This is the opinion of La Fontaine, expressed on a private occasion. Bogdanovich used in all his treatment of the history of Cupid and Psyche. In total, Lafontaine has 498 lines of poetry in The Love of Psyche and Cupid. All of them are reproduced by Bogdanovich and distributed at the expense of details that are absent in the original by La Fontaine.
But even this purely quantitative correlation testifies that Bogdanovich could have Lafontaine's novel only as a canvas and that the poetic treatment of the story of Cupid and Psyche is basically an original creation of the Russian poet.
The language of "Darling" experienced a certain evolution. In Darling's Adventures (1778), Bogdanovich is closer to the language of the Russian fable of the 1760s and the comic poem than to La Fontaine. When preparing the publication 1783 Bogdanovich carefully freed the text of the first book of the poem from satirical content and places written in fable-comic language. So, the lines were discarded:
Thieves did not steal
And the sneaks were silent,
Everyone lived without sorrow
And he ate and drank to his heart's content.
All subjects and neighbors,
Such a charter of worship,
Everywhere they put the face of the wise king
Of gold, silver or copper,
Buddies, friends
Nobles and princes,
They came to visit him;
He first invented
For fun in between
Yulu, goose and bones;
card game,
At the royal court
And among the Greek people,
Was then out of fashion
Grandees, like the mob,
They played with the mind,
They also played chess
Without money, on papers,
And lots of fun
For each and everyone
They were there every day
Everywhere there was laughter
And people were having fun.
In the complaint of Dushenka Amur were the following lines:
I am no worse than my sisters;
But each of them with her husband
Found lovers heels
And maybe each at will
Find more of them...
In the description of the journey of Dushenka and her relatives to the mountain indicated by the oracle, the priests were ironically depicted:
In the end, in this way, everyone was so tired,
That almost did not turn back.
Then the chief priest,
Saving these timid sheep,
Shaking his broad mustache
And the verbal cattle climbing down
He threatened with an oracle and all the heavens.
Some vagueness of the idea and genre nature of "Darling" affected the style of the ed. 1778 and 1783 Bogdanovich still draws the vocabulary of the poem from sources of different genres and does not find a single stylistic principle for it. There is still a lot of variegation in the language of "Darling's Adventures" and "Darling" (1783), colloquial words and turns, expressions of bureaucratic-order slang, gallicisms. Although already when reworking the poem for the 1783 edition, Bogdanovich sought to achieve unity of style and language, to get away from linguistic extremes due to the sharp and already unacceptable stylistic discord for the author. The language of the poem was systematically cleared of turns of vernacular, lines (book three)
And take her to kutok;
IN kutka will show down the stairs...
have been replaced by the following:
Will show later in the hut corner;
Ottol will point down the steps.
Instead of a word with a colloquial and even dialectal character, a word commonly used and mastered by literature was introduced. When finalizing "Darling" in the ed. In 1794, a very thorough editing was carried out, mainly of a stylistic nature. special attention Bogdanovich at the same time turned to the rhythmic-sound side of the poem's verse. In the second book, the line
And the roads are strewn with roses everywhere
modified as follows:
And everywhere the roads are strewn with roses.
With this change in the line of iambic six-foot, the pyrrhic was transferred from the second foot to the third. As a result, rhythmic
228the movement in the middle of the line changes, the monotony of the alternation of shock stops and pyrrhias disappears in it. In other cases, Bogdanovich changed the sound of a line without changing its rhythm:
For all their malice...
is replaced by:
For the greed of their malice...
The sound repetition z... z... is supplemented by another repetition l... l... and the line receives a completely different sound organization, more in line with the author's more precise emotional and stylistic task.
Preface.
Being prompted to do so by printed and written praises. Apparently, this refers to the review in the Supplements to Moskovsky Vedomosti (1783, No. 96, December 2) and the mention of Darling in the SLRS, in M.M. Kheraskov and the article "Party" (1783, part 9, p. 245), which says "about excellent essay Mr. Bogdanovich, which is not a drama, but a fairy tale in verse.
Book one.
Homer, father of poems, double. In Darling's Adventures (1778), Homer was characterized differently:
Homer, father of poetry,
And the rhymes of the rich
And the rhymes of the married!
Apparently, Bogdanovich became convinced of the fallacy of this opinion and therefore replaced it with an indication of "doubleness", that is, the obligatory caesura in the verse of Homer's poems.
Features, without equal feet."Darling" is written in a multi-footed "free" iambic, which was usually used in the 1760s-1770s to write not poems, but fables and parables.
Lycaon, whom Naso wrote the history of. IN Greek mythology- the king of Arcadia, distinguished by cruelty. For the murder of a child as a sacrifice to the gods, Zeus turned Lycaon into a wolf. The "history" of Lycaon was retold in his "Metamorphoses" by Ovid Nason.
Harsh brush- hard, coarse bristles.
Rights Image- truthful, correct image.
In Moscow at a masquerade. Masquerade "Triumphant Minerva", arranged in Moscow during the coronation of Catherine II on January 30 - February 2, 1763. This masquerade took place on the streets of Moscow and consisted of a procession of disguised people in the following order: the herald of the masquerade with his retinue, Momus, or Mockingbird, Bacchus, Disagreement, Deception, Ignorance, Bribery, Perverse Light, Arrogance, Waste and Poverty, Vulcan, Jupiter, the Golden Age, Parnassus and the World, finally, Minerva and Virtue.
cerasts(Greek myth.) - horned people whose transformation into bulls is described in Ovid's Metamorphoses.
Cecrops(Greek myth.) - people turned into monkeys. The legend about this is told in Ovid's Metamorphoses.
Ixion(Greek myth.) - the king, who was punished by Zeus for the persecution of Hera - chained to an ever-spinning fiery wheel.
cythera, or Cythera - an island in
229the Greek archipelago, the place of a special cult of Venus - Aphrodite; there was a temple dedicated to her.
Thetis(Greek myth.) - a sea deity. From her marriage to Peleus, Achilles was born.
Tambours and bobbins- tambour (from French tambour - drum) - a type of embroidery, in which the fabric was pulled over a round hoop and held with straps, resembling a drum in appearance; bobbins - small sticks suspended from threads when weaving lace.
Book two.
Calisto, Daphnia, Armida... Angelica, Phrynea- names of mythological, historical and literary heroines. Kalisto is a character in Ovid's Metamorphoses, Daphne is the daughter of the river god Ladon and Gaia, the goddess of the earth; fleeing from Apollo pursuing her, she was adopted by her mother and turned into a laurel tree; Armida is a character in Tasso's poem "Jerusalem Delivered"; Angelica is a character in Ariosto's poem "Furious Roland"; Phrynea, or Phryne (5th century BC) - an ancient Greek geter, a friend of Pericles, famous for her beauty.
Apell, or Apelles (IV century BC) - Greek painter; here is mentioned as the author of a painting depicting Aphrodite.
Menander(342-292 BC) - ancient Greek playwright, author of everyday comedies.
Movie(1635-1688) - French playwright, author of tragedies and opera librettos.
Detouche(1680-1754) - French playwright.
Renjar(1656-1709) - French playwright, follower of Molière.
Rousseau Jean-Jacques (1712-1778) - credited here as author comic opera"Village Sorcerer" (1752).
Not knowing what to say, she often shouted: ah! This refers to the tragedy of F. Kozelsky "Pantea" (1769), where the exclamation "ah!" "Pantea" was greeted unkindly by satirical magazines in 1769. Novikov wrote in "Trutny" that "the tragedy of Mr. *, recently published, is useful to read only to those who took emetic medicine and it did not work" (N.I. Novikov. Satirical journals, 1952, p. 109). In "Experience historical dictionary about Russian writers" (1772) Novikov called "Pantea" "not very successful."
And for that she ordered the cupids to translate again in a serviceable style- refers to the "Assembly, trying to translate foreign books" created by Catherine II (1768-1783).
Various leaflets - apparently journals from 1769-1774, cockily went out- obviously, the journals of Novikov and Emin, and useful- magazine of Catherine II "All sorts of things" (1769).
Dressed up as a pallas, he threatens on a horse- apparently, the painting by S. Torelli "Catherine II in the image of Minerva" is meant.
Parterre- here: part of the garden with low cut trees.
Book three.
petimeter- dandy, fashionista.
Calculations- curly decorations on outerwear.
Three span tail- in court use the second half of XVIII century, the length of the "tail" (train) was strictly regulated depending on the title and rank.
Shpyn- joke.
Alcmene(Greek myth.) - the wife of Amphitrion; Zeus took possession of her, appearing in the form of her husband, and she gave birth to Hercules.
Praxiteles(IV century BC) - ancient Greek sculptor, whose works are known only in Roman copies. Of these, the statue of Aphrodite of Cnidus was especially famous.
230Serman I.Z. Comments: Bogdanovich. Dushenka // I.F. Bogdanovich. Poems and poems. L.: Soviet writer, 1957. S. 225-230. (Library of the poet; Large series).
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 a dark cave, and, having gone there, finds her husband. 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 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.
"Darling". The central, best work of Bogdanovich, which brought him fame, was Darling. It was created at a time when Bogdanovich had not yet finally become an "overcoat" poet, but when his departure from the progressive views and aspirations of his youth had already begun. Bogdanovich wrote it in the middle, or rather, in the second half of the 1770s. The first "book" of the poem was published in 1778 (with the title "Dushenka's adventures"); one must think that the rest of the poem was not yet ready. The poem was fully published only in 1783 (Bogdanovich made stylistic corrections of the text of the poem in its subsequent editions - 1794 and 1799). The transitional state of Bogdanovich's creativity left its mark on his poem.
"Darling" grew up on the basis of the stylistic tradition of the Kheraskov school; it owes a lot to the style of the fable (the very verse of the poem, a multi-layered iambic, connected it with the fable), and to the experience light story stories in Kheraskov's verses, and partly a heroic poem. The free speech of the narrator fits into the usual formulas developed by the poetry of the Kheraskov school. But the poetic system, perceived by Bogdanovich from a young age, in his poem begins to be rebuilt, serving other ideological and aesthetic tasks.
"Darling", like heroic poems, reduces kings, gods and heroes ancient world, but she is not "rude", she does not have the peculiar realism of "Elisei", there is no "low" nature, there are no muzhik coachmen. Bogdanovich strives in Darling for the grace of salon playfulness, just as he strives for the pastoral sophistication of the court ballet in his love lyrics(songs, idylls). The very eroticism of his poem is different than in Elisha - not the full-blooded semi-Barkovism of Elisha, but the frivolity of salon flirting.
"Darling", like Maikov's poem, despite its mythological plot, is not without polemical attacks. literary character and in general elements of topicality that violate its ancient decoration. But Bogdanovich wants to be "apolitical" in his poem, i.e. refrains from social and political criticism and teaching. Motifs of high-society modernity are woven into the outline of the story about the ancient Greeks. Greek characters inconspicuously turn Bogdanovich into nobles or kings of his era, and their environment is replaced by the environment of the St. Petersburg or Tsarskoye Selo palace festival. The description of the enchanted palace of Amur becomes a glorification of the palaces and parks of the Russian autocrat. The ancient myth is not given seriously, but in a travesty, in tones harmless joke ladies' man and flatterer. The entire apparatus of images and mythology of Bogdanovich is associated with ideas about ballets, holidays, painting and sculpture that adorned the palace.
The heroine of the poem herself often becomes like a complimentary portrait of Catherine II (see, for example, the description of the portrait of Dushenka in Book II, reminiscent of famous portrait Catherine on horseback). Bogdanovich includes in the poem both a complimentary allusion to the Moscow masquerade of 1763 "Triumphant Minerva" and an allusion to the organization of the "Meeting trying to translate foreign books" at Catherine's expense. Darling began to read:
Translations
famous creators;
But often she did not understand them,
And for that she ordered
Correct syllable again Cupids
translate,
So that they can be without burden
read.
Zephyrs, finally, were brought to the princess
Various sheets that are brought to light
From the most ancient years
Between useful presumptuous
went out
And they threatened with bales
Pull hard Helikon.
Princess, knowing who was unknown
law,
I didn’t violate the freedoms of the leaf-scribers,
But I haven't read their work.
Bogdanovich speaks in such a mockingly playful tone (in last verses cited passage) about the struggle between progressive journalism and official journalism in 1769-1773. The “various leaflets” that “came out insolently” were, of course, Novikov’s satirical leaflets, etc., while the “useful” leaflets that came out at the same time were, of course, “All sorts of things.”
The salon style of "Darling" absorbs without a trace the thought underlying ancient myth about Cupid and Psyche, about the love of the soul (ψυχή - in Greek - soul; hence the name of the heroine Bogdanovich). Bogdanovich followed in his poem the presentation not of Apuleius in his "Golden Ass", but of Lafontaine's novel "The Love of Psyche and Cupid" (1669), written in prose with poetic inserts. But Lafontaine, striving for the utmost simplicity of the story, set out to recreate the spirit of antiquity, as he understood it. Bogdanovich is not interested in either antiquity or myth per se. He writes an elegant fairy tale, and his task is to take the reader away from big and serious problems into the bright cheerful world jokes, light feelings, harmless sorrows, pink light. Therefore, his entire poem from beginning to end is playful, ironic. He overthrows all ideological idols with his grin. He laughs at people and gods, at love and suffering, at Venus and sometimes even at Darling herself. At the same time, his laughter is not the satirical laughter of a denying consciousness; it is a calm and indifferent laugh. Bogdanovich no longer believes in any ideals: he believes only in laughter, in the possibility of forgetting, in the fact that it is possible to fill the abyss in the soul with aesthetics, to replace real life with a smile, posture and admiring fictions.
Here, for example, the tsar, the father of Dushenka, in deep grief parted with his daughter, whom he was forced to leave on a mysterious mountain as prey to an unknown monster:
And finally, the king, bent into a hook with grief,
It was forcibly torn from the daughter's hands.
Mythological deities are depicted just as easily and jokingly, for example, Cupids serve Darling:
Another was in kravchih, the other wore dishes,
Another tired, and everyone popped everywhere;
And he considered himself a great honor,
To whom from the hands of their brownies their goddess
Half a glass of nectar deigned to bring.
And many stood before her with open mouths:
Though the Cupids are
In truth, they were by no means revered as greedy,
And more than wine
The princesses enjoyed their sight at that time.
Quite amusingly, the poem tells how Dushenka, expelled from Cupid's palace, decided to commit suicide, but unsuccessfully, since the caring deity removed all types of death from her. Finally, Dushenka was met by an old fisherman:
But who are you old man, he asked.
“I am Darling… I love Cupid…”
Then she cried like a fool
Then, without distant words with her,
The angler cried together
And all Nature sobbed with it.
So the very tears amuse Bogdanovich.
Bogdanovich followed a different path than Muravyov, but he essentially arrived at the same point; Muravyov said that the sweet beauties of art are "what God created to adorn the empty universe." Bogdanovich is engaged in this decoration; and it doesn’t matter to him whether to compliment Catherine or not. For him, his poem is only a fairy tale, a game of a devastated mind, “an easy game of imagination,” as Karamzin defined Darling, and all the images of a fairy tale are indifferent to him, equally fictitious, equally illusory.
Therefore, Bogdanovich recalls the morality of his tale, the meaning of its plot, only when the time has come to end it; That is why he is so little occupied with the plot of the myth and devotes most of all space and art to descriptions of the charming dreamy world of a fairy tale, blissful gardens, etc. Therefore, although he sometimes follows Lafontaine's exposition quite closely, he creates original work, because style, details, tone - everything is his own, and in style, details and tone the whole meaning of the poem as an expression of decadent aestheticism. The reader, who at that time already had in his hands in the Russian translation both the novel of Apuleius (translated by E.I. Kostrov, 1780), and the novel by La Fontaine (translated by F. Dmitriev-Mamonov, 1769), could easily see the very difference in the interpretation of a single plot in all three writers.
Thus, Bogdanovich's desire for elegance and lightness at all costs, his aestheticism were a manifestation of a deep crisis of noble self-awareness and literature. At the same time, in Darling, Bogdanovich did not sink into that swamp of vulgarity into which his official connections and successes later dragged him. In this masterpiece of his, he was still a master of verse, whose art grew on the basis of a tradition that came from Sumarokov through the work of Kheraskov and his entire school. Along with “Rossiada” and “Darling”, in terms of skill, style and verse, this school was the ultimate achievement, and Bogdanovich uses all the experience of his teachers accumulated over a quarter of a century in a specific direction - precisely in order to create easy, free poetic speech. Freeing his art from the tasks of active social struggle, he focuses on solving the problems of the expressive flexibility of the language, maintaining a chamber, intimate-conversational tone throughout the poem, not rising to the grandeur of the Rossiada and not sinking to the "common" rudeness of Sumarokov's fables. This "medium", smoothed, somewhat cutesy language of poetry, first developed in a large form by Bogdanovich, played big role in the history of Russian verbal art. He had a considerable influence on Karamzin and Dmitriev, he prepared the "light" poetry of the beginning of the 19th century, right up to Batyushkov, who not without reason highly appreciated Darling.
Bogdanovich taught Russian poets to convey in verse very subtle shades of the theme, to create elegant pattern-pictures, not real, but not alien to emotional charm. The straightforward clarity of Sumarokov's analysis gives way in Darling to the creation of a general synthetic representation, not "reasonable", but striving to influence fantasy. Bogdanovich creates in "Darling" a special language of poetry, poetry, aesthetic self-gratification, the language of "pleasure"; that is why he has such frequent words like "charming", "gentle", "secretly", "favorable", "sweet"; that is why he is looking for a harmonious, balanced phrase with an elegant finish. All this ephemeral element of poetic grace has nothing to do with the full-blooded element folk art. Bogdanovich does not aspire, when creating a fairy tale, to write a Russian fairy tale. But he uses some Russian motifs, if he needs them, as material to be included in the cosmopolitan fabric of the "light" poetry of refined salon intellectuals. Therefore, in "Darling" there is both "The Serpent Gorynich" and Kashchei, however, they are not in the least like real fairy tales - and they stand next to Apollo, Diana, Paris; there is a sundress next to it marble statues, chariot, oracle, fragrant soaps, etc. For Bogdanovich and Kashchei, and Apollo, and an oracle, and a sundress, and a fairy tale, and a myth, and a parody of a clerk's protocol, and a joke, and words of love - everything in the world has lost its true meaning: for him there is only a dream of beauty, oh light fantasies, saving from reality.
Belinsky wrote in "Literary Dreams" about "Darling":
“The imitators of Lomonosov, Derzhavin and Kheraskov stunned everyone with a loud overpowering; were already beginning to think that the Russian language was not capable of the so-called light poetry, which flourished so among the French, and at that very time a man appears with a fairy tale written plain language, natural and playful, style, according to that time, surprisingly light and smooth; everyone was amazed and delighted. This is the reason for the extraordinary success of Darling, which, however, is not without merit, not without talent. However, already in the article “Russian Literature in 1841”, Belinsky called “Darling” “heavy and clumsy”, and even earlier, in a note on “Darling” (1841), he wrote: “What is really this glorified , this notorious "Darling"? “Yes, nothing, absolutely nothing: a fairy tale written in heavy verse ... devoid of any poetry, completely alien to playfulness, grace, wit.”
Edition of the office of the privileged printing house of E. Fisher, in St. Petersburg. Saint Petersburg. 1841. In the 12th d. 78 pages
"Darling" was an extraordinary success in its time, perhaps even higher than the tragedies of Sumarokov, the comedies of Fonvizin, Derzhavin's ode, Kheraskov's Rossiad. Bogdanovich's shepherd's flute enchanted the ears of his contemporaries more than the trumpets and timpani of epic poems and solemn odes; his myrtle wreath was more seductive than the laurel wreaths of our Homers and Pindars of that time. Before the appearance of Ruslan and Lyudmila, our literature does not represent anything like such a brilliant triumph, if we exclude success. Poor Lisa» Karamzin. All poetic celebrities set about writing inscriptions for the portrait of the happy singer "Darling", and when he died, epitaphs on his coffin. One Dmitriev, once a poetic celebrity of the first magnitude, wrote three such epitaphs; here they are;
I
Attach to this urn, O grace! crown:
Here Bogdanovich sleeps, your favorite singer.
II
In peace, in dreams, all his summers flowed,
But he was attentively the mistress of half the world,
And Russia will keep it in his memory.
Son of Phoebus! be proud: here the favorite of the muses sleeps.
III
It seems that Bogdanovich's own brother wrote the following, once glorious couplet to the creator of "Darling";
Zephyr gave him a feather from his wings,
Cupid led with a pen, he wrote "Darling" .
Batyushkov sang of Bogdanovich in his beautiful message to Zhukovsky "My penates", along with other celebrities of Russian literature:
Behind them is a beautiful Sylph,
Pupil Harit,
On the sweet-voiced zither
About Darling strumming;
Meletsky with you
Calls with a smile
And with him, hand with hand,
A hymn of joy is sung.
Karamzin wrote an analysis of "Darling", in which he tried to prove that Bogdanovich defeated La Fontaine, forgetting that La Fontaine's fairy tale, if written in prose, then in elegant prose, in a language already established, without truncations, without violent stresses, that La Fontaine also has naivety, and the wit and grace so akin to the French genius.
The critic cites two “Tombstones for I. F. Bogdanovich, the author of “Darling” (both - 1803) and the poem “I. F. Bogdanovich, author of "Darling" (1803; there are inaccuracies in the quote).
The author of this couplet is P. P. Beketov (cousin of I. I. Dmitriev), publisher of the works of I. F. Bogdanovich. The poet's brother, Ivan Bogdanovich, wrote another couplet: There is no need to dazzle that grave with inscriptions, Where is Darling, one can replace everything.
This refers to the article by N. M. Karamzin “On Bogdanovich and his writings” (“Bulletin of Europe”, 1803,? 9–10; see: N. M. Karamzin. Selected works, vol. II. M.-L. , " Fiction", 1964, p. 198-226).
Ippolit Fedorovich Bogdanovich (1743-1803) entered the history of Russian literature
poems: magical and fabulous. Further development of this genre was expressed in
replacing the ancient content with images drawn from the national Russian
folklore. "Darling" stands on the periphery of Russian classicism, with which she
tied antique plot to some edifying narrative. Plot
"Darling" goes back to ancient Greek myth about the love of Cupid and Psyche, from
whose marriage the goddess of pleasure was born. This legend as an insert
short stories were included in the book "The Golden Ass" by the Roman writer Apuleius. IN late XVII
V. the work "The Love of Psyche and Cupid", written in prose with
unlike his predecessors, Bogdanovich created his own poetic
work, completely abandoning the prose text.
The plot of "Darling" is a fairy tale, widespread among many peoples, -
the marriage of a girl with a certain fantastic creature. Husband puts before
spouse a strict condition that she must not violate. wife can't stand it
trials, after which there is a long separation of the spouses. But at the end
in the end, the loyalty and love of the heroine leads to the fact that she reconnects with
husband. In Russian folklore, one of the samples of such a fairy tale is “Scarlet
flower."
Bogdanovich supplemented the fairy-tale basis of the plot he chose with images of Russian
folk tale. These include the Serpent Gorynych, Kashchei, the Tsar Maiden, in her
there is living and dead water, kissel banks, a garden with golden apples.
Greek name heroines - Psyche - Bogdanovich replaced the Russian word Dushenka.
Unlike heroic poems type "Iliad", "Darling", served purely
entertainment purposes.
The humorous manner of narration is preserved in relation to all the heroes of the poem,
starting with the gods and ending. mortals. Ancient deities are exposed in the poem
easy travesty, but it is devoid of Bogdanovich's rudeness and
obscenities of Maikov's "Elisey". Each of the gods is endowed with pure
human weaknesses: - arrogance and vindictiveness, Jupiter -
sensuality, Juno - indifference to someone else's grief. Not devoid of well-known
shortcomings and Dushenka herself. She is trusting, innocent and curious. From
ancient and classic heroic poems "Darling" differs not only
Alexandrian verse. Bogdanovich turned to the multi-foot iambic with freestyle
rhyming.
"Darling" is written in the Rococo style, popular in aristocratic society.
18th century Its representatives in painting, sculpture, poetry liked to turn to
antique mythological subjects, to which they gave a coquettish-graceful
erotic character. The constant characters of Rococo art were Venus,
Cupid, Zephyr, Triton, etc. In French painting XVIII V. most
famous representatives of the Rococo A. Watteau and F. Boucher. Belinsky explained
the popularity of "Darling" precisely by its features, its verse and language. "Imagine
to yourself,” he wrote, “that you are stunned by the thunder, by the clatter of pompous words and phrases…
And just at that time a man appears with a fairy tale written in simple language,
natural and playful... This is the reason for the extraordinary success of Darling.
At the same time, she expanded the boundaries of the genre of the poem itself. Bogdanovich the first
offered an example of a fairy tale poem. "Darling" will be followed by "Ilya Muromets"
Karamzin, "Bova" Radishcheva, "Alyosha Popovich" N. A. Radishcheva, "Svetlana and
Mstislav" by Vostokov and, finally, "Ruslan and Lyudmila" by Pushkin.
Sentimentalism and its role in the development of Russian literature, originality
aesthetic ideal.
Poetry M.N. Muraviev. Genre composition style features.
In the second half of the XVIII century. In many European countries distributed by
a new literary movement called sentimentalism. His
appearance was caused by a deep crisis experienced by the feudal-
absolutist regime. Sentimental literature reflects the mood
broad strata European society. By ideological orientation sentimentalism
One of the phenomena of the Enlightenment. The anti-feudal pathos of his works is especially
is clearly expressed in the preaching of the extra-class value of the human personality.
The best samples sentimental literature were recognized as "Sentimental
a journey through France and Italy" by Stern, "The Priest of Wakefield" by Goldsmith,
"Julia, or New Eloise" by Rousseau, "The Sufferings of Young Werther" by Goethe.
Unlike the classicists, the sentimentalists declared highest value Not
state, but a person whose needs, in their opinion, should be met
government laws and institutions. By the unjust order of the feudal world
Sentimentalist Enlighteners contrasted eternal and reasonable laws
nature. In this regard, nature appears in their works not only as
object of contemplation and admiration, but also as the highest measure of all values, including
including the person himself. Official institutions of the absolutist state
sentimentalists opposed unions based on natural, kindred
relationships or mutual sympathy: family and friendship. In the family they saw the most
a strong social cell, and in a good home upbringing of a child - a guarantee
his future civic virtues. The next step in the formation
social behavior of a person was considered friendship, in which the main role
plays the similarity of views, tastes, beliefs.
Sentimentalists have a paramount place in the ideas of feelings, or,
as they said in Russia in the 18th century, sensitivity. From this word (in
French sentiment) received the name and the literary movement itself. IN
unlike classicism, the philosophical basis of which was rationalism,
sentimentalism relied on the sensationalist philosophy of the English scientist
Locke, who declared the starting point of knowledge - sensations. Sensitivity
is understood by sentimentalists not only as an instrument of knowledge, but also as an area
emotions, experiences, as the ability to respond to the joys and sufferings of others
people, that is, as the basis of social solidarity. In the Dictionary of the Academy
Russian, issued at the end of the 18th century, the word "sensitivity"
was defined as "the quality of a person touched by the misfortunes of another."
Like any gift of nature, sensitivity needs to be nurtured and
guidance from parents and mentors. Sensitivity is affected by
a person's position in society. People who are accustomed to care and think not only
about themselves, but also about others, preserve and develop natural sensitivity; those,
who is protected by wealth or nobility from work and duties, quickly
lose it, become rude and cruel.
The political structure of society also affects human nature:
despotic rule kills the sensitivity in people, weakens them
solidarity, free society favors the formation of social
emotions. Sensitivity, according to the teachings of the enlighteners-sensualists, is the basis
"passions", volitional impulses that prompt a person to various, including
and social action. Therefore, in the best works sentimentalism she
Not fair-heartedness, not tearfulness, but a precious gift of nature that determines
his civic virtues.
Sensitivity is at the heart of creative method writers-
sentimentalists. Classicists typified moral qualities of people,
created generalized characters of a hypocrite, a miser, a braggart, etc. They were interested in
not specific a real man, but the traits inherent in the type. Their main role
played the abstract mind of the writer, isolating the same type of psychological
phenomena and embodying them in one character.
The creative method of the sentimentalists rests not on reason, but on feelings, on
sensations reflecting reality in its individual manifestations. Their
interested specific people with individual destiny. In this regard, in
works of sentimentalism often feature real-life faces,
sometimes even keeping their name. It does not deprive sentimental heroes
typicality, since their features are thought of as characteristic of the environment to
to which they belong. Heroes in the works of sentimentalism are clearly divided
on positive and negative. The first are endowed with natural
sensitivity. They are responsive, kind, compassionate, capable of
self-sacrifice, to the high, selfless love. The second is prudent
selfish, arrogant, pedantic, cruel. Carriers of sensitivity
as a rule, there are representatives of the democratic strata of society:
peasants, artisans, commoners, rural clergy. hardheartedness
endowed with representatives of power, nobles, higher spiritual ranks.
The discovery by sentimentalists of a new kind of attitude was a step in
forward movement literary process. However, its manifestation
often acquired in the works of sentimentalists too external and even
exaggerated character, expressed in exclamations, tears, fainting,
suicides. Sentimentalism is characterized, as a rule, by prosaic
genres: short story, novel (most often epistolary), diary, "journey", vol.
e. travel notes to help uncover inner world heroes and
In Russia, sentimentalism originates in the 60s, but its best works are
"Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow" by Radishchev, "Letters from a Russian
traveler" and the story of Karamzin - refer to last decade
18th century As in others literary trends, community of creative
method of writers does not mean the identity of their political and social views,
In Russian sentimentalism, two trends can be distinguished: democratic,
represented by the work of A. N. Radishchev and writers close to him - N. S.
Smirnov and I.I. Martynov, and more extensive in its composition - noble,
prominent figures of which were M. M. Kheraskov, M. N. Muravyov, I. I.
Dmitriev, N. M. Karamzin, P. Yu. Lvov, Yu. A. Neledinsky-Meletsky, P. I.
Unlike Western European sentimentalism, where the main social
the conflict was represented by the relationship between the third estate and
aristocracy, in Russian sentimentalism the heroes-antagonists were
serf and serf landowner. Democratic
currents, sympathizing with the serfs, insistently emphasize their
moral superiority over the feudal lords. In their works
the sensitivity of the peasants is contrasted with spiritual coarsening, cruelty
landowners. Sentimentalist democrats do not idealize the life of the peasants,
they are afraid to show its anti-aesthetic details: dirt, poverty.
The sensitivity of the heroes is represented here most widely and diversely -
from tenderness and joy to anger and indignation. One of its manifestations
be severe retribution against their offenders.
Noble sentimentalists also talk about the moral superiority of the peasants
over the landowners, but the facts of violence, heartlessness and arbitrariness of the feudal
presented in their works as an exception, as a kind of
offender's delusion, but most often end with his sincere repentance.
They write with great pleasure about kind, humane landowners, about
harmonious relations between them and the peasants. Noble sentimentalists
consistently bypass the rough features of peasant life. Hence the famous
a touch of pastorality in the village scenes they depict. Gamma
the sensitivity of the heroes here is much poorer than in the democratic
sentimentalism. Villagers are generally kind, loving, humble
and obedient. And yet it would be wrong to call noble sentimentalism
reactionary phenomenon. Its main goal is to restore in the eyes of society
trampled human dignity serf, reveal him
spiritual wealth, depict family and civic virtues. And although
writers of this trend did not dare to raise the question of the abolition of serfdom
rights, but their activities prepared public opinion to resolution
