with new shades and meanings. A lot of effort was devoted to stylistic decoration. The style of "History" is diverse. Karamzin is able to convey the liveliness of the action and the drama of the event, the psychological depth of the experience and the patriotic impulse of the soul, high feelings and laconism, the aphorism of the speech of a Russian person. Belinsky repeatedly emphasized that it was only in the History that Karamzin's language showed the desire to be the Russian language. Assessing the style of "History", he wrote: it is "a marvelous carving on copper and marble, which neither time nor envy can devour, and the like of which can only be seen in Pushkin's historical experience:" The History of the Pugachev Rebellion "( Ibid., vol. III, p. 513.)
Karamzin's works of the 1790s played a large role in Russian literature, but they were of transitory importance. Karamzin failed to create a new genre for historical narrative - he wrote "The History of the Russian State." But even in the form in which this work took shape, it played no less than the work of Karamzin of the 90s, but an infinitely greater role in the literary life of the first quarter of the 19th century. “In the history of the Russian state,” wrote Belinsky, “the whole of Karamzin, with all the vastness of the services he rendered to Russia and with all the failure to unconditional dignity in the future of his creations. The reason for this - we repeat - lies in the nature and nature of his literary activity. If he was great, then not as an artist-poet, not as a thinker-writer, but as a practical figure, called upon to pave the way among the impenetrable wilds, clear the arena for future figures, prepare materials so that brilliant writers of various kinds would not be stopped on the move. its necessity of preliminary work "( V. G. Belinsky, Complete collection. cit., vol. IX, pp. 678-679.). We must know and be able to appreciate those creations with which Karamzin selflessly paved the way for many writers, and primarily for Pushkin.
P. Berkov
Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin
Year of birth: 1766
Year of death: 1826
The publicist was born in one thousand seven hundred and sixty-six. Nikolai lost his mother in early childhood and was raised by his nanny. He spent his childhood on the estate of his father, a poor landowner and retired captain.
At the age of eight, Nikolai, in one summer, read the entire library of his mother, which consisted of a dozen moralizing novels. When the boy was thirteen, his father assigned him to a boarding house at Moscow University.
For four years, Nikolai studied Russian history, French and German, as well as literature.
In 1783, his father insisted that the young man move to St. Petersburg and enlist in the Preobrazhensky Guards Regiment. Very soon, Nikolai Mikhailovich met his distant relative, Dmitriev, who told the future poet and prose writer that he was translating prose articles and writing poetry, thereby earning his living.
Karamzin resigned and took up literature and translations. And returning to Simbirsk, Nikolai Mikhailovich met a member of the "Golden Crown" of the secret religious and educational society of Masons - Ivan Petrovich Turgenev. It was he who persuaded Karamzin to leave for Moscow.
Ivan Petrovich introduced Nikolai Mikhailovich into a learned society, which was headed by a public figure, a Russian educator - Nikolai Ivanovich Novikov. At that time, he was already famous, thanks to his sharp satirical works, which were directed against the autocracy and serfdom.
Here, in this society, the publicist became an editor in the first Russian children's publication, which was headed by Novikov - "Children's Reading for the Heart and Mind." And for three years, Nikolai Mikhailovich, more and more delved into literature and into his work as an editor, moving away from Freemasonry. And then there was a break at all, between the Masons and Karamzin, this happened in the year one thousand seven hundred and eighty-eight.
In 1789, in the spring, the poet inherited an estate from his father. He sold it and went to travel around Koenigsberg, France and other European cities. And having returned back to Moscow, and having a rich stock of vivid impressions, he finally realized that literature was his vocation!
In one thousand seven hundred and ninety-one, in January, the Moscow Journal was published, and this publication immediately captivates readers. Because, in its pages, the best Russian poets and writers were printed, and Karamzin himself told readers about the beauties of other countries in his essay “Letters from a Russian Traveler”. Here, in this edition, the story "Poor Lisa" was first printed.
In the eighteenth century, most writers wrote their works in hard to understand, literary, heavy language. He was bookish, artificial... Karamzin, on the other hand, tried to create his works in an understandable and simple language, in the one that people were used to and that the Russian educated nobility spoke. Why, the younger generation, with great enthusiasm accepted the work of Nikolai Mikhailovich.
In the spring of 1792, Freemasons began to be suspected of criminal plots against the government. The threat of arrest hung over Nikolai Ivanovich Novikov and his "worst" comrades. They also became interested in Karamzin ... On behalf of the Russian writer and on his own behalf, Karamzin put in a word and defended Novikov.
In May, the next issue of the Moscow Journal was published, in which Karamzin's ode "To Grace" was printed, it was written in an anxious week, the very one when Novikov was awaiting the court's decision.
The ode openly stated that the empress, and not Novikov, was guilty of breaking the law. That she is obsessed with anger and is afraid of the truth, because that is how people will understand the truth and there will be reprisals. True, the ode remained unanswered, and Novikov was prepared for imprisonment in the fortress for fifteen years.
In one thousand seven hundred and ninety-two, the Moscow Journal ceases its publication.
Pavel the First ascended the throne and he returned freedom to Nikolai Ivanovich, which instilled great hope in Karamzin's soul. Soon, Nikolai Mikhailovich wrote an ode in which he compared Peter the Great with Paul the First, but he himself soon became convinced that Paul the First had nothing to do with the “drawn image” of a wise man and ruler, with which the author described him in the work.
There was a palace coup. And with two new odes, Karamzin turns to the new emperor - Alexander the First. In both works, the author calls on the nobility to stop ruining and destroying Russia, stop wars and mark slavery, create “smart” and understandable laws for everyone, and everyone, sacredly observe them. For teachings, the new king awarded the author with a ring with a diamond.
In the next decade, after the closing of the Moscow Journal, Nikolai Mikhailovich published a collection of poems, and then several almanacs and three parts of the Pantheon of Foreign Literature. A little later, he opens the publication of a new magazine, which he called - "Bulletin of Europe". In this magazine, he published articles on politics, history and society.
In 1802, the magazine published "Martha the Posadnitsa, or the Conquest of Novgorod." Belinsky said about this work simply - "it drove the whole audience crazy."
Karamzin wrote historical, brilliant works, thereby laying the foundation for historical fiction. And then, it was successfully developed in their works by Leo Tolstoy, Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin and others.
From 1800 to 1816, Nikolai Mikhailovich worked on a multi-volume history of Russia. And he completely left his work in the magazine, although it brought the writer not a small income. But, the publicist gave all his strength and many years of multi-volume history.
In one thousand eight hundred and eighteenth year, Tsar Alexander the First, allowed the publication of eight volumes of the work - "The History of the Russian State." The success was stunning, it exceeded all the expectations of the author! The people rushed to read the history of their fatherland. It seemed that “Ancient Russia” was found by Nikolai Mikhailovich, just as Colomb found America!
In 1821, the eleventh volume of the History of the Russian State was published, it told about Ivan the Terrible.
Karamzin devoted twenty-two years to History. And while working on the twelfth volume, talking about the year 1611, when the Russian people fought against the Polish intervention and the further development of history, it turned out that the author made a lot of historical mistakes, namely ... Karamzin did not take into account the economy, the historical process in his stories, belittled the role people and exalted, only one person - the ruler. Biggest mistakes!
But despite them, nevertheless, the “History of the Russian State”, at that time, was a major scientific phenomenon, and today it is a wonderful work!
After the release of all volumes, Alexander the First kept the author at court. Karamzin could express directly to the tsar his opinion and view on certain political issues, on internal and external government.
Nikolai Mikhailovich believed that the country needed monarchical rule. And he was mistaken, thinking that it was the “monarch” who would provide the people with “prosperity”, and this is precisely what prevented Karamzin from understanding the need for a “revolutionary action of the Decembrists” in the history of the country.
WAYS OF EVOLUTION
A special place in the work of Karamzin the writer is occupied by stories. In total, for the period from 1791 to 1803, he wrote more than a dozen stories: “Frol Silin, a beneficent person” (1791), “Liodor” (1791), “Poor Lisa” (1792), “Natalya, the boyar daughter” (1792) , "Bornholm Island" (1793), "Sierra Morena" (1793), "Julia" (1794), "My Confession" (1802), "Martha the Posadnitsa, or the Conquest of Novgorod" (1802), "The Knight of Our Time "(1803)," Sensitive and cold "(1803), etc. These works have some common features. They are small in volume, which was especially striking to readers accustomed to multi-volume novels of the 18th century. There are very few characters in the stories, and all of them are close and understandable to the reader, unlike the "high" heroes of classicism. Not outwardly entertaining adventures of the heroes, but their inner world becomes the subject of artistic research. The psychological observations of Karamzin as a narrator in fiction, and above all in the genre of the story, make it possible to establish the dependence of the processes taking place in a person’s inner life on external circumstances and impressions (which corresponded to the spirit of a sensationalist attitude to the problem of the soul). Man, according to the writer, is not initially virtuous or evil; he is endowed with only a certain temperament, which by its nature does not yet have an ethical coloring and can lead to both virtue and vice, both happiness and suffering, depending on the events that happen to a person on his life path .
To understand the moods and experiences of the characters in Karamzin's stories, first of all, speech helps (rich in emotional vocabulary, exclamations, confused phrases that directly show how excited the hero is). The inner world of a person is also revealed in the “drawing” of his behavior - how important are imperceptible at first glance gestures, the manner of moving or speaking, tears flashing in the eyes or a flashing smile! The author himself speaks about the moods and states of his characters, and finally, one can understand the inner world of a person, as if by “seeing” the world around him through his eyes; the landscape itself in Karamzin's stories becomes consonant with the state and mood of the characters and the narrator. There are few events in the stories, and they are built clearly and consistently, the author avoids everything that could confuse, weight the thought. In addition, Karamzin creates in each of his stories the figure of the narrator (“the story” was understood in Russian literature of the 18th – early 19th centuries, right up to Pushkin and Gogol, as a genre in which the very manner of presenting events, the narration, acquires special significance). A story is what is told, and how important it is to feel who the narrator is, what are his views on life, attitude towards people, understanding of the world around and the place of a person in it.
Karamzin's narrator in most works appears as an independent person: a sensitive person who personally knows the characters or who learned the story from friends, random fellow travelers, acquaintances. He vividly responds to people's joys and sorrows; nothing leaves him indifferent. The liveliness of the narrative, the illusion of the reality of the events described, contributed to the awakening of sympathy in the souls of readers. Karamzin’s narrator seems to be in constant dialogue with his readers, and this free communication is not only devoted to the sad or touching, it can also include light irony, a joke, and a literary game, the purpose of which is to remind readers of familiar literary cliches and laugh at them together.
Of particular importance in the construction of the plots of the stories is the motive of love in Karamzin. In the writer's artistic world, love appears as a turning point in a person's life. Discovering in themselves the ability to love, Karamzin's heroes finally find themselves; thus, their moral formation is completed and at the same time, their peculiar perception of the surrounding world is completed in a peculiar way. After all, the soul mate of the beloved, illuminated by the light of love, also embodies a peculiar ideal of a view of the world, a look that seeks and is ready to perceive all that is good and beautiful, emotionally open to everything “other” and thereby turning this “other” into an integral part of one’s own “I” . A synthetic understanding of love not only as a very special psychological state, but also as a philosophical value that reveals to a person his highest destiny and deep patterns of being, Karamzin outlined in a short essay included in the Letters of a Russian Traveler under the title: “Thoughts about Love”. The way of interpreting the feeling of love proposed here can be considered as a kind of key to understanding almost all the plots of Karamzin's stories: “Love is a crisis, a decisive moment in life, awaited with trepidation by the heart. The curtain rises... He! she! exclaims the heart, and loses the personality of its being.<…>Charms are never the basis of passion; it is born suddenly from the co-feeling of two tender souls in one look, in one word; it is nothing but sympathy, the union of two halves that languished in separation. Things burn only once; the heart loves only once.<…>I don't know if there are atheists; but I know that lovers cannot be atheists. The gaze from a cute object involuntarily turns to the sky. Who loved, he understands me.
The psychologism of Karamzin the narrator acquires the most characteristic forms in the story "Poor Lisa" (1792). The very first phrases of the work became here a kind of tuning fork, setting the reader in a certain emotional and psychological way. “Perhaps no one living in Moscow knows the surroundings of this city as well as I do, because no one more often than me is in the field, no one more than me wanders on foot, without a plan, without a goal - where the eyes look - through the meadows and groves, over hills and plains ... ". So begins "Poor Lisa" N.M. Karamzin - at first glance, surprisingly clear (and thanks to the brevity, as if predictability of the plot itself, and thanks to the special emotional coloring and "transparency" of the moral content) - but still paradoxically - one of the most "strange" stories of Russian literature. The structure of the sentence is too rhythmic, like a finely written ornament; its basis is commensurate syntactic segments that correlate with each other due to verbal repetitions, structural parallels in the construction of a complex sentence, alternation of rows of homogeneous members. There is almost symmetry in the phrase - but the symmetry is not deathly, but leaving room for the unexpected, the source of which will be the psychological depths of the human personality. “Assigned” in the first sentence and a special spiritual mood of inner concentration and at the same time - openness to the impressions of being that do not need to be sought - they themselves find a person traveling “without a plan, without a goal”, “wherever the eyes look” “through the meadows and groves, hills and plains. This motif of movement as a discovery - both the world and the depths of one's own soul is understood in the story not only as a spatial movement, in which life impressions pour into the soul, awakening sympathy in it. In a literary text, movement is also a "spiritual journey" in search of truth. The expression of this dynamics of the human spirit is the entire artistic structure of the work, those complex and often ambiguous relationships that arise between the author himself - and the narrator, or the "author" standing outside the text - and the characters, and finally, the relationship of the reader - both with the characters and with narrator, and with "author". There can be a lot of these lines, and each of them gives that space to the movement of the narrative, which makes it truly alive and organic - like a living whole.
The very composition of "Poor Liza" creates special conditions for the most lively and dynamic interaction of the narrator with his characters and readers. The use of the form of a compositional "frame" (in which the author's introduction and conclusion are not directly related to the event plot, they act primarily as an emotional "setting") allowed Karamzin, as it were, to "throw a bridge" from the characters to the reader. The interaction of these figures is set by the very structure of the story, and most of all - by that kind of "coordinate system" of time and space in which the narrator exists. He is separated from his characters by a time frame (the action of the story took place “thirty years before this ...”), but, remembering and talking about those events, from his “present” he looks into the past and feels a living, inseparable connection with it ( "... I love those objects that touch my heart and make me shed tears of tender sorrow!"). This means that such communication is possible - the reader involuntarily joins in it and already from his own "real" (as if "reading time", by analogy with the "telling time" of the narrator) rushes, as it were, into another sphere - the world of the narrator, and through it - and the world of the heroes of the story. The compositional frame makes it possible to realize the direction and dynamics of this movement, in which, according to Karamzin the sentimentalist, lies the ideal program for the perception of a literary text, reading-empathy, which, in its limit, transfers the literary plot into reality itself.
Openness to the impressions of the outside world allows the Karamzin narrator to penetrate into another sphere - into the inner world of the characters. At the same time, the narrator skillfully balances between objective analysis and subjective empathy, more precisely, turns empathy, “getting used to” the spiritual depths of the character, sympathy in the original sense of the word (simultaneous feeling) into a means of revealing the personality of the objectively represented “other selves” - the heroes of the story .
Psychologism becomes Karamzin's main artistic discovery in Poor Liza. The writer here, perhaps for the first time in Russian literature, refuses to present his heroes as unambiguously positive or negative (and such a division was characteristic of classicism). Erast is not a villain at all, he sincerely loves Lisa, believes in the power of his love, but he is weak in soul and therefore destroys the one that is so dear to him. Even at the most tragic moment of the story, the author is ready, but cannot judge him: “My heart bleeds at this moment. I forget a man in Erast - I'm ready to curse him, but my tongue does not move, I look at the sky - and a tear rolls down my face ... ". It is impossible to “forget a person” in a person; one must always maintain compassion for the unfortunate, and especially when they need it most of all - at the moment of mistakes, even tragically irreparable ones. That is why in the story there is no condemnation of a terrible sin - Lisa's suicide, in despair she even forgot her duty to her own mother. And in this tragic weakness, she remains for the author "a beautiful soul and body." So is Erast, who “was unhappy until the end of his life.<...>, could not be consoled and considered himself a murderer. At the end of the story, we learn about the death of Erast, and the last phrase: “Now, maybe they have already reconciled!” - that moral and emotional result, which is most important for Karamzin the psychologist. Man is inexhaustible. His character is formed due to upbringing and external circumstances (recall the life stories of Liza and Erast, which the narrator told before introducing the reader directly to the history of the souls of the characters). The essence of personality is also determined by the properties of innate temperament, which affect both the pattern of behavior and the appearance of a person, primarily the face. “He has such a kind face, such a voice...”, Lisa admires after the first meeting with a stranger. And in the world of Karamzin, her exclamation is not evidence of helpless naivety; with her spiritual eyes, with the gaze of love, she sees here the true essence of Erast, not even the present, but the future, as he will become after the catastrophe, having repented of the unwittingly committed crime.
The spiritual world of the characters is contradictory - and that is why the system of artistic means that help to reveal it is so complex. Karamzin avoids directly naming the feelings of the characters or putting overly "sensitive" flowery phrases into their mouths. Their speech is emotional due to the feeling of the inner, hidden power of feeling, which seems to gradually break through in words. Here is the scene of Erast's acquaintance with Lisa's mother: "But what should we call you, kind, affectionate gentleman?"<...>"My name is Erast"<...>. "Erast," Liza said softly. "Erast!" - She repeated this name five times, as if trying to harden it. In this repetition - and the admiration of the heroine, and the emerging feeling of love, and tenderness for the young man, and Lisa's kindness towards all living things.
Inner excitement is inherent in the narrator himself, whose emotional word is also a window into the spiritual world of both the characters and the narrator; moreover, speech often breaks off, and this break is already a window into the world of the reader's experiences, a definite opportunity for him to remain alone with himself and listen to his heart. In the most emotional scene of the characters’ explanation, the reader sees how the familiar metaphor “love burns the heart” turns into an almost real picture of seemingly visible light, fire: “Lisa stood with downcast eyes, with fiery cheeks, with a trembling heart - she could not take his hands away from him , could not turn away when he approached her with his pink lips ... ah! He kissed her, kissed her with such fervor that the whole universe seemed to her on fire!<...>But I throw the brush ... ".
Karamzin often reveals the inner world of the characters through the outer: portrait, details of description, pattern of their behavior. So, Lisa's lilies of the valley become a symbol of purity, timidity, shy beauty of a girl. It is no coincidence that when love had already arisen in her heart for an unfamiliar gentleman who promised to always buy flowers from her, without meeting him the next day, Lisa throws flowers into the river with the words: “No one owns you!”. This is how the unconditional symbolic analogy of the flower - and the spiritual world of the heroine is fixed. Gestures are also expressive: rejoicing that Erast would come to their house every day, Liza “... looked at her left sleeve and pinched it with her right hand” - both joy, and fear, and the expectation of a new unknown happiness are hidden in this gesture of the heroine.
The inner world of the characters comes off in the author's narrative so completely that it is often impossible to distinguish whose "voice" we hear. Here Liza recalls her dead father: “Often tender Liza could not hold back her own tears - ah! ..” - both this and other emotional exclamations in the story are equally applicable to the character and the narrator. The points of view of the author and the seemingly objectively described characters intersect, overlap one another; it is no coincidence that sometimes a chain of life impressions, pictures unfolding in one or another episode, appears clearly through the prism of the hero's gaze (and more often - the heroine, Liza herself). “Suddenly Liza heard the noise of oars - she looked at the river and saw a boat, and Erast was in the boat ...” - the sequence of impressions here is such that it clearly reveals a look from the shore, from the very edge of the water, a downcast look - the only possible one for the confused heroine.
Characterization of the complex system of interaction of the narrator with his characters and especially with the reader is impossible without analysis and the semantic, philosophical and aesthetic content that is present in the story and allows its world to open outward - to the fate of ideas and "big" genres of literature and art.
The problematics of the story is also enriched by a kind of “dialogue” that Karamzin, the narrator with the literary tradition, leads in it. Sentimentalist writers often resorted to such "references" to other works - this enlivened the reader's imagination, made perception more dynamic and emotional, included the audience in a kind of game - recognizing hints scattered in the text (the English novelist Lawrence Stern often resorted to such a technique; in Karamzin similar "reminiscences" are permeated with "Letters of a Russian Traveler" and almost all stories). In "Poor Liza" the author creatively plays with the pastoral tradition, one of the oldest in world literature and extremely popular in the 18th century.
Pastoral in antiquity is, first of all, “a picture of the simplicity and peaceful flow of rural life, as it is seen by a city dweller.<...>, a landscape inhabited by man, on which herds graze in the neighborhood of cultivated fields, where the shepherd, having finished his easy work, freely indulges in creativity<...>, the world of a simple and harmonious rural culture, opposed to an overly complicated and mired in the vices of civilization. At first glance, in the art of modern times, the theme of “shepherds and shepherds”, which penetrates not only literature, but also painting, sculpture, porcelain plastic, theater, music, even ladies’ fashions of the Rococo era, may seem too conventional and frivolous, but it associated with a number of philosophical motives, which largely determine a person's idea of the world, his sense of self.
The basis of various genre varieties of the pastoral tradition is the myth of the "golden age" (the original age of mankind, the era of natural simplicity and goodness, which has passed forever for people who have known greed and enmity). Involuntarily, the idea arises in the pastoral about the connection of everyday life with the laws of all being, the kinship of the most unpretentious with the most important spiritual values - it is thanks to the highest spirituality (and not an empty desire for "decoration" or inattention to the real problems of a real village) that it becomes so elegant, harmonious and the life of shepherds is beautiful, conditionally aestheticized in pastoral images. Pastoral bears in itself a certain anthropology and ethics - ideas about the natural essence of man and the conventions of social relations, about the interconnections and opposition of natural and artificial, natural and social, emotional and rational, etc. Such a worldview echoed the philosophical ideas of J.-J. Rousseau, who had a great influence on Russian, and more broadly, European thought in the second half of the 18th century. The natural, natural beginning in man is beautiful, and the utopian hope for happiness can only be associated with the dream of returning to the eternal harmony between people - the sons of nature, equal in their natural state.
In the pastoral, sentimentalism is close, first of all, to the fragile elegance of the figurative system, which helps so much in depicting the ideal of spiritual love. The sentimentalist desire to change, to transform the world according to the laws of sensitivity corresponds to the very structure of pastoral plots, which are often based on the motive of changing conditional human “roles” (the king or queen appears as a shepherd or shepherdess; a noble person falls in love with a virtuous villager, her noble origin is suddenly revealed, etc. .d.) - in a word, everything is possible; the pastoral world reveals the true essence of a person, usually hidden under the shell of the external, superficial. The pastoral motives of educational literature also carried the idea of deep moral dignity, virtue, nobility of the common man, endowed nevertheless with all the riches of spiritual life. Such is the heroine of S. Richardson's novel Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (1740), extremely popular both in Europe and in Russia: a poor, humble girl, a servant, awakens love in the heart of her master, Lord B., fearlessly resists his insulting attacks, demanding self-respect, and with this firmness, true nobility, makes his tormentor change. “Let me be just a maid, my soul is immortal just like the soul of a princess,” exclaims Pamela, as if anticipating the enlightening thought of Karamzin, the author of “Poor Lisa,” about the unconditional value of the feelings of a simple person.
The pastoral subsoil of the plot of “Poor Lisa” is already set in the author’s introduction: the panorama of Moscow includes a corner of undisturbed shepherd happiness (“On the other side of the river, an oak grove is visible, near which numerous herds graze; there young shepherds, sitting under the shade of trees, sing simple, dull songs...”). Pastorality determines the literary ideas of Erast (“He read novels, idylls; he had a rather vivid imagination and often mentally moved to those times<...>in which<...>all the people walked carelessly through the meadows, bathed in clear springs, kissed like turtle doves, rested under roses and myrtle trees, and spent all their days in happy idleness. It seemed to him that he had found in Lisa what his heart had been looking for for a long time. "Nature calls me into its arms, to its pure joys," he thought, and decided - at least for a while - to leave the great light"); thus, even before the events unfold, thanks to an extensive network of literary and cultural associations, the possible direction of the reader's expectations is set: the story can develop either as an idyllic, conflict-free reunion of heroes in the bosom of a simple rural world, or as a story about a vile seducer whose soul must eventually be transformed through an encounter with true virtue.
But neither one nor the other expectations are true (as almost always in Karamzin, exactly what seems inevitable to the reader is not justified). For an idyllic world, Erast is too often associated with the motif of money. The researchers noted that they begin and end with them his communication with Liza, and even in the intervals, even from the bottom of his heart, the materially expressed philanthropy of the hero turns out to be in conflict with his own dream of returning to Arcadia; there, in ideal times of primordial unity, in this world of absolute fullness and abundance, there should be no money.
However, there is also no Richardsonian motive for the clash of fate and virtue. Erast is only weak, windy and fickle; but it is precisely these qualities that make him a stranger in that “golden age” that the hero dreams of: after all, as soon as inconstancy arises, Love and Harmony, which seemed eternal, perish, and Time and Death come to happy Arcadia. Erast Karamzin unwittingly becomes the personification of these principles; that is why it is associated with the motive of suddenness, a sharp turn in events, so important in the story, expressed, as a rule, almost symbolically “suddenly”. According to the researcher of the story V.N. Toporov, this word, “dynamizing the situation, so homogeneous and balanced before,” it is with Karamzin that it becomes an expression of surprise, “switching one situation to another.” But the “joyful” “suddenly” at the meetings of Lisa and Erast, in essence, prepare that tragic “suddenly”, which will open up for the heroine the possibility of a terrible denouement (“... Suddenly I saw myself on the shore of a deep pond ...”); not so much opposition as a foretaste of the inevitable is hidden in this verbal coincidence.
The pastoral background is also important immediately before the love explanation of the heroes, when Lisa seeks to realize the revolution taking place in her soul. The inner emotionality of this scene is especially enhanced by the fact that the reader familiar with pastoral motifs involuntarily feels how displaced they are here. Pastoral is, if only for a short moment, but still a return to the original harmony with nature. Liza, in this episode, for the first time feels that she is unable to rejoice along with the awakening world: “But soon the rising luminary of the day awakened all creation: groves, bushes came to life; the birds fluttered and sang; the flowers raised their heads to drink in the life-giving rays of light. But Liza was still sitting in a huff. Of course, the landscape is an important means of psychological characterization in Karamzin's story; the author creates a variety of pictures of nature near Moscow, each of which is both a vivid, memorable description and at the same time a means of in-depth analysis of the spiritual experiences of the characters. Usually in sentimentalism, nature is in tune with the mood of a person, it seems to respond to him (“the gloomy Gothic towers of the Simonov Monastery” at the beginning of the story predict a tragic development of events; in the moments of happiness of the heroes, nature is permeated with happiness and light; the fall of Lisa and Erast occurs when all nature seems to be immersed in chaos of the elements: "The storm roared menacingly; rain poured from black clouds ..."; the picture of the death of the heroine is surrounded by an atmosphere of despondency and gloom). Nature responds to the human world, but harmonious merging with it is only a utopia.
The soul, seized by a rush of feelings, foreshadows misfortune; a person immersed in thoughts at the most unexpected moment feels his loneliness in a beautiful, joyful, natural world: “Ah, Liza! What happened to you? Until now, waking up with the birds, you had fun with them in the morning, and a pure, joyful soul shone in your eyes, like the sun shines in drops of heavenly dew; but now you are pensive and the general joy of nature is foreign to your heart.” The discord between human existence and nature, suddenly realized here, seems to be a foreshadowing of the romantic feeling of man's loneliness in the world. In Karamzin's story, this motif almost immediately loses its sharpness - upon learning that she is loved by Erast, Liza will again feel even more vividly the merger with the harmony of the surrounding being ("The larks have never sung so well, the sun has never shined so brightly, never have flowers didn’t smell nice!”). But nevertheless, the return of a bright mood occurs only until the moment when, left by Erast, the heroine again falls into a feeling of loneliness - this time absolute (“The sky does not fall, the earth does not oscillate! ..”); the finale of this discord is the suicide of the heroine.
The path to Arcadia is closed, and the shepherd passing in the distance, whom Liza looks at before explaining with Erast, and the heroine’s thoughts about the desired happiness are another symbol of his unattainability and unsteadiness: “Meanwhile, a young shepherd on the river bank drove the flock, playing the flute. Lisa fixed her eyes on him and thought: “If the one who now occupies my thoughts was born a simple peasant, a shepherd, and if he now drove his flock past me<...>. He would look at me with an affectionate air - he would, perhaps, take my hand ... A dream! looked at her with an affectionate air, took her by the hand. only confirms that harmony is illusory in a world dominated by cruel inevitability. The "Golden Age" has disappeared from earthly life, the general reconciliation of contradictions is possible only in heaven - this thought sounds in the last lines of the story.
In general, the poetics of the ingenuously sensitive story in Poor Lisa becomes the best expression of the peculiar artistic philosophy of sentimentalism, which stood at the turn between the age of rationality and the elements of feeling, the age of normativity and the domination of absolute individuality. Sentimentalism turns out to be a brief moment of balance of these principles, when the mind has not yet been replaced by irrational spontaneity, when the manifestations of feeling are harmonious and outwardly restrained, when the tragic contradictions of life are already realized - but the sympathetic openness and sociability of a person still does not allow the bonds of being to collapse. The artistic expression of this is the inextricable sympathetic connection of the narrator, characters and reader, which determines the structure of the narrative in the prose of sentimentalism and becomes the basis of the poetics of the most striking sentimentalist work in Russian literature - Karamzin's story.
A special place among Karamzin's sentimental stories is occupied by "Natalya, the Boyar's Daughter" (1792) . This is not just the first attempt to turn to a historical theme (the action of the story takes place during the time of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, in pre-Petrine Rus', although here Karamzin does not strive to create a historical flavor as such). The past for him is the world of ideally pure, artless relations, the time “when Russians were Russians, when they dressed up in their own clothes, walked with their own gait, lived according to their custom, spoke their own language, that is, they spoke as they thought.”
The naivety of the touching and not always believable plot does not frighten Karamzin: he admires the young beautiful heroes, rejoices in the purity and nobility of their relationship, admires the fidelity of their love - one who does not believe in such feelings is not worthy of the title of a sensitive person. However, there is a joke in the story. Karamzin sneers at the methods of adventure novels, well known to readers of that time. In such works, secrets and riddles are needed - and now the boyar Matvey, not understanding why his daughter suddenly felt sad in her parents' house, goes to the dense forests to "his centenary aunt", who was known as a sorceress and could explain the reason for Natalya's longing. Imagine how much mysterious and fabulous could be in such an episode of the story! But Karamzin writes only one phrase: “The success of this embassy remained unknown: however, there is no great need to know it” - joking either at the gullible reader, or at the authors who use such techniques in order to interest at any cost. Further, when the story is told about how Natalya with the nanny and her mysterious fiancé arrive at the place where he is hiding, the atmosphere of mystery is also pumped up: a dense forest, a hut, bonfires, gloomy bearded men around... The frightened nanny starts screaming that these are robbers - and the Karamzin narrator reacts with lightning speed: “Now I could present a terrible picture to the eyes of readers - seduced innocence, deceived love, an unfortunate beauty in the power of barbarians, murderers, the wife of an ataman of robbers, a witness to atrocities and, finally, after a painful life, dying on the scaffold under an ax of justice, in the eyes of an unfortunate parent” - he listed all the possible horrors that could arise in the plot from this situation and ... immediately “reassured” us: “No, dear reader, no! This time, save your tears - calm down - the old nanny made a mistake - Natalya is not with the robbers!
The joke here does not destroy the sentimental intonation, it only makes it richer - after all, one can sympathize not only in trouble, but also in joy. Such an artistic manner also corresponded to the content of the story - cheerful, imbued with the spirit of youth and hope - after all, what seemed like a fatal step becomes here the only opportunity to achieve happiness. It is no coincidence that this story by Karamzin influenced Pushkin's works (The Snowstorm and The Young Lady-Peasant Woman), in which the characters also find their happiness, even when it seems to be lost forever.
All the writer's biographers unanimously recognize 1793 as a milestone in the creative and philosophical development of Karamzin - a period of sharp aggravation of the political situation in France (in the summer of 1793, the Jacobin dictatorship was established in Paris, which became a signal for the deployment of bloody revolutionary terror that terrified Europe). Seeing the beginning of the revolution during his foreign trip. Karamzin, with extreme excitement and bitterness, learned about the terrible consequences of what had once been born right before his eyes. At the end of the short story The Life of Athens (1793), the writer made an autobiographical digression, which best described his state then: papers and Hamburg newspapers, which ... will inform me of the terrible madness of our enlightened contemporaries.
The shock, as it were, splits the writer’s soul, and two of his heroes, Philaletus and Melodorus, become the embodiment of the internal fracture that has taken place, whose “voices” are “the voices of the soul of Karamzin himself”, who with tragic clarity felt the collapse of past hopes, utopian faith in the good nature of man and the possibility of reasonable reorganization of society on the basis of goodness and justice: “The eighth or tenth century ends; what do you see on the stage of the world? - The eighth or tenth century ends, and the unfortunate philanthropist measures his grave with two steps in order to lie down in it with his deceived, torn heart and close his eyes forever.<…>Where are the people we loved? Where is the fruit of science and wisdom?<…>Age of Enlightenment! I don't recognize you - I don't recognize you in blood and flame - I don't recognize you among murders and destruction! A person is trying to maintain hope (“Let us, my friend, let us now console ourselves with the thought that the lot of the human race is not an eternal delusion and that people will someday stop torturing themselves and each other” - “Philaletus to Melodorus”). But on what to base such a belief - this is the question that from now on will painfully worry Karamzin, will become the source of the mysterious mystery of the world around, and even the very fate for his heroes.
The most striking innovative work of Karamzin of this period was the story "Bornholm Island". According to the author's intention, it adjoined the "Letters of a Russian Traveler", reminding the reader of the already familiar hero, who so vividly empathized with everything that met on his way. He returns from England to Russia; along the way, the ship comes ashore, where the narrator meets a mysterious stranger. He was a pale and despondent young man, "more ghost than man." “He looked at the blue sea with his motionless black eyes, in which the last ray of fading life shone,” played the guitar and sang a mysterious song about beautiful, but criminal love, about terrible punishment and loss, about the island of Bornholm, where his soul vainly strives, about the parental curse...
Laws condemn
The object of my love
But who, O heart! Maybe
Resist you?<...>
Holy nature!
Your gentle friend and son
innocent before you.
You gave my heart...
Who he is and where he came from, the narrator failed to find out - the ship sails away and the mystery remains unsolved. Only a few days later, when the ship was off the coast of Denmark, the traveler sees the island of Bornholm and decides to go ashore in the hope of unraveling the mystery of the stranger. He finds himself in a dilapidated castle, the owner of which is a silent gray-haired old man, dejected by mysterious grief, and everything around is permeated with an atmosphere of destruction and imminent death: “Everywhere was gloomy and empty. In the first hall, surrounded inside by a Gothic colonnade, a lamp hung and barely shed a pale light on the rows of gilded pillars, which from antiquity began to collapse; in one place there were parts of a cornice, in another, fragments of pilasters, in a third, whole fallen columns ... ".
The traveler finds a cave-dungeon in the garden, in which a beautiful woman is imprisoned. She makes incoherent speeches: I kiss the hand that executes me - I still love the one for whom I was punished so terribly - let him know about it in his exile - my end is near ... And the elder tells the traveler the secret of his family - “the secret scary!”, “terrible story<...>which you will not hear now, my friends,” adds the Karamzin narrator. So the story ends almost halfway through.
Actually, the “plot” of the story told by the narrator-traveler is omitted, and so exhaustively that, in essence, the very event line of the story is destroyed here. The Karamzin narrator consistently preserves introductory, emotionally setting up the reader descriptions - and takes out of the text what, in fact, should have been preceded by these descriptions - the very content of the narrated story, which could be familiar to a literary educated reader from numerous examples of "Gothic" novels, former extremely popular in Europe in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The secret that intrigued the reader remains unsolved, because the main thing here is not just a plot, but a special mood.
- New!
N. M. Karamzin showed himself as an innovative writer who developed a new direction in European literature in his artistic and journalistic essay “Letters from a Russian Traveler”, which stood on a par with the main work of English sentimentalism ...
- New!
Russian youth. Karamzin's book had a huge impact on Russian literature. Belinsky wrote about the author: “He transformed the Russian language, taking it off the stilts of Latin construction and heavy Slavicism and bringing it closer to a living, natural, colloquial...
- New!
N. M. Karamzin began his career as a translator, and the very selection of foreign works for translation already testifies to his tastes and emerging aesthetic principles. So, in Gesner's idyll "Wooden Leg", translated by Karamzin...
- New!
Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin becomes the founder of sentimentalism in Russia. The son of a landowner in the Simbirsk province, in his youth he served in the guards, from where he retired with the rank of lieutenant. He travels around Europe, and in 1791, having settled in Moscow, he becomes...
- New!
The criterion of beauty, showiness was the main one for Karamzin as an artist; the criterion of strength decided the matter for him as a historian and political thinker. There is no need to prove the weakness of both of these criteria. Marfa Posadnitsa is admired by Karamzin the aesthete....
- New!
The so-called reform of the literary language, carried out by Karamzin, was expressed not in the fact that he issued some decrees and changed the norms of the language, but in the fact that he himself began to write his works in a new way and place translated works in his almanacs, .. .
But this admiration does not oblige Karamzin to sympathize with her or similar phenomena in his time. . Except for the preparatory period of Karamzin's literary work before his trip abroad, his entire activity as a fiction writer and even a journalist is limited to a short period from 1791 to 1803; after this time, 23 years of his life were spent on the History of the Russian State. Twelve years was enough to strengthen Karamzin's fame as a great writer, reorganizer of Russian literature and language. Karamzin already in the 1790s acts as a teacher and leader of literature. His influence was enormous; Representatives of the most diverse mental currents in Russian society openly acknowledged this influence, spoke of the passion for Karamzin through which they passed.
The criterion of beauty, showiness was the main one for Karamzin as an artist; the criterion of strength decided the matter for him as a historian and political thinker. There is no need to prove the weakness of both of these criteria. Fa Posadnitsa is admired by Karamzin the aesthete. But she is defeated. The power of the monarchy in the person of Ivan III crushed it, and Karamzin the politician condemns it. "Winners are not judged" - this is the slogan of Karamzin. And the other - "Woe to the vanquished." And in the "History of the Russian State" perhaps the main argument in favor of the autocracy, convincing for Karamzin, is that the autocracy has won. In the end, already in “Marfa Posadnitsa” we see a dual form of the writer’s attitude to his heroine and to his theme in general: Karamzin sends fu to execution, obeying the power and confessing the right of this force, and at the same time admires the spectacular death of fu.
Throughout almost the XVIII century. Western sentimental or, rather, pre-romantic and at the same time pre-realist literary currents have created an extensive fund of cultural values. The appearance of European culture at the time of the beginning of the French Revolution had changed significantly compared to that which Lomonosov found in the West. Classicism lived out its time, collapsed - and gave a new flowering, on a new basis, in the revolutionary work of poets and playwrights of the end of the century. Next to him bloomed magnificently, heralded by Richardson, Stern, Gray, Diderot, Rousseau, Klopstock. The analysis of a person “in general”, in the name of state unity, subjugating and absorbing the individual, has given way to a psychological analysis of the individual, who has won the right to interest in himself, to protection, to a cult precisely as a concrete individuality. Man's emotional life, his "private affections", his "passions" came to be valued more than the logical scheme of his political relations, even than the rational structure of his morality. Behind this restructuring of the attitude towards man was the recognition of the incorrectness of the political system of feudalism, the illegitimacy of its dominance over the individual, there was the individualism of the revolutionary worldview of the bourgeoisie at that time, there was the recognition of man and his human happiness as the highest criterion of value. Let the individual perish, the state would be alive, - said the classic of the 17th century, and his slogan was progressive and needed in his time. Let that state perish that destroys the individual, it would be free for a person to build his life as he wants, and achieve his human happiness where he wants - this slogan, progressive at the end of the 18th century, helped to storm feudalism and its political system. And the fact that the bourgeois nature of this slogan carried the possibility of degeneration into the ideology of new exploitation was not noticeable when the peoples faced the primary task of fighting the old, feudal evil. By the end of the XVIII century. both Western Europe and Russia have already accumulated considerable experience of the new art.
In a very special relation to Karamzin is the work of another great figure in Russian literature, also a sentimentalist and, moreover, building his literary system long before Karamzin, from the beginning of the 1770s, Alexander Nikolayevich Radishchev. A number of elements introduced by Karamzin into literature are also found in Radishchev; No wonder the central work of both writers is a sentimental journey. But the interpretation of the new style and even its constituent elements by Karamzin and Radishchev are completely different. These were in fact two paths of a single style, or rather, two Russian sentimentalisms, fundamentally hostile to each other. On the one hand, it was a style that embodied the revolutionary aspirations of democracy, on the other hand, the style of a conservative noble worldview associated with the
traditions, but renounced political progressiveness.
Karamzin, bringing together all the elements of aristocratic sentimentalism that already existed in Russian culture, and literature in particular, responded to the request that matured in it, answered with more consistency, brightness, and more talent than his predecessors. Thus, he made the direction of thought and art, which before him was still closed in a narrow circle of the intelligentsia, the property of much wider strata.
