A bit from the biography of Bogdanovich
(23.12.1743 - 06.01.1802)
As a child, he discovered a love of reading and art.
He was taken to Moscow and enrolled in the College of Justice as a cadet. There, the president of the collegium, noticing in him a special inclination for the sciences, allowed him to study at the mathematical school, which was then attached to the Senate office.
But Bogdanovich was fond of poetry and theater. When I went to the theatre, I was amazed by what I saw.
-> went to M. M. Khersakov, who was then the director of the Moscow theater, with a request to accept him as an actor. Kheraskov persuaded the 15-year-old Bogdanovich to enroll in the number of students at Moscow University, offering him a room.
Before 1761 B. spends time in Kheraskov's house and at the university: "learning the rules of art and the language of poetry", participating in the magazine "Useful Amusements" published by Kheraskov, tying various acquaintances with noble and high-ranking people (for example, drew upon himself special attention Princess E. R. Dashkova, who even took part in the magazine "Innocent Exercise").
1763 -moved to St. Petersburg, where he received a position as a translator of the Foreign Collegium in the staff of Count H.I. Panin
1765 - published his first short poem "Ultimate Bliss", was already known for poems and rather successful translations from Voltaire, which were published in the "Innocent Exercise"
1766-68 - appointed secretary of our embassy to the Saxon court. Dresden society, the picturesque surroundings of the city and the treasures of art that adorn the famous Dresden gallery had a strong influence on the development of his poetic talent.
From sept. 1775- within 6 months he published the "St. Petersburg Bulletin" and from that year until December 1782 "had the main supervision" of the publication of the "St. Petersburg Vedomosti".
1775-76 - publishes the journal "Collection of News", where for the first time in Russian. zhur-ke introduced a department of critical reviews
1775 - "placed his "Darling" on the altar of the Graces.
Empress Catherine II spoke of the poem with great praise, dignitaries and courtiers vied with each other in a hurry to declare signs of respect to the author; poets glorified him "in epistles, odes, madrigals and inscriptions".
Contemporaries, tired of the monotony of pseudo-classical works written according to all the rules of strict theory, in "Darling" I liked the playfulness, the mixture of pseudo-classical with Russian, folk, I also liked the verse - free and varied in the number of stops and the combination of rhymes.
The success of "Darling" greatly contributed to the success of the author both in the service and in society-> Bogdanovich becomes a court poet, fulfilling the orders of Catherine, he writes only out of a desire to please his high patroness, who especially encouraged dramaturgy ("Darling's Joy" (1786) and the drama "Slavs" (1787). He tried to write "Historical Image of Russia", compiled a collection of proverbs falsified in the spirit of government patriotism.
About "Darling"
("Dushenkin's poet")
1775 - 1st part written
irony towards mythological heroes and plots marked the ideological and aesthetic crisis of classicism.
Bogdanovich writes "D." for fun, emphasizes its character, free from political and civic goals. This is in the spirit of the poets of the Khersakov school, who prefer intimate, “light” lyrics:
I love my freedom
I don't sing to praise myself;
But so that in the hours of coolness, fun and peace
Chloe laughed pleasantly.
B. departs from interference in the social struggle, from serious social. problems. The only exception: she casually expresses her attitude to the problems raised in satirical magazines, forcing D. to read the “various sheets” brought to her by marshmallows (this is an allusion to Novikov’s satirical sheets, which are contrasted with the useful sheets of “Vsoyaya Vsyachiny”.
At the beginning of the book, he contrasts the first with "D." epic:
Not Achilles' anger and not the siege of Troy,
Where in the noise of eternal quarrels finished days of heroes
But I sing Dushenka.
Form: writes in "simplicity and liberty". For writing heroic poems Alexandrian verse was adopted, but B. writes in “free verse” - a multi-foot iambic, which had previously been used only in fables. This contributes to an easy and relaxed conversational presentation.
Epicureanism, eroticism, lightness, grace of verse make B. a representative of " light poetry”, leading away from the poetics of classicism. Belinsky said that "D." anticipates new poetry in which the high is mixed with the ridiculous, as it happens in reality, and poetry becomes closer to life.
The plot of "Darling" built on the ancient myth of the love of Psyche and Cupid, which was processed by Apuleius in The Golden Ass. In 1669 La Fontaine wrote the novel The Love of Psyche and Cupid. Outwardly, B. retains all the main features of the myth, but in essence this is not a retelling of the myth, but its “turning” - differences in the tone of the story, in a playful manner of presentation.
Bogdanovich borrows the plot, but Russifies the plot. The images of ancient literature are depicted in a playful, ironic, reduced spirit (Venus, Mars, Neptune, nymphs, satyrs). They are mixed with the characters of Russian fairy tales (the Tsar Maiden, the Serpent Gorynych, Kashchei the Immortal). This weave was created for travesty (parody) ancient Greek myth:
the sword with which Hercules cut off 9 heads from the hydra is kept in the arsenal of Kashchei and is called Samosek (borrowed from Russian fairy tales)
Venus sends Darling for living and dead water (according to Apuleius - Psyche must scoop up a bottle of Stygian waters). To the snake guarding the springs, D. addresses: "O snake Gorynych, Miracle Yudo."
dressing up a Greek princess in a Russian peasant outfit, turning her into "Venus in a sundress"
But these intentional folklore features not related to the present folk art as well as his reworking of proverbs. In "D." no philosophical depth ancient myth, the wise immediacy of Russians folk tales. But he managed to create a turned work, which was opposed to Maikov's Elisha. (this is the opinion of D.D. Blagogoy)
Opposition to "Elisha":
· The language is light, graceful, while Maikov's poem is crudely naturalistic.
· The syllable of the poem is equated to the sound of a gentle pastoral flute, in M. - to the common horn and balalaika.
· Bogdanovich writes to "Chloe laughed pleasantly," and M. strives with his unrestrainedly cheerful poem "to tear out the guts of readers."
· The gods behave like courtiers, secular people, Maikov's - like drunken men.
· B.'s satirical attacks are painted in "smiling" tones and are most often directed at the enemies of the empress, at satirical magazines hostile to her, and the satire of Elisha is politically oppositional in nature.
But there is one similarity - both poems do not fit within the framework of the poetics of classicism-> literary shifts are brewing, the formation of a new literary state - Russian sentimentalism.
The poem is written in the form of a free narrative in a light, playful tone that extends to both gods and people.
the god of time Saturn: "without teeth, bald and gray-haired, with a renewal of wrinkles on a hundred-year-old face"
· Dushenka herself lost the features of the ancient Psyche, the personified soul. D. literally consists of flesh and blood, flirtatious, it is characteristic women's whims, panache. Depicted with light light irony.
Expelled from Amur's palace, D. in desperation decides to commit suicide, but she fails:
Wandering in the desert, she meets a fisherman, when asked who she is, she answers:
"I'm Dushenka... I love Cupid..."
the gods of antiquity behave like courtiers, secular people. The fabulous setting in which they operate is reminiscent of the luxury of Catherine's palaces and parks (the enchanted palace and Amur's garden).
Formal freedom, ease, as it were, the deliberate “negligence” of “Darling”, combined with the playful irony of tone, was a phenomenon that was still unprecedented in our literature - the first example of so-called “light poetry” in the genre of the poem, a kind of family love story in verse. This is what led to the colossal success of "Darling" among his contemporaries.
Ippolit Fedorovich Bogdanovich (1743-1803) entered the history of Russian literature as the author of the heroic-comic fairy tale poem "Darling". Written in 1775. (first part), the poem was published in full in 1783. "Darling" with its irony in relation to mythological heroes and plots marked the ideological and aesthetic crisis of classicism. The content of "Darling" is ancient myth of the love of Cupid and Psyche, who received literary processing in the novel of the Roman writer Apuleius "The Golden Ass" (II century AD), and then in the XVII century. Lafontaine ("Love of Psyche and Cupid"). Bogdanovich Russified the foreign plot. It retains all the main features of the myth. The rewriting of this story is contained in the very tone, in a playfully ironic manner of presentation. This is how the images of ancient mythology are depicted, they are whimsically mixed with the characters of Russian fairy tales. In "Darling" there is no defiantly deliberate rudeness, but the author's irony and skepticism dominate everything, sparing neither gods nor people, and even the heroine of the poem herself, with all the poet's patronizing and affectionate attitude towards her. The poem richly includes elements of Russian fairy-tale folklore, intertwined with ancient Greek mythology. For example, the sword with which Hercules “cut off nine heads from the hydra” is kept in Kashchei’s “arsenal” and is called Samosek.
Darling herself lost the features of the ancient Psyche. The heroine of Bogdanovich is lively, flirtatious and capricious. The author depicts her light irony. She is characterized by traditionally feminine flaws: love of clothes, vanity, curiosity, gullibility (you might think that men do not suffer from vanity, I also ... female flaws) .
In "Darling" there is neither the philosophical depth of ancient myth, nor the wise immediacy of Russian folk tales. The poem does not fit within the framework of the poetics of classicism, being a symptom of the imminent literary shifts that were forming in the depths of the classicism of the new literature. direction - Russian noble sentimentalism.
Neither Achilles' wrath nor the siege of Troy,
Where in the noise of eternal quarrels the heroes ended their days,
But I sing Dushenka.
Bogdanovich gives "Darling" a new genre designation " ancient tale».
The poem is written in a free, multi-foot iambic, with a free and varied rhyme. In general, we can say that this is the first representative poem of light poetry, family love story in verse.
To make you understand what this nonsense is:
“I, Darling… love Cupid…”
Then she cried like a fool;
Then, without distant words with her,
The fisherman cried together
And her whole nature sobbed with her.
Summary"Darlings":
Once upon a time there was a girl, Dushenka, and she was so beautiful that she angered Venus with her beauty. Then Venus went to Cupid and, having collected "lies and all sorts of fables," she began to tell him all sorts of heresy about Darling. And Venus Amur asked to “Make a hateful darling forever”, in short, so that suitors would not go to her and that no one would dare to take her as a wife. And so it happened. Darling suffered and decided to leave home. She staggered around, and then ... "Invisible Zephyr on" windy wings "transfers Darling to luxurious halls." At night, the enamored Cupid comes to the girl, but does not allow her to see herself. And then the curious Dushenka, envious of her two evil sisters, whom Zephyr brings at her request to the Amur Palace, incite to see if her terrible husband is a snake, and if so, kill him; why the Zephyrs bring Dushenka to the palace the Self-cut Sword and an oil lamp; at night, Darling lights a lamp and examines her husband, admiring what a wonderful husband she has, but accidentally spills hot oil from the lamp on Cupid, and he wakes up, sees a sword at his wife’s feet, and becomes angry. And she was severely punished - the Zephyrs brought her back ("from the mountainous places to the earth, to where they took her from"). And then the suffering of the curious began. She tried to commit suicide, many times even. But Cupid did not forget her, and secretly followed her, and saved her. First, she jumped from the mountains, Zephyr caught her. Then "I'll cut myself! - she screamed; but she didn’t have a dagger, ”then she wanted to stab herself with stones, and, as luck would have it, they turned into bread. Hung on trees, but all bitches And ( With at ki!) bowed her to the ground. Further: "Couldn't cling to the oak, she decided to drown herself." But having jumped, she got on a pike and she rolled her over the waves. And finally, the last way to the desired suicide is to burn in the fire. I found some kind of fire in the forest, went into it, and it immediately went out. In the same forest, she meets a fisherman (when she cries like a fool - see above), who tells her why everyone hates her so much. And then the curious goes to Venus to beg for forgiveness. She sends her to all sorts of different feats, where Darling loses her beauty. In short, Cupid stands up for her, because he loves the soul of Darling, and everything ends well. Beauty returns, Darling and Cupid live happily ever after and their daughter is born. End of fairy tale.
Iroi-comic poem by I.F. Bogdanovich "Darling". Aesthetic meaning of the interpretation of the "foreign" plot
I. F. Bogdanovich finished the poem "Darling" in 1775, the first song of the poem was published in 1778; full text in 1783. And the very first thing that probably caught the eye of the first readers of "Darling" - and Bogdanovich's poem was very popular - is a fundamentally new aesthetic position from which the poem was written. Bogdanovich defiantly opposed his light, elegant work, which does not pretend to morality and morality, to still quite stable views on literature as a “school of morality”: “My own fun during idle hours was my only motivation when I began to write Darling” Bogdanovich outlined his aesthetic position, which is precisely and literally words can be called "aesthetic".
"Darling" is one of the first examples of not exactly entertaining reading; this is a work that has the final result of its impact on the reader is precisely aesthetic pleasure in pure form without any outside purpose.
This aesthetic position also determined the choice of plot for Bogdanovich's burlesque poem: its source was one of the non-canonical Greek myths, or rather, a literary stylization of a myth - the love story of Cupid and Psyche, set out as an insert novel in Apuleius' novel The Golden Ass and translated into French language by the famous fabulist Jean La Fontaine in prose with numerous poetic inserts. By the time Bogdanovich turned to this plot, both the Russian translation of Apuleius' novel The Golden Ass and the translation of Lafontaine's novella-poem The Love of Psysha and Cupid were already known to the Russian reader. Consequently, when starting to create his poem, Bogdanovich was guided not by the task of familiarizing the Russian reader with a new plot, or, moreover, not by the goals of teaching moral lessons. Rather, it was about a kind of creative competition, an individual author's interpretation of a well-known plot, which naturally puts an individual author's style and individual poetic consciousness at the center of the poetics of such an interpretation.
Like individual approach to the genre of the burlesque poem determined the originality of its forms in Bogdanovich's poem. Such traditional categories of burlesque as the game of discrepancy between high and low in terms of the combination of plot and style are completely alien to Bogdanovich's poem: "Darling" is not a parody of the heroic epic, the heroes of the poem - earthly people and Olympic deities are not travesty through a high or low style of narration. And the very first sign of the rejection of the usual methods of burlesque was Bogdanovich's original meter, chosen by him for his poem and, in principle, devoid of any strong genre associations by that time (with the exception, perhaps, only of the association with the fable genre) - multi-footed (free ) iambic, with varying the number of feet in a verse from three to six, with a very whimsical and varied rhyme. In general, the style of the poem, as well as its verse, Bogdanovich himself accurately defined: “simplicity and liberty” - these concepts are not only a characteristic of the author's position, but also the style and verse of the poem.
The burlesque nature of Bogdanovich's poem lies in a completely different plane of narration, and the general direction of burlesque is predicted by the name that the poet gives to his heroine. In Apuleius and Lafontaine, she is called Psyche, in Russian - the soul. Bogdanovich called his heroine "Darling", literally translating Greek word and giving it a gentle form.
Through the stylization of a myth in the novel by Apuleius, through the classicist conventionality of La Fontaine's Greece, Bogdanovich felt the nature of folklore mythological plot. And it was precisely this folklore character of the myth about Cupid and Psyche that Bogdanovich tried to reproduce in his Russian poem based on an ancient plot, having found in Russian folklore a genre closest to the poetics of myth. Is it necessary to say that this genre is the Russian fairy tale, which in its formal content structure is characterized by the same plot-thematic stability and a specific typology of character and space-time imagery, as well as the mythological world-image? A number of such typological features of the special world of Russian fairy tale- topography, geography, population, composition of heroes - Bogdanovich introduced into his interpretation of the Apuleian plot.
And at the slightest possibility of a functional or figurative coincidence of any plot or figurative motive of a Russian fairy tale with a mythological common place, Bogdanovich does not miss the opportunity to introduce it into the fabric of his narrative and refer to the source: a fairy tale. So, the sword with which the evil sisters persuade Dushenka to kill her monstrous husband is kept in the "Kashcheev Arsenal" and "Samosek is called in fairy tales" (466); yes and all minor characters the poems are clearly divided into pests and givers in their relationship to Darling.
The result is a whimsical but organic synthesis of two related folklore genres belonging to the mentality different peoples, Greek myth and Russian fairy tale, travesty in nature.
The everyday atmosphere recreated in Bogdanovich's fairy tale poem, with its specific content, does not at all resemble the dense everyday coloring of the life of the social lower classes, which constitutes the layer of everyday life in Chulkov's novel or Maikov's poem. But how literary device Bogdanovich's everyday life, which recreates the typical atmosphere of everyday noble life and way of life, is no different from everyday life in a democratic novel or burlesque poem: it is the same external, material, authentic environment in which a person's spiritual life is immersed. Moreover, in the fairy tale poem this is emphasized through the use of traditional motifs of the material and everyday world image - food, clothing and money, which also lose their negative symbolic function in the aestheticized appearance that Bogdanovich gives them: food is a luxuriously laid banquet table; clothes are magnificent outfits, money is sparkling jewelry.
The activity of the author's beginning is manifested, first of all, in the intonation plan of the narration. Lyricism permeates the whole atmosphere of the narrative in "Darling" and the predominant way of expressing it is the direct inclusion of the author's voice, experience and opinion in the descriptive elements of the plot. Direct authorial appeals to the characters that accompany the turning points of the plot and sometimes rise to genuine pathos. Such, for example, is the direct inclusion of the author's voice in the fabric of the narrative at the moment when Darling learns from the marshmallow on the parcels that her sisters are looking for a meeting with her.
Direct outbursts of the author's feelings emphasize the main tone of the narration - the tone of mild irony generated by the very image of Dushenka - "Venus in a sundress", surrounded by a reliable everyday environment of Russian noble life in the 18th century.
Appeal to the reader, who, thanks to them, enters the figurative structure of the poem as a full-fledged participant in events, literally permeates the text of the poem in stable formulas: “The reader will imagine that conveniently for himself” (452), “The reader himself will imagine that with the mind” (457) , "The reader must know first" (479), "Of course, readers will forgive me for that" (461).
With all the playful nature of this type of relationship between the author and the reader - because, of course, the author knows and can incomparably more in the field of verbal creativity, the reader still gets the impression of some kind of equality with the poet and the character in the field of imagination, conjecture of the plot and its details. About the fact that it was this effect, first found and tested by Bogdanovich in poetry, that became the main thing for him in the fairy tale poem, - the effect of organizing the reader's perception in a joint game of imagination, giving rise to the feeling that the reader knows and can do more than the author, - testifies the end of the poem.
24. Early work of I. Krylov. Traditions of Russian satirical journalism in the "Mail of Spirits" Parody genres of "false panegyric" and "oriental story". Joke tragedy "Podshchipa": literary parody and political pamphlet.
Early work of I. A. Krylov (1769-1844)
The work of Ivan Andreevich Krylov is clearly divided into two periods that are approximately equal in chronological terms, but opposite in their ethical and aesthetic settings. Krylov-writer of the XVIII century. - this is a total denier, a satirist and a parodist; Krylov the fabulist of the 19th century, although he inherited the national tradition of understanding the fable as a satirical genre, nevertheless asserts moral truths with his fables, since by nature the fable is an affirmative genre (apologist). At the same time, the work of the young Krylov in the 18th century. has a double historical and literary value: both independent and promising, as the gradual formation of those forms and techniques creative manner, which made the name of Krylov a kind of synonym for national aesthetic ideas about the fable genre.
Krylov began to write very early: his first literary work, the comic opera "The Coffee House", created when he was 14 years old; and his other early literary experiences are also connected with the theater and comedy genre. But Krylov's real literary debut took place in 1789, when he began publishing a satirical magazine by one author, Spirit Mail.
Traditions of Russian satirical journalism in "Mail of Spirits"
IN overall composition"Mail of Spirits" and the two-dimensional picture of the world, which is created in Krylov's journal, typologically stable world images of Russian literature come to life again: satirical-comedy everyday and odo-tragedy ideological, perceived through the prism of satirical journalism of 1769-1774
Krylov’s theoretical discussion of satire and satirist is cast in speech forms that are extremely close to the panegyric style of the “praise word” and are identical in their affirmative setting to the genre. solemn ode.
Parody genres of "false panegyric" and "oriental story"
After the premature termination of the Spirit Mail, Krylov did not engage in journalism for two years. In 1792, together with his friends, writer A. I. Klushin, actor I. A. Dmitrevsky, playwright and actor P. A. Plavilshchikov, Krylov began publishing the satirical magazine Spectator. It was on the pages of the “Spectator” that Krylov’s famous “false panegyrics” were published - “Speech spoken by a rake in an assembly of fools”, “Eulogy to the science of killing time”, “Eulogy in memory of my grandfather”, as well as the oriental story “Kaib”.
The genre of false panegyric in Krylov's satire has a deeply symbolic historical and literary significance. At the end of the century, the genre of the panegyric oratorical word acquires parodic functions in the work of Krylov: the canonical genre form public speaking Krylov uses to create an everyday satirical worldview with a negative attitude.
Krylov's false panegyrics, combining an apologetic intonation with the image of an object of speech, ethically unworthy of praise, represent another genre version of burlesque - extracting a comic effect from the discrepancy between form and content. However, this burlesque is not as innocent as heroic-comic poems: traditionally and genetically, the oratorical panegyric Word was dedicated to the monarch. Making rake, fools, petimeters, provincial noblemen - direct heirs of Fonvizin's characters, heroes of his false panegyrics, Krylov joked very dangerously, since on the second associative plane of high form, combined with low content, the idea of satirical discrediting of power was implicitly present, even if this the idea in the text of the false panegyric is not verbally realized in any way.
Rhetorical devices - appeals, exclamations, interrogations and inversions, which form a typical satirical zoologized image of a nobleman, indistinguishable from a dog or a horse, give rise to two parallel developing motifs in the course of a false panegyric.
At the junction of two opposing genre patterns, one of which borrows the style, and from the other the typology of imagery and content, the effect of double discredit arises: the high style of the official panegyric is discredited by the fact of its application to an object that is ethically unworthy of praise, the negative meaning of the image of the object is strengthened and emphasized by inappropriate style: exaggerated praise is always a mockery. And the lofty content of the official panegyric itself, the concept of ideal power, also does not remain without damage, although in a false panegyric it is not formalized in any way and remains only on the associative plane of the text.
The story "Kaib" was published in 1792 in the journal "Spectator" and was a parodic use of the genre form of the traditional literary and political utopia - Eastern story. Compositionally, the story is divided into two parts: the first contains a description of Kaib as an enlightened monarch, the second develops a conditionally fantastic motif of the monarch's journey through his country incognito, drawn from the Arab tales about Harun al Rashid; moreover, during this journey, seeing with his own eyes the life of his subjects, Kaib gets rid of his delusions and becomes an ideal ruler. And in both parts of the story, the systematic discrediting of stable literary techniques for creating the image of an ideal ruler is obvious.
In the eyes of the Russian enlighteners, patronage of the sciences and arts was an inalienable feature of the ideal monarch. Kaib patronizes sciences and arts in his own special way.
Second compositional part The story develops a conditionally fairy-tale plot of Kaiba's wanderings in his kingdom. There are all the traditional motifs of an Arabian fairy tale here: the transformation of a mouse into a beautiful fairy, a magic ring with a prophecy about the conditions under which its owner will be happy, a prediction in a dream, an ivory doll replacing Kaiba in the palace during his absence, the search for a person, who will love Kaiba as much as he will hate him, and the like..
The systematic discrediting of the idea of an enlightened monarch is accompanied by an equally systematic parody of traditional literary genres dealing with ideal reality: ode as a form of embodiment of the ideal of being, and idyll as a form of embodiment of the ideal of everyday life:
The genre of the oriental story is also discredited in its ideal utopianism. The story of Kaib's rebirth into an ideal monarch begins to be perceived as a literary cliché, completely similar to the conventions of an Arabian fairy tale, the unreality of the appearance of an odic hero and the idyllic immateriality of a literary shepherdess. From the devastating consequences of Krylov's irony, only the concrete-everyday genre of satire survived, striving for the maximum lifelikeness of its world image.
Two years after the publication of Radishchevsky's Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow, and in the same year that Karamzin began to systematically publish his Letters from a Russian Traveler, Krylov also contributed to Russian travel literature. And all three, it would seem so different, genre modifications of the journey - Radishchev's journey through the socio-political map of Russia, Karamzin's journey through the countries Western Europe, Krylov's journey through the world of literary conventions and cliches - turn out to be strikingly similar in their overall result.
The result of the journey every time is clear vision, the ability to distinguish truth from lies, conventionality from reality, the acquisition of self-consciousness and an independent life position, with the only difference being that in Radishchev and Karamzin this happens with the traveler characters, and in Krylov with the reader, because Kaib's insight has the character of a literary convention, which, on the other hand, is very clearly visible to the reader. In this sense, it can be said that it is the comical, parodic nature of Krylov's modification of the novel's motive of travel and the universality of the satirical world image, which by the end of the century absorbed all the characteristic methods of world-modeling of high genres, provide liberation from illusions at all levels of the subject-object organization of the text: the author's clairvoyance is communicated to the reader precisely through the obvious conventionality and parody of the hero's insight.
Joke tragedy "Podshchipa": literary parody and political pamphlet
The entire course of the evolution of Krylov’s work in the 1780s-1790s, the systematic discrediting of the high ideological genres of panegyric and solemn ode, prepared his dramatic joke “Podshchipa”, the genre of which Krylov designated as “joke tragedy” and which, by the time of its creation (1800) symbolically closes Russian dramaturgy and literature XVIII V. According to the fair remark of P. N. Berkov, “Krylov found an amazingly successful form - a combination of the principles of folk theater, folk games with the form of classical tragedy.” Thus, the farcical comedy of the folk game, traditionally disrespectful to those in power, turned out to be a way to discredit political issues and the doctrine of the ideal monarch, inextricably associative in the national aesthetic consciousness. genre form tragedy.
Krylov conceived and wrote his play at that period of his life when he practically left the capital's literary arena and lived on the estate of the disgraced Prince S. F. Golitsyn as a teacher of his children. Thus, the play was "not so much a literary event as an everyday event." And this relegation of literature to everyday life predetermined the poetics of the joke-tragedy.
First of all, the dense everyday coloring is noticeable in the parodic plan of the joke tragedy. Krylov carefully observes the canonical form of the tragedy of classicism - the Alexandrian verse, but as a farcical device of verbal comedy he uses a typically comedic device: imitation of a speech defect (cf. the macaronic language of Gallomaniacs in the comedies of Sumarokov and Fonvizin) and a foreign accent (cf. Fonvizin's Vralman in "Undergrowth" ) V speech characteristics Prince Slyunyaya and German Trumpf.
The conflict of the joke-tragedy is a parodic rethinking of the conflict in Sumarokov's tragedy "Khorev". Among the characters of both works there is a deposed monarch and his winner (Zavlokh and Kiy in "Khorev", Tsar Vakula and Trumph in "Podshchip"), but only Zavlokh in every possible way prevents the mutual love of his daughter Osnelda for Khorev, the heir of Kiy, and Tsar Vakula from tries with all his might to force his daughter Podshchipa into marriage with Trumph in order to save own life and life drooling. If Osnelda is ready to part with her life and love for the sake of the life and honor of Khorev, then Podshchipa is ready to sacrifice the life of Slobbering for the sake of her love for him.
As rightly noted by the researchers of the Krylov theater, “the technique of the tragic and the technique of the farcical conflict are basically similar - both consist in the maximum exacerbation and realization of internal dramatic contradictions in action. But tragic conflict necessarily associated with the victory of the spirit over the flesh, and farcical - with the victory of the flesh over the spirit. In the joke-tragedy, both plans are combined: the higher the spirit soars, the more comically the flesh betrays it.
The disasters inflicted on the kingdom of Vakula by the invasion of Trumph, and finally, the deliverance of the kingdom of Vakula from the invasion of Trumph also has an absurdly jocular physiological character: a gypsy poured “purgant in cabbage soup” to Trumph’s soldiers, the army fell ill in their stomachs and laid down their arms.
This parodic farcical comedy of the collision high life the spirit of an ideologized tragic world image with base carnal motives acquires its formal and meaningful counterpart in the burlesque style of a joke tragedy. In the chased, canonical form of aphoristic Alexandrian verse, Krylov concludes the most rude colloquial expressions, alternating them through the verse, that is, rhyming low-style verse with high-style verse, or even tearing one verse along the caesura into half-lines of high and low syllable.
It is difficult to say whether Krylov had the original intention to create political pamphlet satire when he started work on Podshchipa, although all researchers who have ever turned to Krylov's joke tragedy say that the image of the German Trumpf is a political caricature of Pavel I, who fanatically worshiped the Prussian military orders and Emperor Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia. In any case, even if Krylov had no intention of writing a political pamphlet, the joke-tragedy "Podshchip" became one, if only for the reason that Krylov parodicly took advantage of the enduring features of the tragedy genre, which is political at its very core. highest level parody - semantic - delivers the final satirical blow to the literary conventions of traditional tragedy.
In ancient Greece, in the time of Jupiter, when the “powerful tribe” multiplied so that each city has its own special king, one monarch still stands out from the rest in wealth, good looks and kindness, and most of all because he has three most beautiful daughters. But youngest daughter his appearance still overshadows the beauty of the rest. The Greeks called this beauty Psyche, which means "soul"; Russian narrators call her Dushenka.
The glory of the younger princess spreads everywhere, and now “the cathedral of merriment, laughter, games”, cupids and marshmallows leave Venus and run away to Dushenka. No one else brings sacrifices or incense to the goddess of love. Soon, the wicked spirits inform the goddess that Darling has appropriated the servants of Venus, and, although the princess did not even think of angering the gods, they add that she did this to annoy Venus. Believing their lies, the angry goddess immediately flies to her son Amur and begs him to stand up for her desecrated honor, to make Darling ugly so that everyone turns away from her, or to give her a husband, worse than whom there is in the world.
Cupid, in order to calm his mother, promises to take revenge on the princess. And soon the news comes to Venus that Darling has been abandoned by everyone; former admirers do not even come close to her, but only bow from afar. Such a miracle troubles the minds of the Greeks. Everyone is lost in conjectures ... Finally, Venus announces to all Greece what the gods are angry about, and promises terrible troubles if Darling is not brought to her. But the king and all relatives unanimously refuse the goddess.
Meanwhile, Darling, in tears, appeals to Cupid: why is she alone, without a husband, even without a boyfriend? Relatives everywhere are looking for suitors for her, but, fearing the wrath of the gods, no one wants to marry the princess. In the end, it was decided to turn to the Oracle, and the Oracle replies that the spouse appointed by the fates for Darling is a monster that stings everyone, tearing hearts and carrying a quiver of terrible arrows behind his shoulders, and in order for the girl to unite with him, you need to take her to the top of the mountain, where hitherto no one used to go and leave there.
Such an answer plunges everyone into sorrow. It is a pity to give the girl to some monster, and all relatives declare that it is better to endure persecution and attack than to take Darling to be sacrificed, especially since it is not even known where. But the princess, out of generosity (or because she wants to have a husband, no matter what kind), she herself says to her father: “I must save you with my misfortune.” And where to go, Darling decides simply: the horses harnessed to the carriage must be allowed without a coachman, and let fate itself lead it.
A few weeks later, the horses themselves stop at some mountain and do not want to go further. Then Darling is led to a height without a road, past abysses and caves, where some evil creatures roar. And at the top, the king and his entire court, having said goodbye to the girl, leave her alone and, heartbroken, leave.
However, Darling does not stay there for long. The invisible Zephyr picks her up and lifts her to the "unknown village of heaven." The princess finds herself in magnificent palaces, where nymphs, cupids and marshmallows fulfill all her desires. At night, her husband comes to Darling, but since he appears in the dark, the girl does not know who he is. The husband himself answers her questions that for the time being she cannot see him. In the morning he disappears, leaving Darling perplexed ... and in love.
It takes the princess several days to inspect the luxurious chambers and the forests, gardens and groves adjacent to them, which show her many wonders and curiosities. And one day, going deeper into the forest, she finds a grotto leading to dark cave, and, going there, finds his spouse. Since then, Darling comes to this grotto every day, and every night her husband visits her in the bedchamber.
So three years pass. Darling is happy, but she is haunted by the desire to know what her husband looks like. However, he only begs for all her requests that she not seek to see him, be obedient to him and not listen to any advice in this matter, even from her closest relatives.
One day, Darling finds out that her sisters came to look for her to that terrible mountain where the princess was once left. Darling immediately tells Zephyr to transfer them to her paradise, kindly meets them and tries to "amuse them in every way." When asked where her husband is, she first answers: “Not at home,” but then, unable to stand it, she confesses to all the oddities of her marriage. She does not know that her sisters, jealous of her, only dream of depriving Darling of her happiness. Therefore, they say that they allegedly saw a terrible snake crawling into the grotto, and that this is Dushenka's husband. She, horrified, decides to commit suicide, but the malevolent sisters object to her that first, as an honest woman, she must kill the monster. They even procure and bring her a lamp and a sword for this purpose, after which they return home.
The night is coming. Having waited for her husband to fall asleep, Darling illuminates him with a lamp ... and discovers that it is Cupid himself. Admiring him in admiration, she accidentally spills oil from the lamp on her husband's thigh. Waking up from pain, he sees a naked sword and thinks that his wife has planned evil against him. “And Darling then, having fallen, died.” She comes to her senses on the same mountain where she said goodbye to her relatives a long time ago. The poor thing understands that she herself is to blame for this trouble; she sobs loudly, cries out, asks for forgiveness. Cupid, furtively watching her, already wants to throw himself at the feet of his beloved, but, having come to his senses, descends to her, as it should be for God, in all the splendor of his greatness and announces that Darling, who has transgressed the law, is now in disfavor with the gods, and therefore he is no longer can be with her, but leaves her to fate. And, not listening to her excuses, disappears.
The unfortunate princess is left with only suicide. She throws herself into the abyss, but one of the marshmallows picks her up and carefully carries her to the lawn. Deciding to kill himself, Darling is looking for a sharp stone, but all the stones in her hands turn into pieces of bread. The branches of the tree on which she wants to hang herself lower her unharmed to the ground. Naiad fish keep her from drowning in the river. Noticing a fire in the wood on the shore, the princess tries to burn herself, but an unknown force extinguishes the flame in front of her.
"Fate has appointed that Darling lived / And would suffer in life." The princess tells the old fisherman who has returned to his firewood about his misfortunes and learns from him - alas! - that new troubles await her: Venus has already sent out letters everywhere, in which she demands that Darling be found and presented to her, but they did not dare to hide under fear of her wrath. Realizing that it is impossible to hide all the time, poor Darling asks the most powerful goddesses for help, but Juno, Ceres and Minerva, for one reason or another, refuse her. Then the princess goes to Venus herself. But, having appeared in the temple of the goddess of love, the beauty attracts all eyes to herself; people take her for Venus, kneel ... and just at that moment the goddess herself enters.
In order to properly take revenge on Darling, Venus makes her her slave and gives her such assignments from which she must die or at least become ugly. On the first day, she tells the princess to bring living and dead water. Having learned about this, Cupid orders his servants to help Dushenka. The faithful Zephyr immediately transfers his former mistress to the lot where such waters flow, explains that the snake Gorynich Chudo-Yuda, who guards the water, must be treated with a drink, and hands her a large flask with swill for the snake. So Darling fulfills the first order.
Venus gives the princess a new task - to go to the garden of the Hesperides and bring golden apples from there. And that garden is guarded by Kashchei, who makes riddles for everyone who comes, and eats the one who cannot guess them. But Zephyr calls Darling the answers to the riddles in advance, and she honorably fulfills the second assignment.
Then the goddess of love sends the princess to hell to Proserpina, ordering her to take a certain pot there and, without looking into it, bring it to her. Thanks to the advice of Zephyr, Dushenka manages to safely descend into hell and return back. But, unable to restrain her curiosity, she opens the pot. Thick smoke flies out from there, and the princess's face is immediately covered with blackness, which can neither be erased nor washed away. Ashamed of her appearance, the unfortunate woman hides in a cave with the intention of never going out.
Although Cupid, trying to please Venus, pretended not to think about Darling, he did not forget either her or her sisters. He informs the sisters that he intends to take both of them as his wife, and let them only ascend high mountain and rush down - Zephyr will immediately pick them up and bring them to him. Delighted, the sisters rush to jump into the abyss, but Zephyr only blows them in the back, and they break. After that, Cupid, having described to his mother how Dushenka had become ugly, seeks permission from the satisfied goddess to reunite with his wife - after all, he loves in her not a transient appearance, but a beautiful soul. He finds Darling, talks to her, and they forgive each other.
And when their marriage is recognized by all the gods, Venus, reasoning that it is unprofitable for her to keep an ugly girl in her family, returns her daughter-in-law to her former beauty. Since then Cupid and Dushenka live happily.
Ippolit Fedorovich is considered Bogdanovich(1743 - 1802). His main work: "Darling".
This is a humorous, “light” poem, a genre legalized by the ancient world (for example, the poem: “War of mice and frogs”). In contrast to the "serious" poem, this "joking" one was distinguished by both the lightness of the content and the freedom of the verse.
Bogdanovich looks at poetry like this:
Loving freedom I sing
I don't sing to praise myself;
But so that in the hours of coolness, fun and peace
Chloe had a good laugh!
In the work of Apuleius main idea lies in the fact that the soul, mired in sensuality, matter, then, thanks to initiation into the sacraments, is purified and transformed. The soul of a woman (Psyche), having lost its original purity, had to go through a series of severe trials as a slave of Love (Venus) in order to rise to the divine bridegroom - Eros (Cupid, Cupid).
Already La Fontaine took for his novel from the story of Apuleius only an erotic plot, discarding the "idea". Bogdanovich did the same, following La Fontaine.
The summary of his poem is as follows. The oracle predicts to the king, Dushenka's father, that his daughter will marry a monster; to fulfill the will of the gods, it must be taken to the mountain and left there. The order of the oracle is fulfilled, and the abandoned heroine becomes the wife of the monster. She lives in a rich palace, surrounded by wealth, but she does not see her husband: he comes to her only at night.
She does not dare to find out who he is, as she is warned that then she will be deprived of all benefits. Curiosity, however, conquers all. She lights the lamp when her husband comes to her. It turns out that he is the god Amur himself. For disobedience, Darling is deprived of all wealth and wanders alone in the desert. Despair makes her look for means of suicide, but Cupid saves her every time - and, finally, she, repentant, returns to herself both wealth and her husband's love.
The moral of the work, expressed in final words Zeus :-
The law of time creates beautiful view skinny!
The outer shine in the eyes passes like smoke,
But nothing changes the beauty of the soul -
She is always unique and captivates everyone!
- remained from the Greek original. The less it fits in with that slight cynicism, which, having accumulated on this plot back in France, sometimes becomes rude under the pen of Bogdanovich. Wit itself, subtle in Lafontaine, became heavy in the Russian poet. The grief of a father, when separated from his daughter, is depicted, for example, as follows:
And finally, the king, bent into a hook with grief,
It was forcibly torn from the daughter's hands.
Wandering in the desert, Darling meets a fisherman. He asks her who she is; - she answers:
“I am Darling ... I love Cupid!”
Then she cried like a fool...
The Olympians are presented in caricature form:
And there, in front of her, Saturn, without a tooth, bald and gray,
With the renewal of wrinkles on an old face,
He tries to forget that he is an old grandfather:
Straightens his decrepit camp, wants to be younger,
Curls the remaining hair with its shreds
And to see Darling he raises his glasses.
Bogdanovich's heroine herself lost all the poetry of the Apuleian Psyche and turned into an empty, capricious "dandy", loving outfits and admirers, for the sake of wealth, easily reconciled with the idea that her husband is a monster. It is curious that in Bogdanovich's poem, apart from a few playful folk scenes of his own invention, included some motifs of Russian fairy tales (“Koschei the Immortal”, “The Tsar Maiden”, “jelly banks”, “dead and living water”).
However, both to classicism and to folk poetry The author treats with derision. For us, of course, it is especially important that both the form and the content of this work undermine the foundations of pseudo-classicism, and the heroine receives the real features of a living being.
The significance of Bogdanovich's poem was recognized even by Belinsky, who saw in it "a transitional stage from loud, pompous odes and heavy poems that deafened and surprised everyone, but delighted no one, - to lighter poetry, where a comical element is introduced, where high is mixed with funny as it is in reality itself, and poetry itself becomes closer to life.
Karamzin enthusiastically commented on this poem: “In 1775,” he says, “Bogdanovich laid his “Darling” on the altar of Grace ... “Darling” is an easy game of imagination based on the same rules delicate taste, but not for them
