3. Features of Batyushkov's romanticism.

Belinsky, defining the originality of the poetry of the author of The Bacchae, wrote: “The direction of Batyushkov's poetry is completely opposite to the direction of Zhukovsky's poetry. If uncertainty and vagueness are the distinctive character of romanticism in the spirit of the Middle Ages, then Batyushkov is as much a classic as Zhukovsky is a romantic. But more often the critic praised him as a romantic.

Batyushkov's work is very complex and contradictory. This gives rise to great discord in his assessment. Some critics and literary scholars consider him a neoclassicist (P. A. Pletnev, P. N. Sakulin, N. K. Piksanov). Based on the poet's obvious connections with sentimentalism, he is perceived either as a sentimentalist (A. N. Veselovsky), or as a pre-romantic (N. V. Fridman). Exaggerating the roll calls characteristic of Batyushkov with Zhukovsky, he was ranked among the "dull" romanticism. But Batyushkov, experiencing at the beginning of his work the partial influence of classicism (“God”), and then humanistic-elegiac romanticism, did not belong to the orthodox adherents of either classicism or elegiac romanticism. All his literary activity, poetic and theoretical, basically unfolded in an unceasing struggle against classicism and its epigones. Clearly aiming for classicism, he asked in his “Message to N. I. Gnedich”: “What is in loud songs for me?” Batyushkov spoke in the difficult conditions of the transitional time: the outgoing but still active epigone classicism, the growing sentimentalism, the emerging and gaining popularity of humanistic-elegiac romanticism. And this is reflected in his poetry. But, experiencing and overcoming the impact of literary influences, Batyushkov was formed mainly as a poet of hedonistic-humanistic romanticism. His poetry is characterized by the creation of an objective image of a lyrical hero, an appeal to reality, expressed, according to Belinsky, in particular, in the introduction of “events under the form of memory” into some elegies. All this was news in the literature of the time.

A large number of Batyushkov's poems are called friendly messages. In these messages, the problems of the social behavior of the individual are posed and solved. Batyushkov's ideal in artistic embodiment is certainty, naturalness and sculpture. In the poems “To Malvina”, “Merry Hour”, “Bacchante”, “Taurida”, “I feel my gift in poetry has gone out” and similar ones, he achieves almost realistic clarity and simplicity. In "Tavrida" the heartfelt initial appeal: "Dear friend, my angel!" The image of the heroine is plastic, ruddy and fresh, like a "rose of the field", sharing "work, worries and lunch" with her beloved. Here, the alleged circumstances of the life of the heroes are also outlined: a simple hut, "a home key, flowers and a rural garden." Admiring this poem, Pushkin wrote: “By feeling, by harmony, by the art of versification, by luxury and negligence, “the best elegy of Batyushkov’s imagination.” But the elegy “I feel my gift in poetry has gone out” is not inferior to it. , with the sincerity of her appeal to her beloved, she anticipates the best realistic elegies of Pushkin.

The details of the life of the lyrical hero ("Evening", "My penates") testify to the invasion of the poetry of everyday life. In the poem "Evening" (1810), the poet speaks of the "staff" of a decrepit shepherdess, the "smoky hut", the "sharp plow" of the yelling, the flimsy "rook" and other specific details of the circumstances he recreates.

The bright plasticity of Batyushkov's best works is determined by the strict purposefulness of all means of their depiction. So, the poem "To Malvina" begins with a comparison of a beauty with a rose. The next four stanzas play on and expand on this comparison. And the graceful work ends with a wish-recognition: “Let gentle roses be proud On the lilies of your chest! Ah, dare I, my dear, confess? I would die a rose on it. The poem "Bacchante" recreates the image of a priestess of love. Already in the first stanza, which reports on the rapid run of the Bacchus priestesses to the holiday, their emotionality, impetuosity, passion are emphasized: “The winds blew their loud howl, splash and groans with noise.” The further content of the poem is the development of the motive of spontaneous passion. Belinsky wrote about the elegy “On the ruins of a castle in Sweden” (1814): “How everything in it is sustained, complete, finished! What a luxurious and at the same time resilient, strong verse!

Batyushkov's poetry is characterized by a complex evolution. If in his early poems he is inclined to express and depict mental states more or less statically (“How happiness slowly comes”), then in the prime of his work the poet draws them in development, dialectically, in complex contradictions (“Separation”; “The Fate of Odysseus "; "To friend").

Batyushkov's works, embodying natural, individual feelings and passions, did not fit into the usual genre-specific formations and poetic metro-rhythmic schemes of classicism, intended to express abstract feelings. Following Zhukovsky, the poet also contributed to the development of syllabo-tonic verse. "Light poetry", which demanded naturalness, spontaneity, led Batyushkov to widely appeal to the iambic variety, which is distinguished by colloquialism, expressiveness, and flexibility. According to I. N. Rozanov, almost two thirds of his poems were written in this size (“Dream”, “Message to N. I. Gnedich”, “Reminiscence”, etc.). But for most of the most cheerful lyrical works glorifying love, Batyushkov preferred a playful trochee ("To Filisa", "False Fear", "Lucky". "Ghost", "Bacchante"). Expanding the possibilities of syllabotonics, the poet, in addition to the four-foot (“How happiness slowly comes”), the six-foot (“Message to my poems”) iambic, also uses the three-foot one. The liveliness of the message "My penates", written in iambic trimeter, evoked the praise of Pushkin and Belinsky.

Batyushkov in a number of poems showed examples of strophic art and a remarkable mastery of the symmetrical construction of the verse (“On the death of the wife of F.F. Kokoshkin”, “To a friend”, “The Song of Harald the Bold”, “Crossing the Rhine”). Giving his poems ease, the immediacy of the flow of feelings and thoughts, he more often uses free stanza, but even in it he strives for symmetry (“Merry Hour”).

Taking care of the naturalness of poetry, the poet pays much attention to their harmony. He loves the musical consonances of consonants: “They play, dance and sing” (“To Malvina”); “The clock is winged! don’t fly” (“Advice to friends”); “She shone in all her grandeur” (“Recollection”); "Horses with a silver rein!" ("Lucky"). Skillfully repeating, concentrating the sounds n, r, b, etc., the poet creates a whole musical symphony in the poem: “You awaken, O Baia, from the tomb When aurora rays appear ...” (1819).

Batyushkov is one of the first among poets to violate the absolute boundaries between genres established by the classicists. He gives the message the properties of either an elegy (“To a friend”), or a historical elegy (“To Dashkov”), he enriches the genre of the elegy and turns it into a lyrical-epic work (“Crossing the Rhine”, “Hesiod and Omir are rivals”, "Dying Tass").

Expanding the possibilities of colloquial speech in poetry, Batyushkov achieves immediacy in verse: “Give me a simple flute, Friends! and sit around me under this thick shadow of the elm. Where freshness breathes in the middle of the day ”(“ Advice to Friends ”). But at the same time, where necessary, he turns to anaphoras (“An excerpt from the XXXIV song of the “Furious Orland”), inversions (“Shadow of a friend”) and other means of syntactic representation.

Democratizing the literary language, the poet is not afraid of words and expressions of a wider range than the society of the enlightened nobility, dear to him. We will find appropriately used words in him: “crash” (“Advice to friends”), “stomping” (“Joy”), “blushing” (“Prisoner”).

The plastic expressiveness of Batyushkov's works is also assisted by precise, concrete visual means, in particular epithets. He has a red youth, a merry Bacchus, winged hours, green meadows, transparent streams (“Advice to friends”), frisky and lively nymphs, a sweet dream (“Merry Hour”), an innocent maiden (“Source”), curly groves (“ Joy”), the camp is slender, the cheeks of the girl are flaming (“Bacchae”).

But, fully mastering the art of the artistic word and brilliantly showing it in many beautiful lyrical creations, Batyushkov also left poems, to one degree or another unfinished. This was also noted by Belinsky. According to his observation, the poet's lyrical works are predominantly "below the talent he discovered" and far from fulfilling "the expectations and requirements he himself aroused." In them there are difficult, clumsy turns and phrases: “Rather by the sea, one can sail comfortably on a rolled boat” (“N. I. Gnedich”, 1808). Or: “Guided by the Muses, penetrated into the days of youth” (“To Tass”, 1808). They are not always spared from unjustified archaism: in the elegy "The Dying Tass", written in 1817, there are words that clearly fall out of her style: "koshnitsy", "kiss", "vesi", "finger", “mature”, “fire”, “woven”, “right hand”, “stoghnam”, “voice”, “non-violent”.

Batyushkov is a remarkable connoisseur of antiquity. He introduces historical and mythological names of this world into his poems. The poem "Dream" recalls marshmallows, nymphs, graces, cupids, Anacreon, Sappho, Horace and Apollo, and in the poem "Advice to friends" - nymphs, Bacchus, Eros. He has poems "To Malvina", "Message to Chloe", "To Filisa". However, the abundance of ancient names, historical and mythological in the poems about modernity, undoubtedly introduces stylistic diversity. That is why Pushkin remarked about the message “My Penates”: “The main flaw in this charming message is the too obvious mixing of ancient mythological customs with the customs of a villager living in a village near Moscow.” In this poem, in a “wretched hut” with a “dilapidated and tripod table”, “hard bedding”, “meager junk”, “goblets”, “golden bowl” and “a bed of flowers” ​​coexist.

Crisis of outlook, historical elegies, anthological poems. Remaining faithful to the Epicurean muse, Batyushkov wrote in 1817: “He is forever young who sings Love, wine, erotica.” But at that time, “light poetry”, full of cheerfulness, had already lost its leading role in his work. In the second period his creative path, which begins around 1813, the poet enters a period of ideological doubts, hesitations and disappointments.

The unstoppable onset of the "Iron Age" of bourgeois-capitalist relations, the aggravated social contradictions, grossly destroyed the poet's sweet dream of an independent, peaceful, happy life of huts far from cities. He was literally shocked by the devastating events endured by the peoples, especially by compatriots, in the war of 1812. In October 1812, he wrote to N. I. Gnedich from Nizhny Novgorod: and in history itself, completely upset my little philosophy and quarreled me with humanity.

Life inexorably destroyed Batyushkov's enlightening philosophy. He entered a period of ideological crisis.

4. “Thoughts” by Ryleev, features of the genre.

K. F. Ryleev is rightfully considered the greatest poet and head of the Decembrist romanticism. On the eve of December 14, 1825, and on the day of the speech, he played an active role, in fact replacing the intended dictator Trubetskoy, who betrayed the rebels at the last moment. Ryleev was particularly blamed for an attempt to persuade “Kakhovsky early in the morning of December 14 ... to enter the Winter Palace and, as if committing an independent terrorist act, kill Nikolai. "Ranked among those who plotted regicide, he was sentenced to death. His name removed from the literature.

In 1823-1825. Ryleev worked on the completion of the "Duma" cycle, begun earlier. These were works of a special genre structure. Written on historical material, they differed markedly from historical poems and ballads. Duma as a genre combines the features of an ode, elegy, poem, ballad and, to be a historical story in verse.In Ryleev's creative attitude, when creating thoughts, an educational, instructive desire prevailed.

Feeling that Russia was on the eve of a revolutionary explosion and a decisive transition to the future, Ryleev turned to the past. This is not a departure from actual problems, but an attempt to solve them in a special way. Ryleev had a deeply thought-out plan: to create a series of works about heroes, whose example would contribute to the education of qualities useful for society - patriotism, civic responsibility, hatred of tyrants.

"Dumas" is not a collection of disparate works, at least close in theme: it is, in the strict sense of the word, a cycle - a supra-genre (or super-genre) combination of a number of works to reveal the idea, to embody content that is not disclosed and is not expressed in each individual term, but in full appear only within the boundaries of the entire cycle.The picture of reality in the cycles is created according to the mosaic principle.Individual works mutually complement each other.The connection between them is formed not by direct authorial indications, but due to proximity, adjoining, mutual parallels, allusions; figurative roll call. These connections, which are not declared in the word, are meaningful, and as a result, in addition to the sum of the content of individual terms, there is also an additional content or, according to the definition of academician VV Vinogradov, "an increment of poetic meaning."

Apparently, Ryleev himself was aware of the innovative nature of his cycle, unusual for the Russian reader of that time. Therefore, he considered it necessary to “help” the reader by explaining the essence of his intention in the general introduction, and then he gave an explanation for each work in the form of a brief preface or note. folk history, to make love for the fatherland with the first impressions of memory - this is a sure way to instill in the people a strong attachment to the motherland: nothing can erase these first impressions, these early concepts. They grow stronger with age and create warriors, brave men for battle valiant for advice."

As you can see, this is a poetic interpretation of the political program of the "Union of Welfare": a long, over two decades, education of a whole generation for the revolution planned for the mid-40s. "Dumas" in this sense are educational works. Literature turns into a tool with the help of which, in fact, non-literary goals must be achieved.

The complex, multi-layered structure created by Ryleev with many internal connections had to correspond to the richness and social significance of the content of the “Duma” cycle. The objective content of the history of Russia is not only set out and mastered at different poetic levels, but also repeatedly refracted from different angles of view. In principle, this should it was to give a convex, voluminous expression to individual episodes and the whole picture of the country's historical development.

In the spirit of that time, Ryleev, in order to justify his innovation, decided to refer to authorities, to the long-standing roots of the phenomenon, to the long-standing nature of the genre: “Duma, an ancient heritage from our southern brothers, our Russian, native invention. The Poles took it from us." In fact, by borrowing, he entered into competition with a foreign tradition, created a really new genre and laid the foundation for his own tradition. As a result of creative searches and discoveries, the Ryleeva Duma took root in the genre system of Russian poetry. Pushkin and Lermontov.She then took on a special form with Nekrasov, Blok and Yesenin.

The combination of thoughts into a cycle turned out to be especially promising.
In fact, this is the first cycle in Russian literature: following Ryleev
began to create their own systems of poems, short stories, essays, stories, dramas and even novels, almost all major writers
Russia from Pushkin's "Tales of Belkin" and "Little Tragedies", and then Turgenev's "Notes of a Hunter" to satirical
cycles of Saltykov-Shchedrin and Gorky's Russian Fairy Tales.
development of the world artistic consciousness has approached the level
on which the coverage of the personal and social life of a person according to
demanded an appeal to new forms of the epic. Cyclization was
one of the manifestations of this need for epic reflection
and portrayal of reality.

In his thoughts, Ryleev sought to illuminate the history of Russia from other positions than Karamzin. In fact, borrowing a lot from him, Ryleev rethought what he had taken in the light of the Decembrist views. The revolutionary romantic poet entered into an ideological dispute with the court historiographer on the most important question for that time about the role of the autocracy in the unification and strengthening of Russia. And this anti-Karamzin attitude of his can be clearly seen in the depiction of events and heroes of the past. So, if Karamzin argued that the autocracy saved Russia from foreign invaders, if he believed that the great power and modern culture were created by the autocracy, then Ryleev has other ideas on this score. And they are revealed not in direct assessments (although there are such), but in figurative roll calls. Here, for example, Yermak is depicted: the conqueror of Siberia, the destroyer of the predatory kingdom on the borders of Russia, the hero who pushed apart and strengthened the boundaries of the fatherland. All this was accomplished by Yermak without the support of the central government, at the time of the misfortunes that befell Russia under the ill-fated Ivan the Terrible. On the one hand - a genuine heroic deed, a match for the exploits of ancient heroes. And on the other - scorched Moscow during the raid of the Crimean Khan, the corpses of the killed, suffocated, trampled Muscovites - tens of thousands of dead. Defeated armies on the western, northwestern borders of Russia. The violent villainy of the mad lord on the throne.

Ryleev does the same in other cases. Officially glorified, sometimes ranked as saints, Ryleev’s lords appear either as tyrants, or as fratricides, rapists, lechers on the throne, hypocrites and intriguers. The church called Vladimir of Kyiv a saint - for the adoption of Christianity. And Ryleev seems to be unaware of this fact and its significance in the history of Russia. But he remembers Vladimir's polygamy, recalls his vindictiveness and cruelty. At the moment of the plot action, he is ready to kill Rogneda, the mother of his son, in front of his eyes! The church, tortured in the Horde of Mikhail Tverskoy, is also a saint, but they tortured him at the instigation of the Moscow prince! Ryleev cautiously recalls this in a brief preface. And in the “Boris Godunov” thought, the tsar on the throne is directly called a thief of power, who cut off the legitimate dynasty, a murderer, a man with a troubled conscience. Not a tyrant-fighter, but a new tyrant, a student of Ivan the Terrible!

Pushkin had objections to Ryleev's "Dums". In May 1825, he expressed his opinion in a letter to Ryleev: in one cut: made up of common places ... Description of the scene, the speech of the hero and - moralizing. There is nothing national, Russian in them except names (I exclude Ivan Susanin, the first thought, according to which I began to suspect a true talent in you) ".

Pushkin's objections were of two kinds. On the one hand, he believed that none - even the highest! - the goal does not justify anti-historicism. So, he insistently demanded that Ryleev from the Duma "Oleg the Prophet" remove the ill-fated "shield with the coat of arms of Russia", allegedly nailed to the gates of Constantinople. What coat of arms of Russia could be discussed at the beginning of the 10th century?! Then there was Kievan Rus, and the coat of arms (if only the double-headed eagle was meant by the coat of arms) appeared almost six centuries later, under Ivan III, in Moscow, which did not yet exist during the raids of the Eastern Slavs on Constantinople. The romantic poet projected the recent events of 1812 onto this majestic past, onto ancient Russia: the expulsion of Napoleon, the march of the Russian armies to the West, the capture of Paris ... But the realist poet categorically rejected such allusions: history should be portrayed as it was in fact. He did not believe that such "little things" could be ignored. Moreover, he decisively disagreed with Ryleyev about his well-known statement: "I am not a poet, but a citizen." Pushkin considered it unacceptable to reduce poetry to a service level, did not accept Ryleev's objections that "the forms of poetry in general are given too much importance."

In response to this, Pushkin resolutely declared: "If someone writes poetry, then first of all he should be a poet, but if you just want to be a citizen, then write in prose."

Ryleev died long before the full flowering of his talent, without completing the dispute with Pushkin, without realizing almost most of his plans. For all that, his contribution to the development of Russian poetry is truly unique.

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K. N. BATYUSHKOV

“Batiushkov contributed much and much to the fact that Pushkin was what he really was. This merit alone on the part of Batyushkov is enough for his name to be pronounced in the history of Russian literature with love and respect. 1 These words of Belinsky, clearly and aptly defining the place of the poet in the history of Russian literature as Pushkin's closest predecessor, can be found in many studies devoted to Batyushkov's work. However, another important side of Belinsky's statements about Batyushkov does not always remain uncovered. Belinsky, who was very fond of Batyushkov's poetry, insisted that it had an independent ideological and artistic value. He wrote about this: "Batyushkov, as a strong and original talent, was an inimitable creator of his own special poetry in Russia." 2 Indeed, Batyushkov's poetry has firmly entered the golden fund of Russian classical art of the word. The best examples of Batyushkov's lyrics have stood the test of time: they still instill in our contemporaries the nobility of feelings and impeccable aesthetic taste. The creator of these rare artistic masterpieces was a man whose fate was very tragic.

Konstantin Nikolayevich Batyushkov was born in Vologda on May 29 (new style), 1787, into an old but impoverished noble family. From the age of ten, he was brought up in St. Petersburg private boarding houses Zhakino and Tripoli, where he mastered French and Italian, which allowed him to subsequently show his remarkable talent as a translator. But a particularly important, one might say decisive, role in Batyushkov's upbringing was played by his great-uncle, the writer M. N. Muravyov, who had a huge impact on the cultural interests of the future poet and their general direction. "I owe him everything," confessed Batyushkov, 1 who in 1814 published a heartfelt article on Muravyov's writings. Young Batyushkov, who later became one of the most educated people in contemporary Russia, discovers a passionate love for reading and gets acquainted with the best works of Russian and foreign literature (for example, as a fourteen-year-old boy, he asks his father to send him the works of Lomonosov and Sumarokov, as well as Voltaire's "Candide" ).

After graduating from the boarding school in 1803, Batyushkov remained in St. Petersburg and, as a clerk, entered the service of the Ministry of Public Education. Here he becomes close to N. I. Gnedich, who served in the same ministry, and who forever became his best friend. Batyushkov’s colleagues were also writers who were members of the Free Society of Literature, Sciences and Arts: the son of the author of Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow N. A. Radishchev, I. P. Pnin, I. M. Born and others. On April 22, 1805, Batyushkov joined the Free Society, around which many followers of A. N. Radishchev grouped, expressing and propagating the advanced ideas of their time. Speaking for the first time in print in January 1805 in the journal News of Russian Literature with "Message to My Poems", Batyushkov then collaborated in the organs published by members of the "Free Society" and persons close to him - "Northern Bulletin" and "Journal of the Russian literature". However, Batyushkov’s connection with the Free Society was not long-lasting: it actually ceased.

even before 1807, after which the society was headed by writers who were very far from democratic views.

The service gave Batyushkov the opportunity to get acquainted with prominent figures of Russian culture. But at the same time, the poet was immensely burdened by being “in the offices, between servants, hypocrites and clerks” (III, 149), “the yoke of positions, often insignificant and vain” (II, 121), and when he served in the Ministry of Public Education, and when later - in 1812 - he became an assistant curator of manuscripts in the St. Petersburg Public Library. From the work of a petty official, Batyushkov was repelled not only by its burdensomeness. Friendly supporting Gnedich, busy translating Homer's Iliad, he remarked: “Serving in dust and ashes, copying, writing out, scribbling whole dozens around, bowing to the left and then to the right, walking like a snake and a toad, you would now be a man, but you did not want to lose freedom and preferred poverty and Homer to money” (III, 158). It is curious that Batyushkov, long before the appearance of Griboedov's Woe from Wit, anticipated Chatsky's phrase directed against bureaucratic careerism: "I would be glad to serve, it is sickening to serve." “I served and will serve as best I can,” Batyushkov wrote, “I will not curry favor, following the example of others ... » (III, 362).

In addition, service in the offices gave the poet only a very limited livelihood. Batiushkov often complains of chronic lack of money. In one of his letters to Vyazemsky, he introduces a bitterly ironic poetic impromptu, depicting the image of a poet who does not even have money to buy ink:

And I, out of avarice, in exchange for my ink
On a leash, I paint the wall with charcoal. one

“I hate civilian service,” Batyushkov admitted (III, 8). His attitude towards military service was different. V. A. Zhukovsky had the right to call his friend not only a “singer of love”, but also a “brave warrior” (“To the Portrait of Batyushkov”).

Back in 1807, Batyushkov enlisted in the militia, created during the second war of Russia against Napoleonic France, and made a trip to Prussia. In the battle of Heilsberg, the poet was seriously wounded in the leg; he was carried half-dead from a pile of dead and wounded comrades. In 1808-1809, Batyushkov took part in the war with Sweden and made campaigns in Finland and the Aland Islands. During the Patriotic War, Batyushkov, despite his bad health, did not want to stay away from the fight against Napoleon. “I decided, and firmly decided,” writes Batyushkov to P. A. Vyazemsky, “to go to the army, where duty calls, and reason, and a heart, a heart deprived of rest by the terrible incidents of our time” (III, 205). In 1813, Batyushkov was again enrolled in military service, taking part in fierce battles, in particular in the famous “battle of the peoples” near Leipzig (at that time the poet was adjutant to General N. N. Raevsky Sr.), and as part of the Russian army, “ covered with dust and blood ", in 1814 he ends up in Paris forced to capitulate. Thus, Batyushkov became an eyewitness and participant in the greatest historical events. Informing a friend about the “military miracles” that quickly followed one after another during the campaign of the Russian army in France, he exclaimed: “I often, like Thomas the unfaithful, feel my head and ask: my God, is it me? I am often surprised at trifles and soon I will not be surprised at the most important incident ”(III, 256).

After the end of hostilities, Batyushkov visited London and Stockholm and returned to Russia in the summer of 1814. In his own words, he "returned to sorrows" (III, 292). Indeed, his life is tragic. A talented and educated poet, among whose close acquaintances and friends were such prominent figures of Russian culture as N. M. Karamzin, V. A. Zhukovsky, P. A. Vyazemsky, I. A. Krylov, A. N. Olenin and others , felt everywhere unnecessary and superfluous. Batyushkov did not have a solid material basis for existence. His small neglected estate gave very little income, he did not want to go to the civil service again. A heavy blow for Batyushkov was his forced refusal to marry his beloved woman - A.F. Furman, who did not reciprocate. 1 After this break, which occurred in 1815, he fell ill with a severe nervous breakdown.

Batyushkov's work dates back to the reign of Alexander I, when the government's policy was marked by external liberalism, but in fact remained reactionary. One should not be surprised that Russian reality seemed

poet completely bleak and gloomy. This was connected with Batyushkov's constant complaints about the very obsessive boredom that tormented both Pushkin and Griboyedov. In one of his letters, Batyushkov described this psychological state familiar to him in this way: “People are so tired of me and everything is so boring, but my heart is so empty, there is so little hope that I would like to annihilate, decrease, become an atom” (III, 35). He was vaguely aware of the social underpinnings of his conflict with reality. It is no coincidence that the poet contrasted his literary work with the greedy activities of the "haves" social groups. Rejecting Gnedich's friendly reproaches of inaction, he indignantly asked the latter: “Really, what does my laziness mean? The laziness of a person who spends whole nights sitting behind books, writing, reading or reasoning! Not ... if I built mills, breweries, sold, deceived and confessed, then I would surely be known as an honest and, moreover, an active person ”(III, 65).

The social position of the writers who created Russian literature in the first twenty years of the 19th century was ambiguous and difficult. They were constantly treated as the "lowest grade" of people who did not have the right to respect, and Batyushkov always acutely felt the humiliation of his position as a "writer". Even General N. N. Raevsky Sr., who later left a bright mark on Pushkin’s life, called him “Mr. Poet” with a touch of irony. (II, 330). Batyushkov wrote with despair about the "compassion of society" that kills talent (II, 22), that the name of the writer is still "wild for hearing" (II, 247). “These conditions, damned decency,” he complained to Gnedich, “this vanity, this coldness to talent and intelligence, this the equation the son of Phoebov with the son of the farmer ... it infuriates me” (III, 79). It was about such a social tragedy of the Russian “writers”, these “landowners of the mind”, as Vyazemsky once put it, that Griboyedov later said most clearly: “Whoever respects us, truly inspired singers, in that land where dignity is valued in direct content to the number of orders and serfs?" 1 Outraged by the dismissive attitude towards the writer in society, Batyushkov asserted the significance and value of literary work and constantly fought for his personal independence. In an unpublished notebook, he said with deep conviction that "independence is good," and was indignant at people who "have nothing to do with

it's worth trading your freedom." 1 At the same time, he emphasized that the poet is much higher than those who play an important role in the state system of autocracy, and noted with a sense of high professional pride: “A person who is engaged in literature has a hundred times more thoughts and memories than a politician, minister , general. 2

In 1814-1817 Batyushkov took an active part in literary life. At the organizational meeting of the literary society "Arzamas" (this meeting took place on October 14, 1815), Karamzinists elect him a member of the society. 3 The Arzamas nickname Achilles emphasized Batyushkov's merits in the fight against the literary "Old Believers" - the Shishkovites and testified that the Karamzinists considered him one of the central figures of society. D. N. Bludov argued that even at the founding of the society, “the name of Achilles thundered in the mouths of the Arzamas and this solemn sound alone pushed back the ranks of hostile regiments.” 4

Back in 1810, Batyushkov planned to publish his works in a separate edition. Now he is determined to do so in order to sum up his literary work. In 1817, Batyushkov, with the help of Gnedich, published his two-volume collected works "Experiments in verse and prose" (the first volume included prose, the second - poetic works). This is the only edition of his works published during the lifetime of the poet, which was greeted with warm praise from critics, who rightly saw in it an outstanding achievement of Russian literature.

However, the publication of "Experiments" could not improve the financial situation of the poet. The lack of means of subsistence, the heavy mood caused by the terrible reality of the autocratic serf state, were the main reason that in 1818 Batyushkov left for diplomatic service in Italy, although he was infinitely sorry to leave his homeland. An unpublished letter to E. F. Muravyova, sent by the poet from Vienna on the way to Naples, shows that Batyushkov's departure from Russia was a tragedy. “The uncertainty - when, at what time and how I will return to the fatherland - saddened me most of all, -

confessed Batyushkov. “I don’t dare to say what I thought on the second and third day of my departure, but these days are the saddest in my life, and I will remember them for a long, very long time.” one

Diplomatic service in Italy brought Batyushkov only grief. True, in a foreign land he met and became close friends with Russian artists who lived in Italy, in particular with the remarkable Russian landscape painter Sylvester Shchedrin. But here, too, he was at the mercy of the same "terrible world" from which he tried to escape. As secretary of the Russian diplomatic mission in Naples, Batyushkov is used as a simple clerk. “He, they say, is bored and tortured by stupid work,” Vyazemsky writes about him to A. I. Turgenev, adding characteristically: “We are all, no matter how much we are, beads in the legs of pigs.” 2 The envoy, Count Stackelberg, rudely treats and “scolds” the poet, reproaches him for writing poetry, and once even remarks that he “has no right to reason.” 3

Batiushkov was weighed down by a heavy heredity and had a fragile, unstable nature. All these troubles, apparently, hastened the development of a serious mental illness in him, which struck the poet in 1821. In 1822, A. E. Izmailov informed I. I. Dmitriev from St. Petersburg: “K. N. Batyushkov recently returned here from foreign lands. He is said to be almost mad and does not even recognize his acquaintances. This is a consequence of the troubles he received in the last place from his superiors. He was reproached for writing poetry, and therefore considered incapable of diplomatic service. 4

Mental illness halved Batyushkov's conscious life. He lost his mind for thirty-four years and lived for the same amount of time, occasionally coming to his senses as if in order to acknowledge his death. “I am no longer in the world,” Batyushkov wrote, stricken with a terrible illness (III, 583). The poet died in Vologda on July 19 (new style), 1855, from typhus. Vyazemsky, two years before Batyushkov's death, spoke of the fate of this sufferer who "knew his sunset alive":

He is in the inner world of night visions
Lived locked up like a prisoner in a prison
And he was dead to external impressions,
And God's peace was a kingdom of darkness to him!

("Zonnenstein")

The beginning of Batyushkov's literary biography was marked by his participation in the Free Society of Literature, Sciences and Arts. Obviously unfounded is the opinion expressed in pre-revolutionary literary criticism that participation in the "Free Society" did not have any noticeable influence on Batyushkov's work. 1 In fact, the traditions of Russian education, which brightly colored the activities of society, played a significant role in shaping the poet's worldview. At the time of his communication with members of the Free Society, Batyushkov begins to take an interest in the personality and works of Radishchev. 2 When a prominent follower of Radishchev, I. P. Pnin, died, Batyushkov dedicated a poem to the memory of this most left-wing ideologist of society, which emphasized his humane and disinterested service to “compatriots”.

Among the poets of the Free Society, who translated and enthusiastically read the works of progressive thinkers, 3 Batyushkov developed a deep interest in the classics of ancient and Western European philosophy - Epicurus, Lucretius, Montaigne, Voltaire and others. Batyushkov laughs at the exhortations of the "Capuchins" (as Voltaire ironically called hypocrites) "not to read Mirabeau, d'Alembert and Diderot" (III, 68). Later, he carefully studies the famous poem by Lucretius "On the Nature of Things", which sets out the ancient materialistic worldview, and makes a number of extracts from it in his notebook (II, 350-352). He likes anti-clerical

the works of Voltaire; from the early poems of the poet, we learn that in his room “Voltaire lies on the Bible” (the message “To Philis”).

Batyushkov was firmly convinced that Russia “without enlightenment cannot be either glorious for a long time or happy for a long time,” since “happiness and glory are not in barbarism, contrary to some blind minds” (III, 779-780). In his letters, he devastatingly assessed the inert tops of the autocratic-feudal state, maliciously ridiculing the "current gentlemen", "golden boobies", "nobles", "chief secretaries and tax-farmers". As new materials show, Batyushkov was thinking about abolishing censorship. “I think that the freedom of printing should not be limited in any way, especially in our time,” he remarked in an unpublished notebook. one

However, it should be said that Batyushkov did not fully perceive the educational tradition. It is characteristic that the recognition of the high value of individual freedom, its right to earthly joys and pleasures, the denial of religious and ascetic morality - all these features of Batyushkov's worldview, related to the educational ideology, no longer contained faith in social liberation. Acutely aware of the inhuman nature of the contemporary social structure, Batyushkov rarely touched upon social problems in his work, mostly plunging into the world of the private, domestic life of a person secluded from people. It is noteworthy that the early works of the poet still contain satirical motifs (the message “To Chloe”, the message “To Filisa”, especially the translation of Boileau’s first satire, in which features of Russian life were introduced), but soon after leaving the circles of the Free Society » Batyushkov begins to develop almost exclusively intimate psychological themes, among which social motives only occasionally slip through. These motifs sounded impressive in those lines of My Penates, which Pushkin later called "strong verses":

Father gods!
Yes to my hut
Will not find the road forever

Wealth with vanity
With a hired soul
Depraved lucky ones
court friends
And the proud are pale,
Inflated princes.

It is in contrast to such figures that Batyushkov in the first period of his work (1802-1812) draws the image of an honest and independent poet, whose life position is hostile to the norms of official morality, the views that prevailed at the top of the autocratic-feudal state. To imagine and construct this image, Batyushkov is helped by a "dream", a living creative fantasy. She serves as a "shield" from "evil sorrow" and creates "a wondrous world in the world" for her "favorite" poet. Batyushkov transferred his best humanistic ideals to this world, which were unrealizable in the conditions of his era (it was not for nothing that he worked on the poem “Dream” for many years).

Batyushkov’s desire to “dream”, which is generally not characteristic of classicist writers, whose worldview grew on a strictly rationalistic basis, largely determined his sympathy for the Karamzin school, which proclaimed the primacy of feelings over reason and made “the life of the heart” the main content of poetic creativity. The inclination towards a new literary school was prepared by the influence on Batyushkov of the talented predecessor of sentimentalism, M. N. Muravyov. And in 1809-1810 he became close to N. M. Karamzin, V. A. Zhukovsky and P. A. Vyazemsky. Having become an active participant in the literary party of Karamzinists, Batyushkov begins to express its aesthetic and literary views, which are polar opposite to the principles and theories on which classicism was built.

The Karamzinist school distanced itself from the social themes that occupied a central place in the literature of classicism; this was her ideological weakness. But Karamzinists subtly depicted the psychological world of man, they developed a large and new culture of the word, which was their artistic conquest. Batyushkov submits all his aesthetics to the requirement of a true expression of the inner world of the personality, proclaimed by Karamzin, Batyushkov demands from the writer, first of all, “truth in feelings” (II, 241), the exact embodiment of his psychological life. Turning to the poet, he teaches him precisely this truth of feeling:

“Live as you write, and write as you live ... Otherwise, all the echoes of your lyre will be false ”(II, 120). In striving for such truth, Batyushkov, like the entire Karamzin school, breaks with the normativity of classicism and essentially insists on moving away from the restrictive system of rules, replacing it with the concept of “taste”, based solely on a direct aesthetic feeling that does not obey the strict laws of reason. “Taste is not a law,” says Batyushkov, “because it has no basis, because it is based on a sense of grace. ... " one

Considering that “feeling is smarter than mind,” 2 Batyushkov highly appreciates those writers who followed this principle, expressed in their work the inner world of the individual and were associated with Karamzinism or were its predecessors. Among the predecessors of N. M. Karamzin, he especially singles out the author of “Darling” I. F. Bogdanovich, emphasizing that his poem is marked by “true and great talent” (II, 241), and M. N. Muravyov, in whose lyrics “ portrayed, as in a mirror, a beautiful soul. 3 Batyushkov praises the poems of N. M. Karamzin himself, “full of feelings” (II, 242), defining him as “the only writer whom our fatherland can boast and be proud of” (III, 217), notes the “beauty and accuracy” of the language of works I. I. Dmitriev (II, 337) and calls Yu. A. Neledinsky-Meletsky “Anacreon of our time” (III, 128).

Batyushkov refers to the "brilliant" examples of Russian lyrics "Horatian odes" by V.V. Kapnist (II, 242), which merged into the general stream of Karamzinist poetry; at the same time, he gives Kapnist the most prominent place among the masters of the Russian poetic language: “Whoever wants to write in order to be read,” he points out to Gnedich, “write clearly, like Kapnist, the surest example in the syllable ... » (III, 47).

But Batyushkov has the strongest artistic sympathy for his associates, the “younger” Karamzinists. He approves of Vyazemsky's early lyrics and calls the latter's muse "a lively and witty girl" (III, 468). And Batyushkov considers Zhukovsky the best "new" Russian poet of his time. “He is a giant among the pygmies,” Batyushkov writes to Gnedich,

immediately calling Zhukovsky "a rare talent in Europe" (III, 416). one

The literature of Russian classicism was mainly devoted to problems of national importance. However, intimate lyrics already appear in it. The private life of a person was revealed in the anacreontic poems of Kantemir and Lomonosov, in the elegies and love songs of Sumarokov, and especially in the anacreontics of the late Derzhavin, in whose work two polar opposite images coexisted: a “useful” statesman and an Epicurean who refused fame and ranks (see poetic Derzhavin's dialogue: "Philosophers drunk and sober"). But if the creators of Russian classicism could not create a new, more perfect and subtle method of depicting the inner world of a person, then nevertheless their intimate lyrics anticipated to a certain extent the poetry of Karamzin and Dmitriev, who, in historical and literary terms, were pre-romantics who gave a new, albeit quite superficial depiction of the inner life of the individual. This, in particular, should explain Batyushkov's sympathetic statements about the great poets of Russian classicism, whose historical significance was undeniable for him. So, he spoke with respect about A. D. Kantemir, to whom he devoted a meaningful essay “Evening at Kantemir” (1816), M. V. Lomonosov (he, according to his contemporaries, especially loved and respected him) and about A. P. Sumarokov, in whom he saw a bold literary polemist who laughed at the "stupidity of writers" (III, 59).

Batyushkov's attitude towards G. R. Derzhavin was very complicated, whose work was the pinnacle of Russian classicism and at the same time marked its collapse and the emergence of Russian poetry on new paths. Batyushkov and Derzhavin were in hostile literary camps. Derzhavin was "most enraged" by Batyushkov's anti-Shishkovist work "Vision on the Banks of the Lethe", 2 and for Batyushkov, in turn, Derzhavin's literary position, which was included in the "Conversation of Lovers of the Russian Word", was completely unacceptable. With this position in mind

and the conflict that took place in 1811 between Gnedich and Derzhavin, Batyushkov wrote: “He is a true genius and ... I dare not say - a liar! (III, 112; Batiushkov often called the members of Beseda “liar”). But Derzhavin's late literary position did not obscure for Batyushkov the enormous objective value of his work. Bowing before this creativity, Batyushkov considered Derzhavin "a divine poet" (III, 153). Batyushkov most of all appreciated Derzhavin's art of creating vivid pictorial images. Once he trembled while reading Derzhavin's description of the Potemkin holiday. He saw Derzhavin's picture before him with such extraordinary clarity that, shocked, he "ran beside himself to his sister." “Nothing, I have never been so amazed!” Batyushkov exclaimed, reporting this incident to Gnedich (III, 53).

The activities of the epigones of classicism irritated and resented Batyushkov, and he became one of the most zealous participants in the struggle of the Karamzinists against the Shishkovists, political and literary conservatives who unsuccessfully tried to revive the archaic traditions of high poetry of the 18th century. This struggle of the "new school" against the camp of the "Old Believers" undoubtedly played a progressive historical and literary role. According to Belinsky, in the person of the Shishkovists "it seemed that the Russian stubborn antiquity had risen again, which defended itself against the reform of Peter the Great with such convulsive and all the more fruitless tension." one

Batyushkov sharply and venomously attacks the literary "Old Believers" - S. A. Shirinsky-Shikhmatov, A. A. Shakhovsky, D. I. Khvostov and A. S. Shishkov himself. He resolutely condemns Shishkov's poems, which are "below everything mediocre", his prose, where "there is neither thought nor mind" (III, 121, 127), his literary critical views, as he admires "the dead, because they died , but alive - dead", finally, his linguistic theories. As if summing up the literary activity of Shishkov, Batyushkov exclaims: “What good did he write? At least one page" (III, 142). 2

Batyushkov condemns the dark mystical content of the work of the Shishkovists, their claim to true patriotism and, in particular, their style, which marked the degeneration of the traditions of classicism. He parodically reduces the high genres of the 18th century that the Shishkovists tried to resurrect - the ode, the heroic poem, the tragedy (see his epigrams "Advice to the Epic Poet" and "On the Poems of Peter the Great"), indignantly falls upon the archaic language of the epigones of classicism. "Barbarians, they distorted our language with glory!" - exclaims the poet (III, 409).

In all Russian literature of the early 19th century there were no stronger anti-Shishkovist pamphlets than the satirical works of Batyushkov. In his literary and polemical work, Batyushkov turned to the epigram and to the genres of the parody choir and the small satirical poem, which were relatively rare in his time. In developing the latter genre, he used the forms of conversation in the realm of the dead, characteristic of the satire of the 18th century, and the techniques of the heroic-comic poem, filling them with martial literary content. In A Vision on the Shores of the Lethe (1809), he forced the great poets of classicism to ruthlessly condemn their mediocre epigones, and above all Shishkov. True, the poet eventually saved him from the waters of Lethe, but this did not save Shishkov from Batyushkov's caustic mockery. In The Vision, the poet angrily ridiculed Shishkov's mystical-archaic literary positions and even invented the new word "Slavenophile" to characterize him, which later played such a big role in the history of Russian social thought.

The ridicule of the work of the Shishkovists became even more merciless in another satirical work by Batyushkov - "The Singer in the Conversation of the Lovers of the Russian Word" (1813), written two years after this ideological and literary association arose. “You can’t imagine what is happening in the Conversation! What ignorance, what shamelessness! Batyushkov reported to Vyazemsky (III, 217). It was this shamelessness, associated with incredible self-praise, that Batyushkov ridiculed in The Singer, where he, in his own words, wanted to lead the “Slavs” “to living water” (III, 217). By “making up” the members of the “Conversation” under the characters of Zhukovsky’s famous poem “A Singer in the Camp of Russian Warriors”, Batyushkov achieved a remarkable comic effect, which allowed him to deliver a sensitive blow to his literary opponents.

His brightest literary and polemical works Batyushkov

did not dare to print, but they were widely distributed in the lists. In an unpublished letter to Batyushkov, Gnedich wrote about the Vision: “Your poems are read by heart; you can judge if they like it." From the same letter we learn that “Vision” made Krylov laugh, who listened to him in the house of A. N. Olenin: “What was the surprise for Krylov ... he sat truly in the form of the dead; and suddenly his whole building shook; he had tears in his eyes ... 1 Later, Pushkin, who did not consider Batyushkov a satirist by vocation, nevertheless noted that his "Vision" was "smart and funny." 2 And even later, Dobrolyubov highly appreciated Batyushkov's literary and polemical satire. Pointing out that Batyushkov opposed the "venerable family of authorities", 3 he gladly greeted the publication of The Singer in Sovremennik. On this occasion, he wrote: “Recently, bibliography has also changed its character: it has turned its attention to phenomena that are important for some reason in the history of literature. ... " 4

It should be noted that Batyushkov’s artistic pursuits in a number of significant points diverged from the position of his closest friend Gnedich, in particular, he did not share Gnedich’s belief that art should be devoted mainly to “high” subjects, 5 and animatedly argued with him on the problems of poetic language . So, Batyushkov did not like the abundance of Slavicisms in the Gnedichevsky translation of the Iliad. "I found ... a lot of Slovenian words that are not at all out of place ... he wrote to Gnedich. - Beware of one thing: the Slovenian language "(III, 141).

For all that, Batyushkov occupied a special place in Karamzinism. First of all, he was an implacable enemy of sugary and tearful sentimentality, and in “Vision on the Banks of Lethe” he ridiculed it in the epigone lyrics of the “sweater” P. I. Shalikov, which he considered an even more negative phenomenon than the poetry of the Shishkovists. “God bless you from the Academy, and even more so from Shalikov,” Batyushkov remarked. 6 Moreover, in his letters Batyushkov

would remove the mannered lyrical makeup from the personality of Karamzin himself (he, according to Batyushkov, “is not a shepherd boy, but an adult, small, thin, pale as a shadow.” - III, 78), parodies the pastoral decorativeness of his love lyrics and the sentimental phraseology of his prose (for example , exclaims: "Let's throw a curtain of chastity on these sweet scenes, as Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin says in Natalia" - III, 40). 1 In A Vision on the Banks of the Lethe, Batiushkov simply did not dare to "swing" at many of Karamzin's tearful works, although he probably considered them worthy of oblivion. Commenting on the "Vision" in a letter to Gnedich, he remarked: "I do not dare to drown Karamzin, for I honor him" (III, 61). Until 1812, Batyushkov was also separated from Karamzin and Zhukovsky by his dislike for mysticism. A lively controversy with mysticism embodied in literary forms is clearly felt in Batyushkov's work. He speaks ironically of those writers "who spend whole nights on coffins and frighten poor humanity with ghosts, spirits, and the Last Judgment" (II, 22). Exceptionally highly appreciating Zhukovsky's poetry for its virtuoso skill in conveying the intimate life of the heart, Batyushkov at the same time sharply parodies the mystical motives of his poetic story "The Twelve Sleeping Virgins" (see below), anticipating the demonstrative reduction of these same motives in Pushkin's "Ruslan and Lyudmila" . In general, Batyushkov believed that Zhukovsky's Svetlana was "a hundred times better than his Maidens" (III, 194).

Krylov alone enjoyed absolute unconditional recognition among modern writers, whose fables were the poet’s favorite reading, emphasizing that their “witty, happy poems turned into proverbs” (II, 241-242). At the end of "Vision on the Shores of Lethe", composed by Batyushkov just after the publication of the first separate edition of Krylov's fables, it is this great Russian writer who is truly saved from oblivion. 2 Batiushkov retained high respect for Krylov for life. In 1816, he wrote to Gnedich, perhaps recalling the final episode of his "Vision": "Bow

from me to immortal Krylov, immortal - of course, so! His fables will outlive the ages!” (III, 391).

This whole world of social and literary sympathies and antipathies of Batyushkov became the subsoil of his poetic work, which was distinguished by great complexity, absorbed the most diverse influences and at the same time represented an original, innovative artistic phenomenon.

Batyushkov himself noted that "ardor" and "carelessness" constituted his character "in the first period of his youth" (II, 191). In fact, the man in Batyushkov's lyrics of the first period passionately loves earthly life. Evaluating "My Penates", Pushkin wrote that this message "breathes with some kind of intoxication of luxury, youth and pleasure." 1 "Pre-war" Batyushkov was above all a poet of joy. Her glorification sounds more contagious and full-blooded in him than in any other Russian poet. At the same time, Batyushkov's love of life is often expressed in the form of "advice to friends" - a direct active appeal to a friendly audience:

Drive away the ghost of glory!
For fun and fun
Sow roses along the way;
Let's say to youth: fly!
Let me just enjoy life
Full cup of joy to drink ...

("Happy Hour") 2

The theme of joy and pleasure, as we see, merges in Batyushkov with the theme of friendship. This feeling was for Batyushkov, as well as for many enlightened noble intellectuals of the first decades of the 19th century and earlier periods, a consolation in the acutely felt discord with the "light". “I know the price of your friendship, which is and will be the only consolation in a life filled with sorrow,” Batyushkov writes to Gnedich (III, 109). The theme of friendship was developed by poets associated with sentimentalism - Karamzin, Dmitriev, Zhukovsky and others. But

only Batyushkov organically connects this theme with the Epicurean motives for enjoying life. And most importantly, he gives her such a vivid expression, which was not before him in Russian poetry. The motive of the strength of friendship becomes the main one in many of Batyushkov’s poems, for example, in his elegy “The Shadow of a Friend”, dedicated by the poet to his comrade I. A. Petin, who fell in the “battle of the peoples” near Leipzig (this elegy was written after 1812, but essentially adjoins to the first period of Batyushkov's work). An irresistible impression is made here by the expressive transmission of a sincere feeling of affection for the deceased comrade. The poet wants to hear the voice of this "eternally sweet" warrior and prolong the moment of rendezvous with his shadow:

O! say a word to me! Let the familiar sound
Still my greedy ear caresses,
Let my hand, O unforgettable friend!
Squeezes yours with love ...

Even more important in Batyushkov's lyrics is the theme of love. The development of this theme by Batyushkov became a new word in Russian literature, its outstanding artistic achievement. The poetry of love created by Batyushkov most clearly demonstrates his rejection of moralism and the mannerisms of sentimentalism. The depiction of love experiences in Batyushkov's work should have amazed the Russian reader of the early 19th century, brought up on the monotony of sentimental lyrics, with its complexity and subtlety. The interpretation of human passions among the sentimentalists was very half-hearted and compromise, since they put forward the demand for moderation, which excluded the free development of a strong "lawless" feeling. Batyushkov draws love as a passion that captures the whole person, subjugating all his emotions. The main feature of Batyushkov's elegy "Recovery", which anticipates the masterpieces of Pushkin's lyrics, is the poet's complete and selfless immersion in his feelings. Turning to his beloved woman, he seems to give her all the strength of his spirit:

You give life again; she is your good gift,
I will breathe you to the grave.
The hour will be sweet to me and the fatal torment:
I'm dying of love now.

Sometimes Batyushkov's love lyrics are truly dramatic. But in the first period of creativity, the poet most often includes the theme

love, as well as the theme of friendship, into the philosophy of enjoying life. "Passion is the soul of Batyushkov's poetry," wrote Belinsky, "and the passionate intoxication of love is its pathos." 1 While Zhukovsky's heroes usually live in bodiless, platonic love and count only on reunion "beyond the grave", Batiushkov sees in love a source of earthly joys and, at the same time, a highly spiritualized feeling. Physical and spiritual pleasures organically merge in the poet's love lyrics:

Oh! embrace hands,
Let's join mouth to mouth
Souls in flames will merge,
We will rise, then we will die !..

("Merry Hour")

In Zhukovsky's lyrics, we almost do not find images of the external appearance of his beloved, on the contrary, Batyushkov wants to reproduce the beauty and attractiveness of his heroines, the captivating charm and draws a portrait of a beautiful woman:

I remember blue eyes
I remember golden curls
Carelessly curly hair.

("My genius")

Batyushkov and Zhukovsky belonged to the same literary camp, and both created subtle and complex psychological lyrics. But Batiushkov's interpretation of the theme of love was unacceptable to Zhukovsky, who consistently deprived love of its "earthly" beginning. It is no coincidence that Zhukovsky, who largely inherited Karamzin's morality, entered into a sharp, albeit friendly polemic with Batyushkov over the interpretation of the theme of love in the message "My penates" addressed to him. In a number of places in his response message, Zhukovsky, in contrast to Batyushkov, puts forward his own interpretation of this topic, marked by moralistic mysticism, and draws his own ideal of afterlife love:

You fly away all the time
Soul to those edges,
Where is your lovely angel;

Your bliss is there
Beyond the blue sky
In this foggy distance ...

("To Batyushkov")

The main themes of Batyushkov's lyrics of the first period affirmed life in its vivid manifestations. However, the theme of death is often intertwined with them. This contradictory combination was explained by the fact that the philosophy of individual enjoyment was illusory; it could not obscure the tragic contradictions of life from Batyushkov. The poet, sooner or later, was bound to come to the idea of ​​the ephemeral nature of earthly joys, of the formidable and irresistible specter of death. The contrast between joy and death comes through sharply in Batyushkov's famous "Inscription on the Shepherd's Coffin", used by Tchaikovsky in The Queen of Spades (Polina's romance). It rarely attracted attention, since at first it was included in that section of the "Experiments", which included rather weak epigrams and inscriptions, and then became a "familiar" part of the libretto of the beloved opera. Meanwhile, this poem, as it were, sums up the fate of the heroes of Batyushkov's lyrics:

Love in golden dreams promised me happiness;
But what happened to me in these joyful places? -
Grave!

But most often the theme of death in Batyushkov's lyrics of the first period acquires an optimistic and, oddly enough, even major flavor. If Derzhavin sees in front of him a terrible, unveiled image of death, and Karamzin and Zhukovsky clothe him with a mystical fog, then Batiushkov, even talking about the “instantaneity” of life, retains calmness and clarity of spirit. At times, he depicts death as a harmonic transition into ancient Elysium, where the former "hymns of joy" will sound. This picture strikes with its exceptional artistic brilliance in Batyushkov's poem, where the poet, together with his beloved, finds himself in the afterlife of the pagan world:

In that Elysium where everything melts
A feeling of bliss and love,
Where the lover is resurrected
With a new flame in the blood
Where, admiring the dance of the graces,

Nymphs woven into a round dance,
With Delia to his Horace
Hymns of joy sing.

("Elysium")

Particularly remarkable is the description of the death of "happy young people" in Batyushkov's My Penates. The poet urges "not to complain" about them and to strew the "peaceful ashes" with flowers. At the same time, Batyushkov deliberately sharpens his description against those terrible pictures of the burial, which often arose in Zhukovsky's poetry:

Why these smokes
And bells howl,
And languid psalmody
Above the cold board?

It was an obvious creative polemic with Zhukovsky; in his poetic story "The Twelve Sleeping Virgins" there are such lines dedicated to the description of the funeral rite:

But now - the coffin is already dressed in brocade;
The grave has opened;
And heard bells howl;
And the censers are warm ... 1

The range of Epicurean and love themes and motifs of Batyushkov's lyrics is mostly associated with his translations, carried out before 1812. During this period of his work, Batyushkov translated ancient, Italian and French poets. He is attracted by those images of the art of other peoples that are in harmony with his worldview and artistic tasks that have grown out of the organic development of Russian literature: this is the world of ancient antiquity, the culture of the Italian Renaissance and elegant erotic poetry created by talented French poets of the late XVIII - early XIX century. In ancient literature, Batyushkov is most attracted to the lyrics of Tibull,

in which he sees a poet of love, "sweet dreams" and personal independence (II, 122; III, 136). In Italian literature, he admires the harmony of Petrarch’s language - Batyushkov told Gnedich about how he “enjoyed the musical sounds” of Petrarch’s language, “out of whose mouth every word is bliss” (III, 165), - the creative versatility of Ariosto, who knew how to “combine the epic tone with playful, funny with important, light with thoughtful, shadows with light" (III, 170), and the majestic monumentality of Tasso's poem "Jerusalem Liberated" are treasures of world art: "the more you read, the more new beauties" - spoke about this poem Batyushkov (III, 44). In French literature, his lively sympathies are evoked by the love lyrics and the Ossian heroism of Guys: he insistently emphasizes that the latter is "recognized as the best writer in the light kind", and this "type of writing is very difficult" (III, 113).

Batyushkov's translations are almost always free translations, in which he reveals creative independence and remarkable skill. Discussing the question of how to translate Ariosto, the poet ironically asserted that “only Shishkov is able to translate word for word, line for line” (III, 171).

Batyushkov, the translator, was most interested in works dedicated to love. At the same time, he often tries to enhance the sound of the love theme in the originals he has chosen for translation with concrete strokes. Translating Tibullus, he independently creates a portrait of the poet's beloved. 1 Translating the XVIII song of "Jerusalem Delivered", he endows Armida with more definite features of a passionate lover than Tasso's. Broadly developing his own motives, Batyushkov the translator often completely modifies the original. And sometimes he manages to create works that stand at a greater artistic height than the originals. Pushkin, looking through the "Experiments", found that Batyushkov's "Bacchae", thematically connected with the "Disguise of Venus" Guys, "better than the original, more alive." 2

In the circle of epicurean and love images of Batyushkov's poetry, her artistic method and her style, developed mainly before the Patriotic War of 1812, were most clearly expressed.

Batyushkov was formed as a poet in the first decade of the 19th century, that is, in those years that were a crisis period of the decomposition of the feudal-serf economy and the development in its depths of new, progressive bourgeois relations for that time. This crisis manifested itself sharply in the literary life of the first decade of the 19th century. In this transitional era, classicism dies with its ideas and aesthetic forms characteristic of the heyday of the noble empire, and new literary currents are formed, ultimately associated with the process of progressive historical development and, to one degree or another, anticipating romanticism - that powerful artistic trend that has developed and was theoretically substantiated in the early 20s of the XIX century. It was by comparing Batyushkov's lyrics with classicism and romanticism and, so to speak, "counting" it from them that critics and researchers naturally tried to determine which direction this major poet could be attributed to.

P. A. Pletnev was the first to define Batyushkov as a representative of the “latest classical school”. 1 A different, much more correct point of view on Batyushkov's style was developed by Belinsky. He also sometimes characterized Batyushkov as a "classic", 2 but he did not forget to note romantic elements in his work. Nevertheless, the main part of Belinsky's statements about Batyushkov connects him with romanticism. In a number of Batyushkov's works, Belinsky sees the embodiment of "Greek romanticism". Analyzing one of the poet's anthological poems, he writes: "This piece captures the whole essence of romanticism according to the Greek view." 3 And in Batyushkov's elegies, Belinsky sees the romanticism of the "new time" ("And how good Batyushkov's romanticism is: there is so much certainty and clarity in it!" - he says about them 4).

Batyushkov's contemporaries, including Pushkin, attributed him, along with Zhukovsky, to the "new school", which made a significant

step forward in the development of Russian poetry. So, A. A. Bestuzhev-Marlinsky wrote: “A new school of our poetry begins with Zhukovsky and Batyushkov.” 1 Contemporaries were not mistaken and could not be mistaken in this matter. Batyushkov was above all an innovator, and his work should be regarded as a transitional pre-romantic phenomenon that prepared the way for Pushkin's romanticism of the 1920s.

Indeed, the main features of Batyushkov's poetry are determined by new romantic tendencies. The words of Belinsky are already applicable to this poetry: “In its closest and most essential meaning, romanticism is nothing but the inner world of a person’s soul, the innermost life of his heart.” 2 Batyushkov highlights the problem of depicting the inner world of a person, which was the weakest point of Russian classicism and was solved only by the romantics. In this respect Batyushkov agrees with Zhukovsky. However, he decisively differs from him in his life-loving philosophy, alien to mysticism. It was the pre-romantic Batyushkov, and not the romantic Zhukovsky, who widely developed the mystical-idealistic tendencies of Karamzin's poetry, who to the greatest extent prepared Pushkin's lyceum lyrics, which in essence and in its position in the work of the great poet was also pre-romantic, and the romanticism of his southern poems, where the subtlest image the inner life of the individual was combined with the concreteness of everyday descriptions.

There are features in Batyushkov's poetry that connect it with classicism: the clarity of artistic forms, the abundance of mythological images, and an orientation towards antiquity. But all this is used by Batyushkov in a different artistic function and serves the same task of depicting the inner world. In accordance with his aesthetics, which justifies the need for a true and elegant depiction of the intimate psychological life of a person, Batyushkov appreciates in ancient art "an echo of deep knowledge of nature, passions and the human heart" (II, 103). His choice of ancient authors is characteristic. In "Speech on the Influence of Light Poetry on the Language" he lists the names of ancient lyric poets close to him in spirit who turned to love and anacreontic themes: Anacreon, Sappho, Catullus and others. Batyushkov translates Tibulla,

whom Belinsky, just in connection with these translations, called the "Latin romantic", 1 - a poet who mainly depicted the personal life of a person. No less characteristic is the fact that in "Speech on the Influence of Light Poetry on Language", which can rightly be considered a kind of aesthetic manifesto of Russian pre-romanticism, Batyushkov put forward precisely the "personal" elements of Russian classicism (the love and anacreontic poems of Lomonosov, Sumarokov and Derzhavin) the intimate psychological lyrics of the sentimentalists, as well as the romantic poetry of Zhukovsky. 2

Romantics built the image of the nation according to the type of individual: each nation in their view had special unique features. And in this respect Batyushkov was the forerunner of the Romantics. He perfectly feels and tries to emphasize the national identity of the art of different peoples. In his article "Something about the Poet and Poetry" it is stated that "the climate, the view of the sky, water and earth, everything affects the soul of the poet, open for impressions" (II, 124-125). The same idea is carried out in the “Message to I. M. Muravyov-Apostle”. Batiushkov comes close to the romantic "concrete" understanding of antiquity. In his satirical tale "The Wanderer and the Homebody", he seeks to show the individual face of ancient culture and draws the life of ancient Athens, using the famous book of the French archaeologist Barthélemy "Journey of the Younger Anacharsis in Greece". 3 In this regard, Batyushkov anticipated the aesthetic theories of some freedom-loving romantics, in particular P. A. Vyazemsky, who saw the “main essential dignity” of ancient authors in the “imprint of the nationality, locality” lying on their works. 4

In his lyrics, Batyushkov most often developed two genres that were perfectly suited for depicting the world of the individual - a friendly message and an elegy. At the same time, romantic tendencies force Batyushkov to break with normativity to a large extent.

classic system of genres. Batyushkov significantly expands the scope of the elegy. Dramatizing this genre and, as a rule, depriving it of the emotional coloring of the “deplorableness” already set by Sumarokov, 1 he embodies in it the richness of a person’s psychological life. Some of Batyushkov's elegies become not sad, but, on the contrary, major and life-affirming (see at least the elegies "Recovery" and "My Genius"). Paying tribute to the classicist tradition, Batyushkov still divides his lyrics into genres, but in his creative mind the lines between them are already beginning to blur. It is characteristic that when compiling the “Experiments”, the poet included in the section of elegies the message “To Dashkov”, which reflected the horrors of the Napoleonic invasion. Obviously, the general tonality of the poem seemed to him a more essential feature for defining the genre than external formal features. Continuing the work of Derzhavin, who boldly fused elements of different types of poetic creativity, Batyushkov thereby prepared the collapse of the genre system of classicism, which was finally rejected by the romantics.

Thus, Batyushkov, as was said, should be defined as a pre-romantic: in his poetry, romantic elements played a leading role, but they have not yet taken shape in an integral artistic system (we will see that they became aggravated and deepened in the second period of the poet's work).

Batyushkov's style of poetry absorbed the achievements of his immediate predecessors. First of all, the experience of Derzhavin was especially valuable for him, the strikingly bright and rich coloring of his poems was expressed with particular brilliance in his works, permeated with Epicurean motifs, and in his anacreontics. In this regard, the role of M. N. Muravyov, who saw in ancient Hellas a world of ideal beauty and harmony and clothed the description of this world in very clear subject and musical forms, was also significant, and Kapnist, who painted in his poetry an image of a lyrical hero close to Batyushkov, who retired in a modest house from the hustle and bustle of the world. Batyushkov mastered the elegance of the style of love lyrics Guys, his favorite French author. But at the same time, Batyushkov's style is deeply original and perfectly conveys by means of art the bright, spontaneously materialistic perception of life inherent in the poet. The poet creates a special, only peculiar to him, combination of colors, sounds and techniques of “sculptural modeling of images - and the artistic reflection of the concrete-sensory world becomes alive, visible, tangible and singing in him.

The images of Batyushkov's poetry are distinguished by objectivity and visibility. Belinsky perfectly described this side of Batyushkov’s work: “There is a lot of plasticity in his poems, a lot sculpture, if I may say so. We often not only hear his verse with our ears, but we see it with our eyes: we want to feel the twists and folds of his marble drapery. 1 N. G. Chernyshevsky later pointed out the plasticity of Batyushkov's poetry as a generally recognized fact. Arguing with S. P. Shevyrev in “Essays on the Gogol Period of Russian Literature,” he asked: “How could it happen that there was little plasticity in Batyushkov’s verse? After all, everyone knows that he is especially famous for this quality. 2 The artistic details of Batyushkov's poetry are very precise and specific; In this regard, his epithets are especially revealing: "salty wave", "voiced ice", "noisy rain", "thin elm”, etc.

A. D. Galakhov wrote about the poet: “Whole pieces poured out from him, like distinct sculptures of thoughts and feelings.” 3 Batyushkov's poetry of the first period is dominated by the color scheme of red-yellow tones, corresponding to the major worldview of the lyrical hero, the joyful intensity of his emotions (crimson, purple, ruddy, azure, gold, yellow, amber, etc.). Batyushkov’s spectacular color painting is combined with an accurate reproduction of movement in the poem “Bacchae”, where the “slender camp” entwined with yellow hops and the “cheeks” of a running woman flaming with “bright crimson” are drawn.

The brightness and plasticity of the visual image are complemented by Batyushkov's fullness of sounds. Batyushkov is one of the most musical Russian poets. Pushkin admired the harmony of Batyushkov's poetry, calling him a "miracle worker".

Like a demanding master, Batyushkov constantly "corrected" and carefully finished his poems. "Sometimes a permutation of one word ... very significant,” he wrote to Gnedich (III, 422). It was Batyushkov's high exactingness that was one of the reasons that his literary production was small in volume. The poet betrayed many of his works, which did not satisfy him artistically, to the “fire-fighter”.

An important role for the further development of Russian poetry was played by

the fact that Batyushkov approved new forms of verse (free and four-foot iambic in the elegy; the classic three-foot iambic in the message). At the same time, he raised the Russian poetic language to a high level. One of Batyushkov's main arguments in favor of the so-called "light poetry", by which he understood everything opposite to the "high" genres of classicism (including ballads and fables), was that this kind of lyric poetry has a beneficial effect on the language, because it requires from the writer of maximum "purity of expression" (II, 240-241). The poet's constant striving for such "purity" produced important results. “Batyushkov, a happy associate of Lomonosov, did for the Russian language what Petrarch did for the Italian language,” wrote Pushkin, 1 obviously referring not only to Batyushkov’s general merits in processing the language of Russian poetry, but also to the fact that he imparted to him an exceptional musicality. Together with Zhukovsky, Batyushkov created the exact and harmonious poetic language that Pushkin used and enriched. "Watch accuracy in words, accuracy, accuracy!" exclaimed Batyushkov (III, 162). He succeeded in achieving this goal: in 1830 Pushkin wrote about "harmonic accuracy" as a distinctive feature of "the school founded by Zhukovsky and Batyushkov." 2

These are the main features and the historical and literary role of Batyushkov's style, which was embodied with the greatest completeness and completeness in his lyrics of the first period.

The beginning of the Patriotic War became a milestone that opened the second period of Batyushkov's poetic activity with its new themes and problems (1812-1821).

Batyushkov creates excellent poems in which the most important events of the Patriotic War are covered from a highly patriotic point of view. In the message “To Dashkov”, he draws with deep sorrow a destroyed by fire, devastated Moscow and artistically embodies the nationwide patriotic upsurge associated with the ever-growing desire to drive the Napoleonic army out of the fatherland. This message is devoid of any traces of religious-monarchical tendentiousness, which was characteristic of the attitude

conservative circles to the events of 1812 and was partly reflected even in Zhukovsky’s famous patriotic choir “The Singer in the Camp of Russian Soldiers” with his glorification of the “royal throne” and the “Russian God”. In the message "To Dashkov" Batyushkov appears as an ordinary Russian person who feels a sense of anger against foreign invaders. This feeling, which raised the broad masses of the people to armed struggle, makes the poet determine his life behavior and reconsider his literary positions. Under the influence of patriotic sentiments, he defiantly renounces the intimate-psychological themes of the Karamzinists and vows to leave epicureanism until better times. G. V. Plekhanov's statement about the message "To Dashkov", which has remained in the shadows until now, is remarkable. In his work on Chernyshevsky, Plekhanov, speaking of the fact that the critics of the sixties "often denied themselves the moral right to satisfy their aesthetic needs", as they had a "highly developed sense of civic duty", and arguing with those who accused them of "rudeness" ”, mentions Batyushkov’s message “To Dashkov”. After quoting a long passage from it, he writes: “As far as I know, it has never occurred to anyone to accuse Batyushkov on this basis of being unable to understand the aesthetic need of man. But in this poem of his, the same mood was affected, which made itself felt so strongly in the articles of literary critics of the sixties. 1 Indeed, it is from the standpoint of “civic duty” that Batyushkov responds to his friend’s advice to sing “carelessness, happiness and peace”: he refuses to “call the shepherdesses into a round dance” “during the terrible glow” of the Moscow fire. At the sight of the horrors of war, Batyushkov sees the themes of his own Epicurean poetry as petty and insignificant:

While with a wounded hero,
Who knows the way to glory
Three times I will not put my chest
Before enemies in close formation, -
My friend, until then I will
All are alien to muses and charities,
Wreaths, with the hand of love retinue,
And joy, noisy in wine!

In the poem "Crossing the Rhine", which Pushkin considered the best, "strongest" poetic work of Batyushkov, a feeling of patriotic pride was expressed in the immensity of Russia and the victories of the Russian troops, who had driven the enemy out of their country and were preparing to start persecution on his own territory:

And the hour of fate has come! We are here, sons of the snows,
Under the banner of Moscow, with freedom and thunder !..
Flocked from the seas covered with ice,
From the midday jets, from the Caspian ramparts,
From the waves of Ulei and Baikal,
From the Volga, Don and Dnieper,
From our city of Peter,
From the peaks of the Caucasus and the Urals !..

However, Batyushkov nowhere glorifies war for the sake of war and, on the contrary, affirms the superiority of peace, which creates the possibility of an upswing in the economic and cultural life of the people. Batyushkov knew the war too well not to see its horrors. In the excerpt “The Crossing of the Russian Troops across the Neman”, he truthfully depicted the terrible everyday life of the war. It is characteristic that in 1814, after the end of the foreign campaign, Batyushkov chose for a free translation the 3rd elegy of the 1st book of Tibull - a work in which war was condemned and peace was glorified.

In Batyushkov's poems on the subject of the war, there are traces of historical limitations. During the Patriotic War, Batyushkov, like most of the advanced nobility of that time, believed in Alexander I and surrounded his image with a heroic halo. "Our sovereign ... of course, higher than Alexander the Great ... "- the poet claimed in an unpublished letter to Vyazemsky. 1 In the same poem, "The Crossing of the Russian Troops across the Neman", together with Kutuzov and other military leaders, the "young tsar" is depicted as an attractive figure. However, in these poems, Batyushkov nowhere connects the sympathetic lines about Alexander I with the glorification of the monarchy, and in this respect he decisively differs from conservative poets and journalists.

Batyushkov, together with Zhukovsky, managed to create poetry about the war

completely new type. He organically included lyrical moments in it and, as it were, merged it with intimate psychological poetry. “Tender thoughts, passionate dreams and love somehow merge very naturally with the noisy, rebellious, active life of a warrior,” Batyushkov wrote (II, 362). The poet-warrior, drawn by Batyushkov, thinks not only about battles, but also about love and friendship (see, for example, the elegy "The Shadow of a Friend"). The lyrical element, which makes itself felt very strongly in Zhukovsky's "The Singer in the Camp of Russian Warriors", was widely developed by Batyushkov in the message "To Dashkov", where the poet, acting as a singer of popular anger, at the same time expressed his deeply personal perception of military events . This "warmness" of the message "To Dashkov" made it the best lyric poem written about the events of the Patriotic War of 1812. At the same time, Batyushkov became the author of the first Russian military-historical elegy. Such an elegy of very high artistic quality was the "Crossing the Rhine", where the entry of Russian troops into France is depicted against the background of pictures of the historical past of Europe (the battles of the Romans with the ancient Germans, medieval tournaments, etc.). In this elegy there is also a lyrical element that makes it related to the military ode, which basically boils down to the author’s emotionally colored reflections on the courage and heroism of the Russian troops, but nevertheless the main role in it is played by successive historical descriptions of an epic character.

Batyushkov painted the Russian army in a way that only a person who was vitally connected with military life could do. In the message “To Nikita”, he conveyed in very specific details the sensations of camp life (the rumble of the “evening cannon”, sleep “under a warm cloak”, etc.). Resorting to new pictorial means, Batyushkov renounces the pompous and solemn manner of depicting battles with its abundance of mythological images, which is characteristic of the writers of classicism. One of the remarkable features of Batyushkov-batalist was the exact transmission of movement. The poet loves to draw troops properly placed, not yet in battle; he sketches and pictures of the battle. The exact transmission of movement can be seen, for example, in "Crossing the Rhine", where a vivid picture of the crossing of Russian troops is created. In terms of the skill of depicting military operations in poetry, Batyushkov then had no rivals. But, of course, he was significantly inferior to Denis Davydov in depicting the life of the hussars. This is evidenced by Batyushkov's poem "Separation" ("Hussar, leaning on a saber ... ”), where the usual elegiac theme of adultery is rather unfortunately connected with the life of the hussars. No wonder Pushkin felt mannerisms

“Separation” and wrote against her in the margins of the “Experiments”: “Zirlich manirlich. There is no need to argue with D. Davydov.” one

During the Patriotic War in the mind of Batyushkov, a deep turning point was indicated, which was caused primarily by the tragic events of the Napoleonic invasion of Russia. “The terrible deeds of the vandals or the French in Moscow and its environs, deeds unparalleled in history itself, completely upset my little philosophy and quarreled me with humanity,” Batyushkov wrote to Gnedich in October 1812. In the same letter, the poet emphasized that during his campaigns he “could not see such “horrors of war” either in Prussia or in Sweden” (III, 209). Batyushkov's consciousness was even more shocked in the further course of the war, when the poet had to see a new string of gloomy pictures. Batyushkov recalled in one of his letters about the battlefield of Leipzig, where he “driving alone over the piles of bodies of the dead and dying”: “I have never seen a worse battlefield than this in my life ... » (III, 236). The very course of the historical process clearly demonstrated to the poet all the inconsistency of his attempt to distract himself from the formidable and destructive movement of history, from the painful contradictions of reality. As noted, even in the first period of creativity, the theme of death, intruding into Batyushkov's Epicurean poems, testified to the limitations of the philosophy of individual enjoyment of earthly joys. Now Batyushkov resolutely rejects this philosophy, comparing it with the terrible historical reality. "What a noble heart ... - he asks, - will he want to look for gross earthly pleasures in the midst of the terrible ruins of capitals, in the midst of ruins, even more terrible, of universal order and in the midst of the suffering of all mankind, in the whole enlightened world? (II, 129).

The general problems of life seem to Batyushkov more and more confusing and insoluble. In the elegy “To a Friend”, Batyushkov emphasizes that, in an effort to resolve these issues, he, despite all his efforts, did not see any meaning in history and its essence seems terrible to him:

In vain I asked the experience of centuries
And Kliya gloomy tablets ...

The diligently erected world of dreams, as if shielding the Epicurean poet from historical reality, collapsed. In that

But Batyushkov's elegy "To a Friend" directly speaks of the death "in a storm of troubles" of a shelter decorated with roses. After returning from a foreign campaign, Batyushkov sees life in all its nakedness, he is horrified by terrible historical events, and he is intensely looking for a way out. “Everything that I saw, that I experienced during the sixteen months of the 'war' left a complete void in my soul. I don’t recognize myself, ”he admits in an unpublished letter to Vyazemsky, 1 and in another letter he asks Zhukovsky:“ Tell me what to resort to, how to occupy the emptiness of my soul ... » (III, 304).

A certain role in aggravating this state of mind of Batyushkov was also played by the personal hardships and failures that he encountered after returning to his homeland. In 1815, it reaches its climax in its tension, and the poet is captured by reactionary philosophical ideas. Personally and spiritually approaching Zhukovsky, Batyushkov tries to find a solution to the problems that confronted him in religion. In those elegies of Batyushkov in 1815, where he tries to resolve internal conflicts in a religious spirit (“Hope”, “To a friend”), mystical motifs characteristic of Zhukovsky’s poetry invade, and even its individual images and expressions (the earthly life of a person is “a riza wanderer", providence - "guide", "power of attorney to the creator", etc.). It was in 1815 that Batyushkov created the articles “Something About Morality Based on Philosophy and Religion” and “On the Best Properties of the Heart”, imbued with religious moralism. In them, he correctly gropes for the weakness of the ethical foundations of French enlightenment philosophy - individualism, determined by its bourgeois character, but in general takes a reactionary point of view and fiercely attacks "impious free-thinking" and materialistic ideas. The religious mood of Batyushkov causes a sarcastic attitude among some of his friends. If earlier the poet laughed at hypocrites - "Capuchins", now Vyazemsky writes about himself: "There is no strength to see how he is a capuchin." 2

At this time, Batyushkov, in his letters and articles, interprets the events of the Patriotic War in the spirit of reactionary-monarchist journalism. Condemning the "horrors of the revolution" (II, 115), he considers Napoleon the heir of the Jacobins - "the horseman Robespierre" (III, 250), sees in the Moscow fire "the fruits of enlightenment, or, better

say, the debauchery of the most witty people" (III, 205), and analyzing Zhukovsky's message to "Emperor Alexander", dedicated to the events of the Patriotic War, he notes: "No matter how much one can say about the philosophers who prepared evil" (III, 302). In one of his articles of 1815, Batyushkov, referring to the thoughts of Chateaubriand, argues that the victory of the Russians in the war was a kind of disgrace to revolutionary ideas: reason, brotherhood and liberties built by godlessness, and the banner of Moscow, faith and honor is hoisted at the site of the greatest crime against God and humanity! (II, 141).

However, the poet did not go over to the camp of reaction. His religious and mystical sentiments reached their peak in 1815, but then began to clearly weaken. Despite his new attitude towards the philosophy of Voltaire and Rousseau, even at that time Batyushkov was far from indiscriminately denying their ideological heritage and continued to consider them great people, repeatedly citing the works of these thinkers, while representatives of reactionary circles tried to erase the very memory of the philosophers. -enlighteners and, according to the testimony of the Decembrist N. I. Turgenev, they called them "swindlers". 1 Already at the time of spiritual confusion, during a campaign in France, Batyushkov goes to "bow" to the "shadow of Voltaire" in the castle of Sirey and in an essay about this trip calls Voltaire "Proteus of the human mind", noting his "mind is flexible, vast, brilliant, capable for everything" (II, 66). After the end of the Patriotic War, Batyushkov sharply condemns the "embittered tyrants" (II, 148) and the medieval Inquisition with its bonfires (see II, 297 and 362), dreams of the liberation of Russian serfs. According to Vyazemsky, in 1814 the poet composed a "beautiful quatrain" directed against serfdom. Addressing Alexander I in it, he offered the latter "after the end of the glorious war that liberated Europe", "to complete his glory and immortalize his reign by the liberation of the Russian people." 2 This quatrain, which unfortunately has not come down to us, was obviously written under the influence of the Decembrist N. I. Turgenev, with whom the poet often saw in 1814, during the foreign campaign of the Russian army. There is an entry made just at that time in the diary of N. I. Turgenev, which is

a complete analogy to Batyushkov's quatrain. About the liberation of the peasants, N. I. Turgenev says: “Here is the crown with which the Russian emperor can crown all his deeds.” one

At this time, Batyushkov still remains an enemy of literary reactionaries. True, he no longer directs a single major satirical work against the Shishkovites, and in general after 1813, when “The Singer in the Conversation of Lovers of the Russian Word” was composed, he creates only one small anti-Shishkovist poem addressed to Vyazemsky - “I see the shadow of Bobrov ... ". The rejection of controversy, of active interference in literary life was associated with the influence of conservative ideas on the poet: “For some time now I have been disgusted by satire,” he admits to Gnedich (III, 410). However, in letters to friends, Batyushkov, with even greater bitterness than before the Patriotic War, attacks the Shishkovites and their attempts to reverse the development of Russian literature. In 1816, he writes to Gnedich about the language of the Shishkovists: “No, I have never had such hatred for this mandarin, slave, Tatar-Slavic language, as now!” (III, 409). Taking into account precisely these moods of Batyushkov, the Karamzinists elected him a member of Arzamas. And although Batyushkov took part in the meetings of "Arzamas" when the society was already going through a period of disintegration (he attended its meeting for the first time on August 27, 1817 and then delivered an introductory speech 2), the Arzamas people appreciated in the poet his potential powers as a literary polemicist and widely used his old, very famous anti-Shishkovsky works. In many Arzamas comic speeches, echoes of these works are heard, for example, in the speech prepared for Arzamas by the Decembrist N. I. Turgenev, where, as in Batyushkov's "Vision on the Banks of the Leta", the motif of immersing mediocre works of shishkovists ("dead" "Conversations" plunge "bales of unbound printed sheets" into the water and cross the river along them to get to the Russian Academy 3).

Not taking a particularly active part in the anti-Shishkovist activities of Arzamas, Batyushkov undoubtedly approved of this activity - the "war against the Slavophiles" (III, 433). In 1816 he

wrote Zhukovsky: "Hour by hour I am more and more convinced that the Arzamas people are better than the Suzdal 'Shishkovists', and without them there is no salvation" (III, 382). At the same time, the poet was dissatisfied with the "intimacy" and frivolity of society's activities. 1 He ironically informed Vyazemsky about its members: “It’s fun at Arzamas. They say: we will begin to work, and no one does anything: (III, 468). This position was also reflected in Batyushkov's essay "Evening at Kantemir", read in January 1817 at a meeting of "Arzamas". Despite the historical theme, the essay was a response to the burning political problems of our time, and it felt a clear dissatisfaction with the social order existing in Russia. But the solution of social problems in the essay, of course, did not correspond to the views of the left wing of Arzamas, since Batyushkov placed his hopes for a better future only on peaceful “successes in enlightenment” (II, 230).

In the last years of his creative activity, Batyushkov begins to show interest in the Decembrist love of freedom, and sometimes even expresses some sympathy for him. In a letter from Italy dated August 1, 1819, he asks Zhukovsky: “Tell N. I. Turgenev that I sincerely respect him, and so that he does not think that I am a barbarian: tell him that I swam in the Tiber and walked along the Forum of Rome , without blushing that here I am reading Tacitus ... » (III, 562). In the terminology of N. I. Turgenev, the word "barbarian" was equivalent to the word "reactionary", and Tacitus was interpreted by the Decembrist-minded figures, and not only them, as the "scourge of tyrants" (Pushkin's words), who defended Roman freedom. Thus, Batyushkov believed that his convictions gave him the right to think about the heroes of Roman freedom without remorse. The poet surrounded the personality of his second cousin, the Decembrist Nikita Muravyov, with an aura of ancient liberty, about whose love of freedom, as archival materials show, he was well aware. In 1818, he reported from Vienna to E. F. Muravyova: “I will write to you from Venice or Florence,

but to Nikita from Rome, for he is a Roman in soul. 1 The words "Roman in soul" undeniably meant love for freedom - that is exactly what they received in freedom-loving circles. Let us recall at least Pushkin's lines from his first civil poem - the message to Licinius:

I am a Roman at heart; freedom boils in the chest,
The spirit of a great people does not sleep in me.

But of course, any revolutionary sentiments were completely alien to Batyushkov. If Pushkin ardently wished success to the revolutionary movement of the Italian Carbonari from a distance, 2 it only repelled his eyewitness Batyushkov. “I am very tired of this stupid revolution,” he wrote to E. F. Muravyova from Rome in 1821. “It’s time to be smart, that is, dead.” 3 It is significant that representatives of the Decembrist circles often criticize Batyushkov, referring to the moderation of his political views and the thematic narrowness of his poetry. An ironic review of the "Experiments" was the comedy by A. S. Griboedov and P. A. Katenin "Student", where sharp parodies of Batyushkov's poetry and prose were given. Notes on the margins of the "Experiments" by the Decembrist Nikita Muravyov, who attacked those places in Batiushkov's "Speech on the Influence of Light Poetry on Language", which seemed to him erroneous in a political sense, are also indicative. To Batyushkov’s words that “all noble hearts, all patriots” gratefully bless the tsar’s hand, which generously rewards “domestic talents” (II, 246), Nikita Muravyov responds with an indignant tirade: “What impudence to vouch for others! Who chose the author as the representative of all patriots? (II, 527).

But despite the fact that Batyushkov was far from revolutionary and radical circles, after returning from a foreign campaign, he clearly understood that literature was facing new, serious tasks, and, trying to respond to the demands of modernity, he tried to direct his work along new artistic paths. This becomes quite obvious when analyzing the most significant works of the poet relating to the post-war period.

Having already declared in his message “To Dashkov” his desire to go beyond the narrow limits of Karamzinist themes and images, Batiushkov complains of dissatisfaction with his own poetry even after the end of the war. In 1814, he confesses to Zhukovsky: “My smallest gift, which fate gave me, of course - in its anger, became my tormentor. I see its uselessness for society and for myself” (III, 304). Now Batyushkov wants to expand the range of his creativity, to solve new, more important artistic tasks. Claiming that he was tired of "trinkets" (III, 227-228), Batyushkov writes to Zhukovsky: "I would like to give a new direction to my tiny muse and expand the scope of elegy" (III, 448). Indeed, he creates a number of monumental historical elegies ("On the ruins of a castle in Sweden", "Crossing the Rhine", "Dying Tass", "Hesiod and Omir - rivals"). Batyushkov is thinking about working on a large epic canvas. As a preliminary experience, he writes a large satirical tale "The Wanderer and the Homebody" (1815).

The poetic tales of I. I. Dmitriev (such as “Fashionable Wife”) served as a model for her. Batyushkov admitted that the “beautiful” verse of this poet “The mind loves to wander, but the heart lives in place” gave him the first impetus to compose his work. 1 However, Batyushkov developed the motif of wanderings, which was often found in Dmitriev's poetry, in a different way. Depicting a hero who traveled for a long time and unsuccessfully through different countries and “half-dead” returned to his native hut, he ends his tale not with an apology for peace, like Dmitriev (see, for example, at least his fairy tale “The Freaky Girl”), but with a rejection of it: the hero again sets off to travel, ignoring the arguments of his homebody brother who is trying to keep him:

Vain words - the eccentric did not return -
waved his hand ... and disappeared.

In The Wanderer and the Homebody, Batyushkov, in the person of the protagonist, by his own admission, "described himself", 2 i.e., his love for distant travels, associated with the desire to leave the suffocating atmosphere of autocratic-feudal Russia (in the introduction

to the tale, the poet directly says that a person of his type is “condemned to seek ... what he does not know himself). The autobiographical moment, his own thoughts and feelings, which colored this work in subjective-lyrical tones, are the new things that Batiushkov enriched the genre of the poetic fairy tale. However, work on this obsolete genre at that time did not promise Batyushkov any fruitful prospects. He sets before himself and before other talented writers the task of creating a Russian poem of a new type. He insists that Zhukovsky should leave the "trinkets" - elegies and ballads - for important work. "I'll forgive you everything if you write a poem ... "- Batyushkov exclaims in a letter to Zhukovsky (III, 382-383). Having met in 1815 with the young lyceum student Pushkin, he advises him not to limit himself to lyrics and compose a poem with an epic plot. 1 Batyushkov himself is also preparing to begin work in this direction. Entering the path that Pushkin so brilliantly took in Ruslan and Lyudmila, Batyushkov dreams of creating a great work with a Russian national plot: he conceives the historical poem Rurik (III, 439) and is going to write poems about Bova 2 and Mermaid ”, 3 having built them on folk fairy-tale motifs. His interest in Russian national themes, prompted by pre-romantic and romantic tendencies in Russian literature, echoed the creative aspirations of such poets as Zhukovsky and Katenin. However, these plans for large works remained unfulfilled, apparently because Batyushkov, by the type of his talent, was a master of small forms and, moreover, was bound by the Karamzinist tradition, which was very far from folklore. 4

The spiritual crisis experienced by Batyushkov left an indelible mark on the entire post-war work of the poet, marked by the deepest internal contradictions. The creative image of Batyushkov doubles; his poetic work goes, as it were, in two opposite directions, only occasionally touching each other.

friend. On the one hand, he is still under the spell of an ideal that affirms life as sensual pleasure, but now he embodies it exclusively in the images of the ancient world, making it the property of only an era of ancient times. Another line of Batyushkov's poetry is connected with historical elegies, with the romantic theme of the tragic loneliness and death of the poet, which reflected the real situation of the artist in the conditions of autocratic-serfdom reality. Not a single Russian writer before Pushkin developed this theme as fully and deeply as Batyushkov. Even before the Patriotic War, the poet was agitated by the misfortunes of the playwright Ozerov, who soon became mentally ill under the influence of official and literary troubles. In support of him, he composed the fable "The Shepherd and the Nightingale". But the most grateful material for developing the theme of the fate of the persecuted poet, which in Russian conditions had a sharp modern sound, was given to Batyushkov by the biography of Torquato Tasso, a poet hunted by court circles. As early as 1808, Batyushkov, who began translating Jerusalem Liberated, composed the epistle To Tass, where he indignantly addressed the persecutors of the poet:

Oh you who poison
Torquata gave a taste of the torment of fierce hell,
Come a spectacle worthy of merriment
And enjoy the death of his talent!

Batyushkov created the largest work about Tasso in the post-war period: in 1817 he wrote the historical elegy "Dying Tass". The poet, who considered this elegy his best work, partly put autobiographical content into it; it is no coincidence that contemporaries began to see in her, especially after Batyushkov's insanity, a reflection of his own suffering. The elegy was a more resounding success than any other work by Batyushkov. The Decembrist A. A. Bestuzhev-Marlinsky argued: “Batyushkov would remain an exemplary poet without reproach, even if he wrote one“ Dying Tassa ”. 1 In the elegy, a tragic figure appeared, persecuted by "talent killers", persecuted by fate, Tasso, trying in vain to find peace:

Fortune pitted abysses
Opened under me, and the thunder did not stop!

Driven from country to country, driven from country to country,
I searched in vain for shelter on earth ... -

the dying hero of the elegy complains.

Batyushkov showed originality in developing the theme of Tasso and, moving away from the interpretation of Goethe (drama Torquato Tasso, 1790), who saw the tragedy of the great Italian writer in his internal contradictions, completely independently of Byron with his titanic "Tasso's Complaint", created a Russian work about Tasso , based on the poet's conflict with reality (Byron's "Tasso's Complaint" was composed almost simultaneously with Batyushkov's "The Dying Tass", in April 1817). Tasso Batyushkova is the true forerunner of the yearning wanderers, "wanderers persecuted by the world", later depicted in the romantic works of Pushkin and Lermontov. However, in Batyushkov's elegy, with freedom-loving moods, reminiscent of Zhukovsky's poetry, the motives of the religious and mystical resolution of the poet's conflict with reality were combined: Tasso, before his death, finds solace in thoughts about the other world and the afterlife meeting with his beloved Eleanor, waiting for him "among the angels." These religious motives, as well as the absence of an energetic protest against social evil, gave the character of the hero and the whole elegy of Batyushkov some lethargy, which caused a sharply negative review of Pushkin, who saw only “glory and good nature” in the lamentations of the dying Tasso and claimed that this was a “skinny work” " below his glory" and is no match for Byron's "Tasso's Complaint". one

A number of his post-war translations essentially adjoin Batyushkov's Tassov cycle, where the image of a persecuted, suffering person is also drawn. In 1814, Batyushkov created the poem "The Fate of Odysseus", which is a free translation of Schiller's work, and autobiographically comprehends the image of the Homeric hero who "did not know" his homeland (Batiushkov himself, who often compared himself with Odysseus, after returning from a foreign campaign, felt like a stranger on homeland). By 1816, Batyushkov’s free translation from Milvois dates back to the historical elegy “Hesiod and Omir are rivals”. It again develops the theme of the fate of the persecuted poet, and the author of the Odyssey is depicted as a homeless blind man who managed to maintain spiritual greatness, despite

persecution of the "vain crowd". Quite independently, Batyushkov concludes the poem with a generalizing conclusion about the bleak fate of the poet. Speaking about the fact that Homer does not find a “refuge” in Hellas, Batyushkov, in the last line, which has no correspondence in the original, asks a mournful rhetorical question: “And where will his talent and poverty find?”

The theme of the fate of the persecuted poet brought Batyushkov close to many freedom-loving writers of the first twenty years of the 19th century, for example, with Gnedich, whose poem "The Birth of Homer" (1816) clearly echoed the elegy "Hesiod and Omir are rivals" ("How did we get along?" Batyushkov asked Gnedich one).

Batyushkov became the creator of a special kind of historical elegy with a predominance of the lyrical element, which, in fact, was a transitional artistic phenomenon, standing between a lyrical poem and a romantic poem, and made it possible not only to illuminate the psychology of the hero, close to the mood of the poet himself, but also to show his life destiny. Thus, in The Dying Tassa, where Batyushkov approached the genre of a romantic poem, the extensive monologue of the dying Italian poet not only conveys his experiences, but also contains a description of the most important vicissitudes of his life.

In his work on historical elegies of this type, Batyushkov anticipated some of Pushkin's themes. If Pushkin in 1821 created the message “To Ovid”, which was essentially a historical elegy, where he lyrically linked the fate of the exiled Roman poet with his own fate as an exile, then Batyushkov was going to write about Ovid in Scythia back in 1817, believing that this was “a subject for elegies are happier than Tass himself” (III, 456), and, of course, he wanted to put a deeply personal content into this thing (Batyushkov often compared his life in the countryside with the reference of the Roman poet 2). The historical elegies of Pushkin and Batyushkov, standing on the same line of development of Russian romanticism, were persistently brought together by Belinsky. He called The Dying Tassa a work "to which only Pushkin's Andrey Chenier can be put in parallel." 3 Indeed, both elegies depict the dying moments of the poet and have the same plan (description

the setting of the action, the great monologue of the poet, which occupies almost the entire work, and a catastrophic denouement: Tasso dies in Batyushkov, Chenier enters the scaffold in Pushkin).

Thus, Batyushkov, under the influence of the aggravation of his conflict with reality, came quite close in the works of the post-war period to some important themes and problems of Pushkin's romanticism of the 1920s. This was also manifested in his post-war love lyrics, which embodied the psychological world of a lonely person experiencing a spiritual drama (see in particular "Elegy"), as well as in the fact that even before Pushkin he became one of the first Russian connoisseurs of Byron's romantic poetry. In 1819, he made a fairly accurate translation of one of the stanzas of Childe Harold's Wanderings, which created the image of a disillusioned, cooled person, leaving for the natural world ("There is pleasure in the wildness of the forests ... "). This, by the way, showed that the interests of Batyushkov, the translator, partly shifted, compared with the first period of his work, from French and Italian literature to English and German. This movement was explained primarily by the strengthening of Batyushkov’s romantic aspirations: it is no coincidence that, having discovered German literature for himself during the Russian army’s foreign campaign, he not only discovers a burning interest in the romance of passions in the work of the young Goethe (“I have a heart almost the same as Goethe, man crazy, gave crazy Werther,” the poet admits in an unpublished letter to Vyazemsky 1), but he also begins to translate Schiller, choosing those of his works in which antiquity is romantically comprehended.

Back in 1814 or 1815, Batyushkov wrote his famous poem "The Bacchante", called by Belinsky "the apotheosis of sensual passion." 2 It is also highly remarkable in that it outlines the method of depicting the life of ancient antiquity, which Batiushkov brilliantly demonstrated in his lyrical cycles From the Greek Anthology (1817-1818) and Imitation of the Ancients (1821), which are a single whole.

In Batyushkov's anthological poems, the theme of love prevails - "ardent delight" and "rapture" of earthly passion; this shows that he is still a life-loving poet. Near

with it stands the heroic theme of the struggle with dangers, proud contempt for death. This theme brought Batyushkov closer to progressive freedom-loving literature, imbued with the ideas of Decembrism, and anticipated Pushkin's anthem of the chairman from A Feast in the Time of Plague, glorifying "rapture in battle." But since Batyushkov's consciousness at the time of composing anthological poems was distinguished by a sharply expressed inconsistency, at the same time a complex complex of minor, and sometimes pessimistic moods is outlined in them. These moods suggest the tragic theme of the death of a young being and the theme of the frailty of all human deeds and values, deployed against the background of pictures of the destruction and death of ancient cultures (see the 5th poem from the Greek anthology, built on the contrast of the greatness of the ancient city and its later desolation, as well as an excellent poem adjoining Batyushkov's anthological cycles “You are awakening, O Baia, from the tomb ... ”, which emphasizes the impossibility of reviving an ancient civilization).

Before Batyushkov, anthological poems were written by Derzhavin (see his translation from Pavel Silentiarius "Shackles", referring to 1809) and Dmitriev. S. P. Shevyrev, in his Parisian lectures on Russian literature, rightly asserted that some of Dmitriev's "anthological plays" contain "the germs of Batyushkov's poetry." 1 However, it was Batyushkov who raised this genre in Russian poetry to a great artistic height. If Voltaire - one of the greatest masters of this genre 2 - said in his "Philosophical Dictionary" that an anthological poem should be short and concise, then Batyushkov's works can serve as a classic example of such poetics. His anthological poems, with all the depth and capacity of their content, often do not exceed 4-6 lines in size. Thus, Batyushkov brilliantly fulfilled the basic requirement of the anthological poem genre - the embodiment of thought and feeling in the most economical form. It is quite natural that with such conciseness of Batyushkov's anthological poems, various methods of lyrical composition played a particularly important role in them, in particular, an energetic closing ending, which often took on an aphoristic form:

O young swimmer, how beautiful your life is!
Trust the shuttle! swim!

("With courage on the forehead
and with a flame in the blood ... »)

Do not be afraid! God will decide. He is only a father to the brave
Only brave pearls, honey or death ... il crown.

("Do you want honey, son? -
so sorry don't be afraid ... »)

In the anthological poems, perhaps, the most characteristic feature of Batyushkov's style is manifested with the greatest force - the extraordinary concreteness of the images. Not knowing the ancient Greek language, Batyushkov, with an amazing power of creative instinct and imagination, “guessed” the properties of the original and the spirit of ancient life expressed in them through the rather pale and sometimes manneredly sentimental French translations of S. S. Uvarov from ancient poets. He not only intensified the theme of "earthly" ardent passion to the maximum, but also gave a surprising concreteness to many rather banal Uvarov lines, embodying the erased "stamp images". For example, instead of the “fresh and light fabrics” (“frais et légers tissus”) mentioned by Uvarov in the third poem of the cycle, Batyushkov has “light covers from snow-white haze”. Thus, Uvarov, who pointed out that his French translations from ancient authors were created in the order of "friendly competition" with Batyushkov, suffered a complete defeat in this competition. And in his original cycle "Imitation of the Ancients" Batyushkov develops a magnificent color painting, a whole range of colors. An equally brilliant color painting can be seen in Batyushkov’s anthological poem “You are awakening, O Baia, from the tomb ... ».

It is not surprising that Batyushkov's anthological poems, which became one of his best artistic achievements and testify to how high the level of the poet's skill was at the end of his career, evoked rave reviews from his contemporaries. I. I. Dmitriev wrote about them to A. I. Turgenev: “This is the perfection of Russian versification: what flexibility, softness, tenderness and purity!” 1 V. K. Kuchelbecker, who wrote about these poems

a special article, noted in them "the most ardent lyricism" and "a gigantic power of expression", 1 and Belinsky considered them "truly exemplary, truly artistic" and put them forward in the first place in Batyushkov's work, as "the best work of his muse", complaining about the fact that the public does not pay due attention to these masterpieces, which are distinguished by their “marble relief form”. 2

But neither the history of the ancient world, nor ancient art could smooth out the poet's tragic conflict with reality. Heavy thoughts and gloomy moods again began to rapidly escalate. Their expression was a poem, tentatively known as "The Saying of Melchizedek", where Batyushkov declared that a person's life is a continuous chain of suffering and is entirely determined by the incomprehensible will of fate, which does not open up any reasonable goals for him ("A slave will be born a man, a Slave to the grave lie down"). At the same time, Batyushkov also rejected the "consolations" of religion, on which he had previously tried to rely. And death will hardly tell him why he went ... ”- the poet wrote about man, spreading his skepticism to the doctrine of the afterlife. But the hopeless pessimism expressed in The Saying of Melchizedek, growing out of "crisis" experiences, nevertheless arose to a large extent under the influence of Batyushkov's mental illness. That is why it would be wrong to consider "The Saying of Melchizedek" as the result of the entire creative path of the poet.

Much suggests that if Batyushkov's mental illness had not interrupted his work, he could have entered some new creative path. This point of view was firmly supported by Belinsky, who found that the flourishing of Pushkin's activity would have had a "strong and beneficent influence" on Batyushkov. 3 “Only then would the Russians know what a great talent they had in him,” wrote Belinsky. 4

Batyushkov himself clearly felt the tragic incompleteness of his creative path when he was no longer able to continue it. In a moment of enlightenment, the mentally ill poet said to Vyazemsky: “What can I say about my poems !.. I look like a man

who did not reach his goal, but he carried on his head a beautiful vessel filled with something. The vessel fell off the head, fell and shattered into smithereens. Go and find out now what was in it!” one

Batyushkov was closely associated with progressive Russian culture. Despite the well-known constraint of old forms, his work was directed forward - into the artistic realms of romanticism. It was Batyushkov's ideological and artistic innovation that made him one of Pushkin's teachers and favorite writers. The great Russian poet was related to his closest predecessor Batyushkov primarily by the earthly, spontaneously materialistic perception of life. Throughout his career, Batyushkov remained for Pushkin a classic of Russian poetry and at the same time a living artistic phenomenon. When analyzing Pushkin's lyceum lyrics, it turns out that the influence of Batyushkov both quantitatively and qualitatively outweighs the influences of all other poets in it. And in the future, Pushkin continued to be keenly interested in Batyushkov's thoughts, themes and artistic techniques. Making a rapid path from Epicurean poetry to freedom-loving romanticism and further to realism, Pushkin consciously and unconsciously included Batyushkov's motifs, images and techniques reworked by him into different stylistic layers of his work. We often meet them in Pushkin's lyrics, in almost all of his poems, in A Feast in the Time of the Plague and in Eugene Onegin. Pushkin also used the poetic language and forms of Batyushkov's verse and his phraseology - stable verbal formulas carefully honed by this exacting master. All this was quite natural, since Pushkin and Batyushkov created two closely connected, successive stages in the progressive development of Russian literature. But of course, in all areas, Pushkin took a giant step forward compared to Batyushkov - both because he was a genius, and his predecessor was only a great talent, and because he managed to become an incomparable "poet of reality", depicting with amazing fullness and freshness Russian life. Not without reason, in notes on the margins of "Experiments", Pushkin not only admired the artistic brilliance of Batyushkov's poetry, but also criticized it from the standpoint of strict realism for its stylistic inconsistency, for a mixture of mythological and everyday images.

We also find the influence of Batyushkov's ideas and style or individual motifs in his poems in the poetry of Ryleev, Baratynsky, Lermontov, Tyutchev, Maikov. But Batyushkov is not only a teacher of Russian poets. Like all truly high works of art, the poet's best poems broke out of their era and passed through the "envious distance" of centuries. And now they continue to live a full life and deliver aesthetic pleasure to the reader. This is a wonderful result of Batyushkov's creative activity, who managed to create, despite the acute tragedy of his biography, a noble, bright and harmonious poetry.

The tragic fate of the poets of Pushkin's time is well known. Pushkin was killed. Lermontov was killed. Venevitinov burned down from transient consumption, which he received during interrogations in the 3rd department. The strange and unexpected death of Delvig is directly associated by contemporaries with the name of the gendarme Benckendorff. Polezhaev, demoted to the soldiers, was sentenced to "drive through the ranks" and died in the regimental hospital. The Decembrist Marlinsky died from a bullet in the Caucasus, where he was sent by the tsar "for seniority." Küchelbecker was rotten in Siberia...

Among this synodogue of the strangled, let down by bullets, driven into consumption, the poet Batyushkov stands, as it were, apart. He was born on May 29 (NS) 1787, and died in June 1855, having lived for 68 years. However, if these calendar dates are disclosed, the death of the poet will have to be attributed to the very beginning of the twenties. It was in 1821 that Batyushkov wrote from Italy the following lines full of bitterness: “I leave the field of literature not without gratitude to those compatriots who ... deigned to approve my weak undertakings. I promise not even to read criticism... for I have completely and probably forever left the author's pen.

Since that year, faithfully fulfilling his promise, the poet disappears not only from literature, but even from life. The next 34 years, spent by him in various psychiatric hospitals in Europe from Sonneniggein, (Saxony) to St. Petersburg, is an empty space in his work. “We are all born under some kind of disastrous constellation,” Vyazemsky wrote to A. I. Turgenev, having learned about the poet’s illness, “the devil knows how we live, what we live for ...” The devil knows how we live, what we live for! - this was not only Batyushkov's tragedy. How similar is this tragic exclamation to the mournful words of Pushkin: “And the devil pulled me to be born in Russia with intelligence and talent!”

What is the strength of Batyushkov's bright talent? “We not only hear his verse with our ears, but we see it with our eyes: we want to feel the twists and folds of its marble drapery,” Belinsky writes, summing up the poet’s work. And in this enthusiastic review lies Batyushkov's indisputable right to the attention of modernity. Batiushkov enters the magnificent, solemn, but heavy, clumsy poetry of the first decade of the 19th century as a bold innovator, as a fierce champion of careful work on the word. He doesn't just write poetry, he polishes it like a piece of marble. Well acquainted with the Italian language, he boldly takes on the most difficult and, as it was then believed, impossible task - to transfer into Russian verse, accustomed to the clumsy grandeur of Derzhavin's odes, the melodiousness and expressiveness of the Italian language.

Batyushkov not only perfected his verse so that it flowed like a flute melody, but made the Russian language, accustomed to Slavicisms and barbaric truncations, sound like the whole bizarre range of Italian speech.

Pushkin followed Batyushkov and in the footsteps of Batyushkov. He almost completely went through the entire path of his creative development, but for this he did not need a whole life, like Batyushkov, but only 3-4 years. All Pushkin's poems relating to the so-called lyceum period (1814-1818) are associated with the name of Batyushkov. Batyushkov was not a great poet, but the agitated breath of his verse sounded with brilliant force precisely in Pushkin's powerful iambs. After Batyushkov, Pushkin's arrival was already historically prepared.

To what musicality Batyushkov reaches in his poems, can be seen from the following poem, which A. Maikov erroneously attributed to Pushkin:

Oh memory of the heart! You are stronger

Reason of sad memory

And often with its sweetness

You captivate me in a distant country.

I remember blue eyes

I remember golden curls

Carelessly curly hair.

My shepherdess incomparable

I remember the whole outfit is simple,

And the image is sweet, unforgettable

Travels with me everywhere.

Guardian - my genius - love

He is given to the joy of separation:

Will I fall asleep? cling to the head

And soothe a sad dream.

“These are not yet Pushkin’s poems,” Belinsky wrote, “but after them one should have expected not any poems, but Pushkin’s.” In the huge work on the creation of the Russian literary language - after Pushkin, Batyushkov should be given one of the first places.

Works in prose and verse, Konstantin Batyushkov

Belinsky V. G. Collected Works. In 9 volumes.

T. 1. Articles, reviews and notes 1834--1836. Dmitry Kalinin.

Enter. article to the collection op. N. K. Geya.

Article and note. to the first volume of Yu. V. Mann.

Preparation of the text by V. E. Bograd.

M., "Fiction", 1976

WORKS IN PROSE AND VERSE, KONSTANTINA BATYUSHKOVA. Second edition. St. Petersburg, in the printing house of I. Glazunov. 1834. Two parts: I - 340; II - 270. (8).

Our literature, extremely rich in high-profile authorities and ringing names, is extremely poor in true talents. Its whole history went like this: along with some luminary, true or false, there appeared up to ten mediocre people who, deceiving themselves in their artistic vocation, unintentionally deceived our good-natured and trusting public, shone for a few moments, like airy meteors, and immediately extinguished. How many of the loudest authorities fell from 1825 to 1835? Now even the gods of this decade, one by one, are deprived of their altars and perish in Lethe with the gradual spread of true concepts of elegance and acquaintance with foreign literatures. Tredyakovsky, Popovsky, Sumarokov, Kheraskov, Petrov, Bogdanovich, Bobrov, Kapnist, Voeikov, Katenin, Lobanov, Viskovatov, Kryukovskoy, S. N. Glinka, Bunina, the Izmailov brothers, V. Pushkin, Maykov, Prince . Shalikov - all these people were not only read and admired, but even revered by poets; this is not enough, some of them were known as geniuses of the first magnitude, such as: Sumarokov, Kheraskov, Petrov and Bogdanovich; others were awarded the then honorary, but now meaningless title exemplary writers(Here, for example, is what our famous playwright Prince Shakhovskoy wrote about Maikov in a brief preface to his iroi-comic poem "Stolen fur coats", placed in "Reading in the Conversation of lovers of the Russian word" in 1811: "In our language, Vasily Ivanovich Maikov composed" Elisha ", a comic poem in 4 songs. Excellent talents of this poet and the most beautiful verses (!!) with which filled with (what: excellent talents or the most beautiful verses?) His work deserves fair praise from all lovers of the Russian word; but the content of the poem, taken from self-popular incidents, and the violent actions of its hero do not allow us to classify this sharp and funny creation as a kind of heroic comic poems that necessarily require decent humor" (p. 46). Since this was a long time ago, I cite this opinion not as a reproach to the famous and highly respected playwright, but as a fact for the history of Russian literature and proof of how fragile the surprise of contemporaries towards authors.). Now, alas! the names of some of them are known only from legends about their existence, others only because they are still alive as people, if not as poets ... The name of Karamzin himself is now respected as the name of an unforgettable figure in the field of education and the engine of society, as a writer with a mind and zeal for goodness, but not as a poet-artist ... But although the author's fame is so often fragile, although the surprise and praise of the crowd are so often false, however, blind, she sometimes, as if by chance, bends her knees and before true dignity. But, I repeat, she often does this out of blindness, by chance, because she praises the artist for what she blames his posterity, and, on the contrary, blames him for what she praises his posterity for. Batyushkov is the most convincing proof of this truth. That this man was a true poet, that he had a great talent, there is no doubt about it. But why did his contemporaries praise him, why did they marvel at him, why did they proclaim him exemplary(then same as now) ingenious) a writer? .. I answer in the affirmative: correct and pure language, sonorous and light verse, plasticity of forms, some kind of affectation and coquetry in decoration, in a word, some kind of classical dapperness - that's what captivated contemporaries in Batyushkov's works. At that time about feeling they didn’t bother, because they considered it superfluous and empty in art, they demanded art, and this word then had a special meaning and meant almost the same thing with pretentiousness and unnaturalness. However, there was another important reason why contemporaries especially fell in love with and distinguished Batyushkov. It should be noted that we classicism had one sharp difference from the French classicism: just as the French classics tried to flaunt their sonorous and smooth, albeit inflated, verses and pretentiously chiselled phrases, so our classics tried to be distinguished by their barbaric language, a true amalgam of Slavicism and distorted Russian, chopped off words for measure, broke out oak phrases and called it pitiful liberty, to which a special chapter was devoted in all aesthetics. Batyushkov, the first of the Russian poets, was a stranger to this pitiful liberty- and his contemporaries waved. I will be told that Zhukovsky, even before Batyushkov, entered the field of literature; so, but Zhukovsky was then poorly understood, for he was too unsuitable for the society of that time, too ideal, dreamy, and therefore was overshadowed by Batyushkov. So, Batyushkov was proclaimed an exemplary poet and prose writer and advised young people exercising(during leisure hours, having nothing to do) vocabulary, imitate him. For our part, we will not advise anyone to imitate Batyushkov, although we recognize in him a great poetic talent, and many of his poems, despite their dapperness, we revere as precious pearls of our literature. Batyushkov was quite the son of his time. He foresaw some new need for his artistic direction, but, carried away by a classical upbringing, which was based on a different and unaccountable astonishment for Greek and Latin literature, bound by a blind adoration of French literature and French theories, he did not know how to make clear to himself what he foresaw somehow. that dark feeling. That is why, together with the elegy "The Dying Tass" - this work, which is distinguished by a deep feeling, not absorbed by form, energetic talent, and to which only Pushkin's "Andrey Chenier" can be paralleled, he later wrote a languid, prosaic epistle to Tass 1 (h II, p. 98); that is why he, the creator of "Elegy on the ruins of a castle in Sweden", "Shadow of a friend", "Last spring", "Omir and Hesiod", "To a friend", "To Karamzin", "I.M.M.A." , "K N." 2, "Crossing the Rhine", - imitated the vulgar Parny, left us a boring fairy tale "The Wanderer and a Homebody", a fragmentary translation from Tassa 3, terrifying with Kherask iambs, and many poems that are decidedly bad, and, finally, a lot of ballast, consisting of epigrams, madrigals and the like; that is why, admitting that "the ancient heroes under Fontenelle's pen are often transformed into courtiers of Ludovik's time and remind us of the courteous shepherds of the same author, who lack a wig, cuffs and red heels to shuffle in the royal antechamber" (Part I, p. 101 ), he did not see the same thing in the writings of Racine and Voltaire and admired the Ruriks, Oskolds, Oleg Muravyov, in whom he mixed a noble dignitary, a virtuous husband, an intelligent and educated person with a poet and artist (Ants, as a writer, is remarkable in his moral direction, in which shone through his beautiful soul, and in good language and style, which, as you can see even from the passages cited by Batyushkov, is hardly inferior to Karamzin's.). In addition to the poems I have named, some are remarkable for the charm of verse and form, such as: "Remembrance", "Recovery", "My penates", "Taurida", "Source", "Captured", "Excerpt from an elegy" 4 (p. . 75), "Dream", "To P-well", "Separation", "Bacchae" and even the most imitations of Guys. Everything else is mediocre. In general, the distinctive character of Batyushkov's poems is some kind of carelessness, lightness, freedom, the desire not to noble, but to ennobled the pleasures of life; in this case they are in harmony with the first works of Pushkin, excluding, of course, those which, in this latter, are imbued with a deep feeling. His prose is curious, as an expression of the opinions and concepts of one of the smartest and most educated people of his time. In everything else, except perhaps for a good language and style, she does not deserve any attention. However, the best prose articles are: “Something about morality based on philosophy and religion”, “On poetry and a poet”, “A walk to the Academy”, and the worst: “On light poetry”, “On the writings of Muravyov” 5 and in features of the story "Predslava and Dobrynya".

Now about the edition. His appearance is not only neat and beautiful, but even luxurious and magnificent. It is impossible not to thank Mr. Smirdin from the bottom of his heart for this wonderful gift he made to the public, especially since he is not the first and, we hope, not the last. The price, according to the beauty of the publication, is the most moderate: in St. Petersburg 15, and with shipment to other cities 17 rubles. This is what Messrs. booksellers. Selfless deeds we can want from them, but not demand; the purpose of the merchant's activity is profit; there is nothing reprehensible in this, if only he acquires these profits honestly and in good faith, if he only does not contribute, with his own money and his excessive greed for benefits, the distribution of bad books and the perversion of public taste.

It is only a pity that this edition, while fully satisfying the requirements of taste in external merits, does not satisfy them in internal ones. Even when Derzhavin's writings were published, Mr. Smirdin was noted in a Moscow journal that the poems should be arranged in chronological order, in accordance with the time of their publication. Such publications present a curious picture of the gradual development of the artist's talent and provide important facts for the aesthetician and for the literary historian. In vain did Mr. Smirdin pay no attention to this.

The edition is decorated with a portrait and two vignettes of excellent finish. The first was drawn by Mr. Kiprensky, and the last by Bryullov; those and others were engraved by Mr. Galaktionov.

NOTES

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

The following abbreviations are used in the text of the notes:

Annenkov - P. V. Annenkov. Literary Memories. Goslitizdat, 1960.

Belinsky, USSR Academy of Sciences - V. G. Belinsky. Full coll. cit., vols. I-XIII. M., Publishing House of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, 1953-1959.

"Belinsky and Correspondents" - VG Belinsky and his correspondents. M., Department of Manuscripts of the State Library of the USSR. V. I. Lenin, 1948.

"Memories" - V. G. Belinsky in the memoirs of contemporaries. Goslitizdat, 1962.

GBL - State Library of the USSR. V. I. Lenin.

Grigoriev - Apollon Grigoriev. Literary criticism. M., "Fiction", 1967.

Grits - T. S. Grits, M. S. Shchepkin. Chronicle of life and creativity. M., "Science", 1966.

IRLI - Institute of Russian Literature (Pushkin House) of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR.

KSsB - V. G. Belinsky. Works, part I-XII. M., Publishing House of K. Soldatenkov and N. Shchepkin, 1859-1862 (compilation and editing of the publication was carried out by N. Kh. Ketcher).

KSsB, List I, II... - Attached to each of the first ten parts is a list of Belinsky's reviews that were not included in this edition. "by its insignificance."

LN - "Literary heritage". M., Publishing House of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR.

Nadezhdin - N. I. Nadezhdin. Literary criticism. Aesthetics. M., "Fiction", 1972.

Polevoy - Nikolai Polevoy. Materials on the history of Russian literature and journalism of the thirties. Publishing house of writers in Leningrad, 1934.

Pushkin - A. S. Pushkin. Full coll. op. in 10 volumes. M.-L., Publishing House of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, 1949.

Stankevich - Correspondence of Nikolai Vladimirovich Stankevich, 1830-1840. M., 1914.

TsGAOR - Central State Archive of the October Revolution.

Chernyshevsky - N. G. Chernyshevsky. Full coll. op. in 16 volumes. M., Goslitizdat, 1939-1953.

Works in prose and verse, by Konstantin Batyushkov (pp. 378-381). For the first time - "Molva", 1835, part IX, N 13, "New Books", column. 204-210 (c. river 29 March). General signature at the end of the section: (-on-inskiy). Included in the KSSB, part I, p. 348-353.

1 The poem is called "To Tassu" ("Let me, the shadow is sacred, to the unknown singer ...").

2 A number of Batyushkov's works are named inaccurately. In the peer-reviewed edition they were published under the title: "On the ruins of a castle in Sweden", "Hesiod and Omir, rivals", "To Karamzin" (in modern editions it is printed under the title "To the Creator of the History of the Russian State"), Message to I. M. M BUT". The poem "K N." now printed under the title "To Nikita".

3 We are talking about a translation from the I song of "Jerusalem Delivered"! "The hermit has finished speaking! - Heavenly inspiration!"

4 In modern editions, this poem is printed under the title "Elysius".

5 A number of names are given by Belinsky inaccurately. Need: "Nothing about the poet and poetry", "A walk to the Academy of Arts", "Speech on the influence of light poetry on the language", "Letter to I.M.M.A. about the writings of Mr. Muravyov".

6 The remark was made by N. Polevoy in the article "Works of Derzhavin" (see Moscow Telegraph, 1832, No. 15, p. 397). This was one of the first - if not the first - substantiation in our country of the idea of ​​a consistent "chronological order" in the arrangement of the writer's works.

Creativity K.N. Batyushkov

The cult of personal freedom, joys of life and associated Epicurean and Anacreontic motifs in the poet's lyrics. Opposition sounding of these motifs in the 10s of the XIX century.

The end-to-end leitmotif of dreams (“Dreaming is the soul of poets and poems”) as a reflection of the romantic aspirations of the poet. Batyushkov and Zhukovsky: the unity of the general tendency towards romanticism and the different ways of its realization, expressed in the fact that Batyushkov, along with Zhukovsky, continuing the elegiac line of sentimentalism, at the same time, in his striving for clarity and rigor of poetic forms, relied on the achievements of classicism. In this regard, the problem of Batyushkov's creative method (“neoclassic”, “pre-romantic”, “romantic”?), its solution in modern studies of the poet's work.

Influence of M.N. Muravyov, who first substantiated the dignity of poetry of small lyrical forms and informal, intimate themes (“Experience on Poetry”) and created their first samples, on the formation of the aesthetic and structural-meaningful phenomenon of Batyushkov’s “light poetry”. The predominance in him of romantic ideas about the poet and poetry, "noble subjectivity" (Belinsky), independence and incorruptibility of the "singer". Batyushkov's interest in French "light poetry" (Parni).

Elegies Batyushkov. The expression in them of complex psychological states, tragically colored feelings ("Elegy", 1815), psychologization of landscapes ("Dream", 1802, "Evening. Imitation of Petrarch", 1810). "Transitional" genres in Batyushkov's poetry, containing elements of an ode, ballad, elegy ("On the ruins of a castle in Sweden", elegy-messages). Patriotic motifs of Batyushkov's lyrics, reflecting the events of the war of 1812 ("Crossing the Russian troops across the Neman", "Crossing the Rhine", etc.).

The growth of tragic motives in the poet's work at the end of the 10s, associated with a spiritual crisis and illness.

Batyushkov's prose experiments, their significance as "materials for poetry" and their influence on the formation of the style of Russian prose.

Batyushkov as the immediate predecessor of A.S. Pushkin.

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Lecture

CreationK.N. Batyushkova

K.N. Batyushkov is one of the most talented poets of the first quarter of the 19th century, in whose work romanticism began to take shape very successfully, although this process was not completed.

The first period of creativity (1802-1812) is the time of creation of "light poetry". Batyushkov was also its theorist. "Light poetry" turned out to be the link that connected the middle genres of classicism with pre-romanticism. The article "Speech on the Influence of Light Poetry on the Language" was written in 1816, but the author generalized in it the experience of the work of various poets, including his own. He separated "light poetry" from "important genera" - epic, tragedy, solemn ode and similar genres of classicism. The poet included in "light poetry" "small genera" of poetry and called them "erotic". The need for intimate lyrics, conveying in an elegant form ("polite", "noble" and "beautifully") the personal experiences of a person, he associated with the social needs of the enlightened age. The theoretical prerequisites revealed in the article on "light poetry" were significantly enriched by the poet's artistic practice.

His "light poetry" is "social" (the poet used this word characteristic of him). Creativity for him is an inspired literary communication with loved ones. Hence the main genres for him are the message and the dedication close to it; the addressees are N.I. Gnedich, V.A. Zhukovsky, P.A. Vyazemsky, A.I. Turgenev (brother of the Decembrist), I.M. Muraviev-Apostol, V.L. Pushkin, S.S. Uvarov, P.I. Shalikov, just friends, often poems are dedicated to women with conditional names - Felisa, Malvina, Liza, Masha. The poet loves to talk in verse with friends and loved ones. The dialogical beginning is also significant in his fables, to which the poet also had a great inclination. The seal of improvisations, impromptu lies on small genres - inscriptions, epigrams, various poetic jokes. Elegies, having appeared already at the beginning of the poet's creative path, will become the leading genre in his further work.

Batyushkov is characterized by a high idea of ​​​​friendship, a pre-romantic cult of "kinship of souls", "spiritual sympathy", "sensitive friendship".

Batyushkov's six verse letters to Gnedich were created between 1805 and 1811; they largely clarify the originality of his work at the first stage. The conventions of the genre by no means deprive Batyushkov's message of autobiography. The poet in verse conveyed his moods, dreams, philosophical conclusions. The lyrical "I" of the author himself turns out to be central in the messages. In the first messages, the lyrical "I" is by no means a disappointed person with a chilled heart. On the contrary, this is a person who acts in an atmosphere of jokes, games, carelessness and dreams. In accordance with the aesthetics of pre-romanticism, the lyrical "I" of the messages is immersed in the world of chimeras, the poet is "happy with dreams", his dream "makes everything in the world gild", "a dream is our shield". The poet is like a "madman", like a child who loves fairy tales. And yet his dream is not those romantic dreams, full of mysterious miracles and terrible mysteries, sad ghosts or prophetic visions, into which romantics will plunge. The dream world of the lyrical subject Batyushkov is playful. The poet's voice is not the voice of a prophet, but ... a "talker".

In "light poetry" a charming image of "red" youth, "blooming like a rose", like a May day, like "laughing fields" and "merry meadows" was created. The world of youth is subject to the "goddess of beauty", Chloe, Lilet, Lisa, Zafne, Delia, and an attractive female image constantly appears next to the lyrical "I". As a rule, this is not an individualized image (only individual moments of individualization are outlined in the image of the actress Semenova, to whom a special poem is dedicated), but a generalized image of the "ideal of beauty": "And golden curls, // And blue eyes ..."; "And the curls are loose // They flutter over the shoulders ...". The ideal maiden in the artistic world of Batyushkov is always a faithful friend, the embodiment of earthly beauty and the charm of youth. This ideal, which is constantly present in the poet's imagination, is artistically embodied in the elegy "Tauris" (1815): "Blush and fresh, like a field rose, / You share labor, cares and lunch with me ...".

In poetic messages, the motif of native shelter, revealing Batyushkov's individual appearance and a characteristic feature of Russian pre-romanticism, was artistically realized. Both in his letters and in his poems, the call of the soul to native penates or lares, to "the hospitable shadow of the father's shelter" is repeated. And this poetic image is opposed to the romantic restlessness and vagrancy expressed later in poetry. Batiushkov, on the other hand, loves "home chests", his father's house.

The artistic world of Batyushkov is colored with bright, precious colors ("gold", "silver", "beaded"); all nature, and man, and his heart in motion, in a fit, feelings overwhelm the soul. The lyrical subject of Batyushkov's "light poetry" 1802-1812 - a predominantly enthusiastic person, although at times his enthusiasm is replaced by melancholy. The poet conveyed the emotion of delight in visible, plastically expressive images-emblems, poetic allegories. He was looking for "emblems of virtue." In "light poetry" four images-emblems stand out and are repeatedly repeated: roses, wings, bowls and canoes, which reveal the essence of his poetic worldview.

The images of flowers, especially roses, are Batyushkov's favorite, they give his poems a festivity, the image of a rose in him is a leitmotif, multifunctional. She is an exponent of the idea of ​​beauty; the fragrant, pink, young flower is associated with ancient times - the childhood of the human race: roses - Cupid - Eros - Cyprida - Anacreon, the singer of love and pleasure - such is the line of associations. But the image of a rose also acquires a semantic extension, it passes into the area of ​​comparisons: a beloved, in general, a young woman is compared with a rose as a standard of beauty.

Also, other images-emblems - wings, bowls - reflected the cult of elegant pleasure, the needs of a person who is aware of his right to happiness.

The conditional language of Batyushkov's poetry incorporates the names of writers, which also become signs, signals of certain ethical and aesthetic predilections: Sappho - love and poetry, Tass - greatness, Guys - the grace of love interests, and the name of the hero Cervantes Don Quixote (as Batyushkov) - a sign of subordination of real actions to lifeless and ridiculous reverie.

The fable beginning entered Batyushkov's "light poetry". Not only Gnedich, but also Krylov was a friend of the poet. Close to Krylov's fables and his satirical stories, especially "Kaibu", images appear in Batyushkov's messages and in his other genres. In poetic messages, the images of animals do not always create an allegorical scene. Usually they turn out to be just an artistic detail, a fable-like comparison, designed to express the discrepancy between what should be and what is: "Whoever is used to being a wolf, he will not forget how to // Walk like a wolf and bark forever."

The first period of Batyushkov's work is the formation of pre-romanticism, when the poet retains a connection with classicism ("middle" genres and "middle" style). His "communal" pre-romanticism in his favorite genre of letters to friends was marked, first of all, by the bright dreaminess and playfulness of a young soul, longing for earthly happiness.

The second period of creativity.Participation in the events of the Fatherlandnnoah war of 1812. Formation of Batyushkov's historical thinking.

1812-1813 and the spring of 1814 are isolated in an independent period of the poet's work, who survived a real turning point, a complete rejection of the Epicureanism of his youth; at this time, the formation of Batyushkov's historical thinking takes place. Batyushkov poet romanticism

Participating in the events of the Patriotic War, he connected his historical mission of an eyewitness, a witness of outstanding achievements with writing. His letters of those years, especially N.I. Gnedich, P.A. Vyazemsky, E.G. Pushkina, D.P. Severin, at the same time conveyed the course of historical events and the inner world of a person of that time, a citizen, a patriot, a very receptive, sensitive person.

In the letters of the second half of 1812 - confusion, anxiety for relatives and friends, indignation against the "vandals" of the French, the strengthening of patriotic and civic sentiments. A sense of history is formed and developed by Batyushkov in the code of the Patriotic War. He is increasingly aware of himself not just a spectator of events ("everything happens before my eyes"), but an active participant in them: "So, my dear friend, we crossed the Rhine, we are in France. That's how it happened ..."; "We entered Paris<...>amazing city". The historical significance of what is happening is clear: "Here, every day, then an era."

The idea of ​​the relativity of values ​​in the light of history enters into letters and poems - and a central philosophical question arises, born in the vicissitudes of time: "What is eternal, pure, immaculate?" And just as in his letters he declared that historical vicissitudes “transcend all conception” and everything seems as irrational as a dream, so in verse the reflective poet does not find an answer to questions about the meaning of history. And yet he does not leave the desire to understand its laws.

The third period of creativity.Romantic rejection of reality. Poetics of elegies.

The third period of Batyushkov's creative development - from the middle of 1814 to 1821. The pre-romantic artistic world of the poet is modified, enriched with purely romantic elements and trends. At a new stage of spiritual development, a new idea of ​​a person, about the values ​​of life, appears, and interest in history becomes more acute. "Elegant Epicureanism" does not satisfy him now, he criticizes the ideas of the "Epicurian school". For him, not just human sensitivity becomes more and more important, but the philosophical, specifically ethical, as well as social, civic position of a person.

The lyrical "I" of his poems and his lyrical heroes not only dream and feel the fullness of happiness, but are immersed in thoughts about life. Batyushkov's philosophical interests and studies were reflected in the genre of elegies, which now occupy a central place in his poetry. In the elegies - the poet's lyrical reflection on human life, on historical being.

Romantic rejection of reality intensified in Batyushkov. The poet saw a strange antinomy: "the suffering of all mankind in the entire enlightened world."

The poet's programmatic poem, in which he proclaimed new ideological and artistic principles, "To Dashkov" (1813), reveals his patriotic and civic consciousness. He refuses to sing love, joy, carelessness, happiness and peace among the graves of friends "lost on the field of glory"; let talent and lyre perish if friendship and the suffering motherland are forgotten:

While with a wounded hero,

Who knows the way to glory

Three times I will not put my chest.

Before enemies in close formation, -

My friend, until then I will

All are alien to muses and charities,

Wreaths, with the hand of love retinue,

And noisy joy in wine!

Batyushkov's pre-romanticism received a civic content. The elegiac message "To Dashkov" was followed by original historical elegies. They reveal the first trends of romantic historicism.

In his historical elegies ("Crossing the Russian troops across the Neman on January 1, 1813", "Crossing the Rhine", "Shadow of a friend" adjoins them, the elegy "At the ruins of a castle in Sweden" was written in the same style key of the "northern elegies") there are elements that anticipate the historicism of the civil romanticism of the Decembrists. The poet glorifies the heroic military feat. Moreover, not only outstanding historical figures occupy his imagination - the "old leader" (Kutuzov) and the "young tsar" (Alexander I), but above all unknown heroes: "warriors", "warriors", "heroes", "regiments" , "Slavs".

The poetics of the elegies testify to a significant evolution of Batyushkov's style. In the elegy "The Crossing of the Russian Troops across the Neman on January 1, 1813", a spectacular picture was created, which is based on a combination of contrasts: burning bonfires are opposed to the darkness of the night, throwing a crimson glow into the sky. Other contrasts are also expressive: the desertedness of the foreground of the picture (an empty coast covered with corpses is drawn) and the movement of regiments in the distance, a forest of spears, raised banners; a dying fugitive with "dead legs" and powerful, armed warriors; young king "And the old man-leader in front of him, shining with gray hair // And marvelous in old age beauty." The aesthetic ideal of the poet has changed significantly: the author admires not the beauty of Lisa, like a rose, but the courageous and "abusive" beauty of the hero-warrior - the old man Kutuzov.

Among the best elegies associated with the Russian "Ossian style" is "The Shadow of a Friend". True, only echoes of this style are visible in Batyushkov’s work, expressed in his paintings of the harsh North, as well as in memories of ancient skalds, of the “wild” and brave warriors of Scandinavia, of Scandinavian myths (“On the ruins of a castle in Sweden”). In the elegy "Shadow of a Friend", the poet does not so much follow the literary tradition as conveys a deeply personal experience: longing for a friend who died in the war. The elegiac idea of ​​the inevitability of the loss of a dear and dear person, the transience of life (“Or everything that happened was a dream, a dream ...”) was gained by the poet himself.

Batyushkov's "Southern Elegies" - "Elegy from Tibullus. Free translation", "Taurida", "Dying Tass", they are adjoined by the ballad "Hesiod and Omir - Rivals". Batyushkov's antiquity is, first of all, the color of the place, expressed in the names: "Theakia", "eastern shores", "Taurida", "Ancient Greece", "Tiber", "Capitol", "Rome", in the exotic of the south: " Under the sweet sky of the midday country", "azure seas", "the fragrant herbs are full of fragrant herbs around", "... priceless carpets and purples are spread among laurels and flowers"; the peaceful life of people and animals flows: "a stout ox roamed freely through the meadows", "in the vessels of milk in a plentiful stream // Poured from the breasts of feeding sheep..." - "sacred places". The external attributes of life, the picturesque image of antiquity are very significant for the poet, but nevertheless, the historicism of his elegies is by no means reduced to exotic picturesqueness. The poet feels the movement of time. He retains in his translations the signs of the worldview and psychology of ancient man (worship of the gods, sacrifices, fear of fate), but nevertheless, those elements of antiquity that are associated with modernity are especially important for him.

The romantic beginnings are strong in the elegy "Dying Tass". The epigraph in Italian from Tasso's tragedy "Torrismondo" proclaimed the unreliability of fame: after triumph, sadness, complaints, tearful songs remain; both friendship and love are classified as unreliable goods. Batyushkov made the famous Italian poet with a tragic fate, Torquato Tasso, the lyrical hero of the elegy. Tasso's passion, like Dante, belongs to the first trends of romanticism in Russia. Batyushkov's image combines two principles - greatness and tragedy. In the personality of the great poet, whose work has passed through the centuries, like the work of Tibull, Batyushkov found the embodiment of the most important and eternal, according to the poet, historical pattern: the unappreciated genius of his contemporaries, the tragedy of his fate; his gift receives "overdue payment".

The historical elegy affirmed the moral idea of ​​the need for human gratitude ("memory of the heart") to great martyrs who gave their genius to others. At the same time, moralizing is noticeable in the elegy - history in the person of Tassa is giving a lesson to posterity.

Creativity Batyushkov - pinnacle of Russian pre-romanticism.

Batyushkov's lyrics have outlived their time and have not lost their charm even today. Its aesthetic value lies in the pathos of "social life", in the poetic experience of youth and happiness, the fullness of life and the spiritual inspiration of a dream. But the poet's historical elegies also retain their poetic appeal both in their humane moral tendency and in the vivid painting of lyric-historical paintings.

Literatura

1. Batyushkov K.N. Compositions (any edition)

2. Fridman N.V. Batyushkov's poetry. - M., 1971.

3. Grigoryan K.N. Batyushkov // K.N. Grigoryan. Pushkin's elegy: national origins, predecessors, evolution. - L., 1999.

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Patriotic War of 1812. Update of the Patriotic War theme. The fundamental artistic discovery of Pushkin. M.Yu. Lermontov showed a particular interest in national history. In 1867, Leo Tolstoy finished work on War and Peace.

essay, added 05/03/2007


The main facts of the biography of Konstantin Nikolayevich Batyushkov (1787-1855) - the predecessor of A.S. Pushkin, the poet of early Russian romanticism, the founder of the new "modern" Russian poetry. Anicreontic and Epicurean motifs in the poet's work.

presentation, added 09/05/2013


K.N. Batyushkov - Russian poet, predecessor of A.S. Pushkin. Combining the literary discoveries of classicism and sentimentalism, he was one of the founders of the new, "modern" Russian poetry. The study of the biography and literary activity of the poet.

presentation, added 12/10/2011


The poetic chronicle of the Patriotic War of 1812 as a milestone in the history of Russian literature: contempt for the enemy, faith in victory in the poetry of F. Glinka, V. Zhukovsky; modern realities in the fables of I. Krylov; prophetic comprehension of events in the work of A. Pushkin.

term paper, added 01/12/2011


Childhood of Konstantin Nikolayevich Batyushkov. Participation in hostilities in Prussia. Participation in the war with Sweden. The value of Batyushkov's poetry in the history of Russian literature. Distinctive features of Batyushkov's prose. Purity, brilliance and imagery of Batyushkov's language.

presentation, added 10/30/2014


V. Zhukovsky as a famous Russian poet, participant in the war of 1812: analysis of a brief biography, acquaintance with creative activity. General characteristics of the ballad "Lyudmila". Consideration of the main features of the translation skills of V. Zhukovsky.

presentation, added 12/18/2013


Biography and creative path of Konstantin Nikolayevich Batyushkov. Elegy as a genre of new romantic literature. The value of Batyushkov's poetry in the history of Russian literature. Literary tastes, distinctive features of prose, purity, brilliance and imagery of language.

presentation, added 01/31/2015


Contribution to the development of Russian literature of the first poet of Russia Konstantin Batyushkov. Biography of the poet, the tragedy of his fate. Reflections on religious and philosophical topics, the opposition of the poet and the real world of poetry imbued with dreary hopelessness.

presentation, added 12/11/2012


The principle of historicism and description of the events of the Patriotic War of 1812 in the works of A.S. Pushkin and M.Yu. Lermontov. Analysis of romantic heroes in their work. The problem of interpretation of the image of Napoleon in fiction and evaluation of his policy.

term paper, added 08/01/2016


Characteristics of the language situation at the beginning of the 19th century. Creativity K.N. Batyushkov and the school of harmonic accuracy. Historical digression at the lessons of the Russian language. Linguistic and literary views of the Russian writer, the work of K. Batyushkov in the school course.

wrote the verse "Batyushkov". The names of Batyushkov and Zhukovsky always stand side by side in time. Their common merit is the discovery of romanticism for Russian literature. But they have different romanticism. Zhukovsky's key word was "soul". Characteristics of Batyushkov's romanticism: plasticity, certainty, orientation towards Greek antiquity, interest in Romanesque cultures; cult of sensuality, elements of erotica. At the same time, Zhukovsky is the "soul" of Pushkin, and Batyushkov is the "body" of Pushkin.

Batyushkov in life is a dual figure. He was born in Vologda, in the family of a provincial nobleman, he studied in St. Petersburg. In 1805 he joined the free society of literature, sciences and arts. Batyushkov - a participant in the anti-Napoleonic wars. Fought in Prussia, in Sweden (where he was wounded). 1813 - participation in the battle of Leipzig. How a romantic experiences unhappy love: his beloved Anna Furman refuses. Participates in the Arzamas society. In 1817, the only lifetime edition was published - the book "Experiments in Verse and Prose" (from 2 books, where there is both prose and poetry).

From 1818 to 1821 - is in the diplomatic service in Italy. In 1834, Batyushkov goes crazy (heredity and strong sensitivity influenced him). And until the end of his life Batyushkov remains mentally ill. Batyushkov is an interesting cultural prototype of Pechorin (it's a matter of attitude, he reflects his fragility and vulnerability long before his illness). In his notebook in 1817, he makes a lengthy entry, which expresses his philosophy of life - "Alien - my treasure."

Batyushkov's creative personality: crisis of attitude, duality

1.Pre-war Batyushkov. This is a mask, a lyrical hero - hedonist, singer of solitude, "little man". He expressed sensual joy. The poetic message "My penates" - it reflects all the signs of pre-war creativity. Against the background of a sentimental attitude (sensitivity, village, nature, friends) - a special influence on the work of uncle - M.N. Muravyov (this is a sentimentalist who designated "light poetry" - poesie fugitive - sliding poetry). Muravyov's influence.

Batyushkov's theoretical work - "Speech on the influence of light poetry on the language" - is an adaptation of European culture to the foundations of Russian culture. Batyushkov created a unique lyrical hero. Batyushkov was called "the singer of strangers Eleanor" (he created an erotic, love mask). He himself was not a lover of erotica, and he did not have the experience that he described. Aesthetic love is the personification of the fullness of life, earthly joys. Batyushkov relies on antiquity as the ideal of harmony between the individual and the world, the golden age. Batyushkov is dominated by neoclassicism (Empire style). Empire: orientation to antiquity, to its plastic forms and patterns.

For Batyushkov, this is an ideal, a dream. For him antiquity- the embodiment of a dream, an interweaving of conventions and simple realities. Empire appears on the wave of social upsurge, on the wave of anti-Napoleonic wars. Examples of the Empire style: the building of the General Staff, Rossi Street, the Alexandrinsky Theater, the Stock Exchange on the spit of Vasilyevsky Island, the Kazan Cathedral, the Academy of Arts; painting - Borovikovsky and Kiprensky; sculpture - Martos and Shubin. Batyushkov embodied the Empire style in My Penates in 1811. The main qualities of the verse: a mixture of ancient realities and reduced Russian common realities. The chanting of solitude (“poor hut…”). The image of a happy poet is created.

Poetics of the literary list. This is theatricalization, convention, game meaning, poeticization of inspiration, death. Batyushkov is one of the first to poeticize the idea of ​​a house in Russian literature. Batyushkov anticipated the poems of the young Pushkin: "The Town", "Message to the Sister". Batyushkov's poetics is characterized by plastic expressive means (verse: "The inscription on the coffin of the shepherdess" - the motive of recollection; "Bacchante" - the translation of Guys). In contrast to the verse Guys, Batyushkov has an expression of running; the emotion of ecstasy, the motive of pagan sensation, intensifies.

Batyushkov is also the creator of a love, dull melancholy elegy. 2 types of Batyushkov's elegies: Historical elegy- memory of past historical events; very close to Zhukovsky's elegy "Slavyanka" (Batyushkov's elegy: "On the ruins of a castle in Sweden" - the motive of the military past of Sweden, the idea of ​​frailty); love elegy- "Recovery", "My Genius" - ancient realities, love sickness, melancholy, kisses, passionate sighs, voluptuousness, the priority of heart torment over reason.

Batyushkov is a member of Arzamas (“Vision on the banks of Leta”, “Singer of the uprising of Russian soldiers” - parodies). Batyushkov's fairy tale "The Wanderer and the Homebody" - a fairy tale in the French sense - a literary short story. The hero of the story - Batyushkov's alter ego (in the game plot) - is his own Odyssey. Here - an appeal to the eternal types. Batyushkov is the forerunner of Pushkin's novel in verse. This is the type of Chatsky, Onegin, Pechorin. Batyushkov turns to translation from Greek ontology. The book "On Greek Ontology" by Arzamas. Translates the epigram and small verses into Russian.

2. Patriotic War of 1812. - a milestone in the work of Batyushkov. There is a new attitude and a new type of elegy. It is impossible to preserve the joy of life on the "wreckage". The European educational ideal disrupts the joyful worldview. Batyushkov develops a different moral program. The article "Something about morality based on philosophy and religion" - Batyushkov renounces the secular foundations of morality (based on selfishness). Batyushkov says "no" to both the Stoics and the Epicureans. He insists on a third way - the way of a human wanderer. Poem-I: "To a friend", "Shadow of a friend", "Dying Tass", "To Dashkov" - morality is based on truths Christianity, orthodoxy.

Batyushkov's book "Experiments in verse and prose". The first part is prose. Features of the "Experiments": turn us to tradition ("Experiments" were with Montaigne, Muravyov, Vostokov); “Experiences” is an inconclusive, unfinished, developing thing. Prose: this is also romantic logic (the genre of travel and walks is “A walk to the Academy of Arts”, “An excerpt from the letters of a Russian officer about Finland”, “Journey to Serey Castle”), but these are also portrait essays, essays(“Arnost and Tass”, “Petrarch”, “Lomonosov” and other portraits of prominent figures). Mosaic, dynamics - both externally and internally.

Focuses on a universal approach to the world. The second part of the "Experiments" - poems - 53 verses (elegies, messages, mixing genres). This part opens with the verse “To Friends” - a dedication - a retrospection, which begins and ends the entire poetic part. Verse-i - both originals and translations. Logic: in the "mixture" section, 2 elegies - "Dying Tass" and "Crossing the Rhine". Poems and prose in the book interact according to the principle of complementarity.

Batyushkov's meaning:

He became a translator of various cultures (antique - Hesiod, Tibul, Homer; Italian - Tasso, Arnosto, Casti, Boccaccio; French - Guys, Milvoa, Gresse; northern culture - Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark).

He created a prose style (essays, portraits, travels).

He created an analogue of the "strange person", an eccentric.

His lyrical hero is from a hedonist to a skeptic; flickering from personal biographical to conditional role-playing.

Batyushkov - the creator of the prototype of the "book of the 20th century" (Akhmatova, Tsvetaeva, Brodsky).

Konstantin Nikolaevich Batyushkov

Ideological and artistic originality of Batyushkov's poetry.

Belinsky, defining the originality of the poetry of the author of The Bacchae, wrote: “The direction of Batyushkov's poetry is completely opposite to the direction of Zhukovsky's poetry. If uncertainty and vagueness are the distinctive character of romanticism in the spirit of the Middle Ages, then Batyushkov is as much a classic as Zhukovsky is a romantic. But more often the critic praised him as a romantic.

Batyushkov's work is very complex and contradictory. This gives rise to great discord in his assessment. Some critics and literary scholars consider him a neoclassicist (P. A. Pletnev, P. N. Sakulin, N. K. Piksanov). Based on the poet's obvious connections with sentimentalism, he is perceived either as a sentimentalist (A. N. Veselovsky), or as a pre-romantic (N. V. Fridman). Exaggerating the roll calls characteristic of Batyushkov with Zhukovsky, he was ranked among the "dull" romanticism. But Batyushkov, experiencing at the beginning of his work the partial influence of classicism (“God”), and then humanistic-elegiac romanticism, did not belong to the orthodox adherents of either classicism or elegiac romanticism. All his literary activity, poetic and theoretical, basically unfolded in an unceasing struggle against classicism and its epigones. Clearly aiming for classicism, he asked in his “Message to N. I. Gnedich”: “What is in loud songs for me?” Batyushkov spoke in the difficult conditions of the transitional time: the outgoing but still active epigone classicism, the growing sentimentalism, the emerging and gaining popularity of humanistic-elegiac romanticism. And this is reflected in his poetry. But, experiencing and overcoming the impact of literary influences, Batyushkov was formed mainly as a poet of hedonistic-humanistic romanticism. His poetry is characterized by the creation of an objective image of a lyrical hero, an appeal to reality, expressed, according to Belinsky, in particular, in the introduction of “events under the form of memory” into some elegies. All this was news in the literature of the time.

A large number of Batyushkov's poems are called friendly messages. In these messages, the problems of the social behavior of the individual are posed and solved. Batyushkov's ideal in artistic embodiment is certainty, naturalness and sculpture. In the poems “To Malvina”, “Merry Hour”, “Bacchante”, “Taurida”, “I feel my gift in poetry has gone out” and similar ones, he achieves almost realistic clarity and simplicity. In "Tavrida" the heartfelt initial appeal: "Dear friend, my angel!" The image of the heroine is plastic, ruddy and fresh, like a "rose of the field", sharing "work, worries and lunch" with her beloved. Here, the alleged circumstances of the life of the heroes are also outlined: a simple hut, "a home key, flowers and a rural garden." Admiring this poem, Pushkin wrote: "In feeling, in harmony, in the art of versification, in luxury and negligence of the imagination, Batyushkov's best elegy." But the elegy “I feel my gift in poetry has gone out” is not inferior to her. With sincerity of feelings, sincerity of appeal to her beloved, she anticipates the best realistic elegies of Pushkin.

The details of the life of the lyrical hero ("Evening", "My penates") testify to the invasion of the poetry of everyday life. In the poem "Evening" (1810), the poet speaks of the "staff" of a decrepit shepherdess, the "smoky shack", the "sharp plow" of the yelling, the fragile "get along" and other specific details of the circumstances he recreates.

The bright plasticity of Batyushkov's best works is determined by the strict purposefulness of all means of their depiction. So, the poem "To Malvina" begins with a comparison of a beauty with a rose. The next four stanzas play on and expand on this comparison. And the graceful work ends with a wish-recognition: “Let gentle roses be proud On the lilies of your chest! Ah, dare I, my dear, confess? I would die a rose on it. The poem "Bacchante" recreates the image of a priestess of love. Already in the first stanza, which reports on the rapid run of the Bacchus priestesses to the holiday, their emotionality, impetuosity, passion are emphasized: “The winds blew their loud howl, splash and groans with noise.” The further content of the poem is the development of the motive of spontaneous passion. Belinsky wrote about the elegy “On the ruins of a castle in Sweden” (1814): “How everything in it is sustained, complete, finished! What a luxurious and at the same time resilient, strong verse! (VII, 249).

Batyushkov's poetry is characterized by a complex evolution. If in his early poems he is inclined to express and depict mental states more or less statically (“How happiness slowly comes”), then in the prime of his work the poet draws them in development, dialectically, in complex contradictions (“Separation”; “The Fate of Odysseus "; "To friend").

Batyushkov's works, embodying natural, individual feelings and passions, did not fit into the usual genre-specific formations and poetic metro-rhythmic schemes of classicism, intended to express abstract feelings. Following Zhukovsky, the poet also contributed to the development of syllabo-tonic verse. "Light poetry", which demanded naturalness, spontaneity, led Batyushkov to widely appeal to the iambic variety, which is distinguished by colloquialism, expressiveness, and flexibility. According to I. N. Rozanov, almost two-thirds of his poems were written in this size ("Dream", "Message to N. I. Gnedich", "Recollection", etc.). But for most of the most cheerful lyrical works glorifying love, Batyushkov preferred a playful trochee ("To Filisa", "False Fear", "Lucky", "Ghost", "Bacchante"). Expanding the possibilities of syllabotonics, the poet, in addition to the four-foot (“How happiness slowly comes”), six-foot (“Message to my poems”) iambic, also uses the three-foot one. The liveliness of the message "My penates", written in iambic trimeter, evoked the praise of Pushkin and Belinsky.

Batyushkov in a number of poems showed examples of strophic art and a remarkable mastery of the symmetrical construction of the verse (“On the death of the wife of F.F. Kokoshkin”; “To a friend”, “The Song of Harald the Bold”, “Crossing the Rhine”). Giving his poems ease, the immediacy of the flow of feelings and thoughts, he more often uses free stanza, but even in it he strives for symmetry (“Merry Hour”).

Taking care of the naturalness of poetry, the poet pays much attention to their harmony. He loves the musical consonances of consonants: “They play, dance and sing” (“To Malvina”); “The clock is winged! don’t fly” (“Advice to friends”); “She shone in all her grandeur” (“Recollection”); "Horses with a silver rein!" ("Lucky"). Skillfully repeating, concentrating the sounds p, p, b, etc., the poet creates a whole musical symphony in the poem: “You awaken, O Baia, from the tomb When aurora rays appear ...” (1819).

Batyushkov is one of the first among poets to violate the absolute boundaries between genres established by the classicists. He gives the message the properties of either an elegy (“To a friend”), or a historical elegy (“To Dashkov”), he enriches the genre of the elegy and turns it into a lyrical-epic work (“Crossing the Rhine”, “Hesiod and Omir are rivals”, "Dying Tass").

Expanding the possibilities of colloquial speech in poetry, Batyushkov achieves immediacy in verse: “Give me a simple flute, Friends! and sit around me Under this thick shade of elm, Where freshness breathes in the middle of the day ”(“Advice to Friends”). But at the same time, where necessary, he turns to anaphoras ("An excerpt from the XXXIV song of the Furious Orland"), inversions ("Shadow of a friend") and other means of syntactic representation.

Democratizing the literary language, the poet is not afraid of words and expressions of a wider range than the society of the enlightened nobility, dear to him. We will find appropriately used words in him: “crash” (“Advice to friends”), “stomping” (“Joy”), “blushing” (“Prisoner”).

The plastic expressiveness of Batyushkov's works is also helped by precise, concrete, pictorial means, in particular epithets. He has a red youth, a cheerful Bacchus, winged hours, green meadows, transparent streams (“Advice to Friends”), frisky and lively nymphs, a sweet dream (“Merry Hour”), an innocent maiden (“Source”), curly groves (“Joy ”), the camp is slender, the cheeks of the girl are flaming (“Bacchae”).

But, fully mastering the art of the artistic word and brilliantly showing it in many beautiful lyrical creations, Batyushkov also left poems, to one degree or another unfinished. This was also noted by Belinsky. According to his observation, the poet's lyrical works are predominantly "below the talent he discovered" and far from fulfilling "the expectations and requirements he himself aroused." In them there are difficult, clumsy turns and phrases: “Rather by the sea, one can comfortably sail on a rolled boat” (“N. I. Gnedich”, 1808). Or: “Guided by the Muses, penetrated into the days of youth” (“To Tass”, 1808). They are not always spared from unjustified archaism: in the elegy “The Dying Tass”, written in 1817, there are words that clearly fall out of her style: “koshnitsy”, “kiss”, “vesi”, “finger”, “orata”, “ matured”, “fire”, “woven”, “right hand”, “stognam”, “voice”, “non-violent”.

Batyushkov is a remarkable connoisseur of antiquity. He introduces historical and mythological names of this world into his poems. The poem "Dream" recalls marshmallows, nymphs, graces, cupids, Anacreon, Sappho, Horace and Apollo, and in the poem "Advice to friends" - nymphs, Bacchus, Eros. He has poems "To Mal-Vina", "Message to Chloe", "To Filisa". However, the abundance of ancient names, historical and mythological in the poems about modernity, undoubtedly introduces stylistic diversity. That is why Pushkin remarked about the message “My Penates”: “The main flaw in this charming message is the too obvious mixing of ancient mythological customs with the customs of a villager living in a village near Moscow.” In this poem, in a “wretched hut” with a “dilapidated and tripod table”, “hard bedding”, “meager junk”, “goblets”, “golden bowl” and “a bed of flowers” ​​coexist.