Sumarokov Alexander Petrovich short biography. Need help studying a topic?
Alexander Petrovich Sumarokov, whose biography is inextricably linked with the development of Russian culture in the 18th century, is rightfully considered the “father of Russian theater.” He served him as a playwright and librettist. His contribution to Russian literature, which, thanks to his poetic works, rose to new heights at that time is also invaluable. His name forever entered the history of Russia.
The young heir to an old noble name
On November 25, 1717, in Moscow, a son was born into the family of ensign Pyotr Sumarokov, who was named Alexander. Like many children from old noble families, and the Sumarokov family was one of them, the boy received his initial education and training at home under the guidance of teachers and tutors hired by his parents.
In those years, many young nobles preferred a military career. Alexander Sumarokov was no exception. The biography of his independent life begins when, at the age of fifteen, he entered the Open Land School in St. Petersburg at the behest of Empress Anna Ioannovna. He spends eight years within its walls and here for the first time begins to study literature.
Cadet Corps and upcoming career
While studying in the cadet corps, the aspiring writer writes poetry and song lyrics, taking as a model the works of French authors and his compatriot. His first poetic experiments are poetic transcriptions of psalms. In addition, he fulfills the orders of his comrades - he writes on their behalf congratulatory odes to the Empress Anna Ioannovna, who ruled in those years, which was in great fashion.
In 1740, Alexander Sumarokov was among the young officer graduates of the corps. The biography says that his life in those years was as good as possible. At the age of twenty-three, he enlists in the office of Count Minich, and soon becomes the personal secretary of first Count Golovin, and then the all-powerful Alexei Razumovsky. But, despite the career opening up to him, he devotes himself entirely to literature. His idol of those years was Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov, whose famous odes became for Sumarokov a model of harmony and a guide in his search for a creative path.
First well-deserved glory
However, no true artist can be satisfied with just imitating what someone else has created; he is always looking for his own style. This is exactly what Sumarokov did. The biography of his creative life truly begins when lists of his love songs appear in the salons of the educated St. Petersburg aristocracy. This genre was not chosen by the author by chance. It was he who, to the greatest extent, allowed the state of mind of Alexander, a young brilliant officer, full of romantic experiences characteristic of his age, to be revealed.
But real fame was brought to him by the production of his poetic drama Horev, which took place at court in 1747. Then it came out of print, becoming available to the general public, which made his name popularly known. Following this, also at court, several plays were performed, the author of which was Sumarokov. From this time on, the biography of his work reaches a new level - he becomes a professional writer.
Sumarokov’s rich creative life
In 1752, a significant event occurred. By her decree, the Empress summoned F. G. Volkov, an outstanding theater figure of those years, from Yaroslavl and entrusted him with organizing the first permanent theater in Russia, of which Sumarokov was appointed director.
A short biography of him can only give an idea in general terms of the invaluable contribution that this man made to the formation of Russian stage life, but in the memory of future generations he was preserved as the “father of the Russian theater,” and this, you see, is more eloquent than any words.
His creative heritage is unusually wide. Suffice it to recall the eight tragedies that came from his pen, twenty comedies and three opera librettos. In addition, Sumarokov left a significant mark in other literary fields. His works are published in the pages of the academic journal “Monthly Works,” and in 1759 he begins to publish his own journal, “The Industrious Bee.” In subsequent years, numerous collections of his poems and fables were published.
The end of the poet's life and the memory of descendants
Sumarokov managed the theater until 1761. After this, he lived in the capital for some time, and then in 1769 he moved to Moscow. Here he has a serious conflict with the commander-in-chief P. Saltykov, whose side the empress takes. This causes mental trauma to the poet and entails serious financial problems. But, despite the adversity, in the seventies, according to researchers, he wrote his best works, such as “Dmitry the Pretender”, “The Trickster” and many others. He died on October 12, 1777 and was buried on
Descendants fully appreciated the services of this man to the Fatherland. On the famous monument “Millennium of Russia”, Alexander Sumarokov is represented among the outstanding historical figures of the state (the reader can see a photo of this object on the page). Entire generations of poets, who became the glory and pride of our culture, grew up on his works, and his theatrical works became a textbook for future playwrights.
Russian nobleman, poet, writer and playwright of the 18th century. He is often called the “father of Russian theater”.
In 1756, by decree of the Empress Elizaveta Petrovna A permanent theater was established for the Senate and A.P. Sumarokova he was appointed director. To ennoble the title of actors in the eyes of the poorly educated public, the new director obtained the latter a noble distinction - the right to wear a sword.
A.P. Sumarokov wrote numerous plays for the theater. While working for the theater, he at the same time wrote: odes, elegies, fables, satires, parables, eclogues, madrigals, articles, etc. Unlike M.V. Lomonosov, he believed that poetry should, first of all, not be majestic, but “pleasant.”
In January 1759 A.P. Sumarokov managed to achieve a new decree Elizabeth: “Russian theater comedians and others... from now on be in the department of the Court Office and are called courtiers.” 3,000 rubles were added to support the troupe. The actors' salaries were increased, their position became more secure.
“But the character of the Russian theater has changed dramatically. He has completely lost his independence and even in the choice of repertoire he was now completely dependent on the Court Office and the ignorant Grand Marshal Karl Sivsrs, who headed it. Sumarokov quarreled with him tirelessly, complaining about him, who had done so much for Russian culture and, it would seem, was still influential, taking out his grievances on innocent actors.
“I only ask,” he wrote in one of his letters, annoyed and offended, “that if I deserve to be thrown out of the theater, then at least that this be done without continuation... For my work in the theater, which seems to me more than what Volkov did, and I can’t be on Volkov’s team, and I won’t ask him to leave the theater until I go crazy.”
In his letters, Sumarokov either asked for resignation or threatened that if he was fired, he would cease to be a writer, at least a dramatic one. He swore on his honor, his surname, hoping that his threat would frighten Elizabeth and he would be able to defend himself as director of the theater. But Elizaveta Petrovna had long been tired of his complaints. She did not like everything about his tragedies, which constantly emphasized the idea that the monarch’s indulgence in his own passions leads to the misfortune of his subjects. And although in these tragedies there was always a conversation about an ideal monarch, by which Elizabeth was supposedly meant, she could not help but understand the true meaning of the edifications of their creator. After another letter from Sumarokov to Shuvalov in the summer of 1761, his resignation was sanctioned. Sumarokov threw thunder and lightning. But he was quick-witted. And he passionately loved the theater. In addition, the Russian Theater continued to play his works - no decrees could break Sumarokov’s indissoluble connection with the Russian stage.”
Kulikova K.F., Russian theater first actors, L., “Lenizdat”, p. 50-51.
A.P. Sumarokov left us impressions of the Russian theater of his time: “For the clerk to weave praise... it is only inappropriate, since it is indecent... those who came to see Semira, sit near the orchestra itself and gnaw nuts and think that when money is paid for the entrance to the disgrace, you can fist bump in the stalls, and loudly tell the stories of your week in the boxes. You, travelers who have been to Paris and London, tell me, do they gnaw nuts there during a drama performance, and when the performance is at its peak, do drunken coachmen who have quarreled among themselves be flogged, to the alarm of the entire stalls, boxes and theater?
Lunacharsky M.V., Russian criticism from Lomonosov to Belinsky’s predecessors, in Collection: M.V. Lomonosov: pro et contra / Comp. M.A. Maslin, St. Petersburg, “Russian Christian Humanitarian Academy”, 2011, p. 640.
The inscription on the pedestal of the Bronze Horseman: “Petro Primo Catharina Secunda” - “Catherine the Second to Peter the Great” it was proposed A.P. Sumarokov.
After establishment Peter I newspaper "St. Petersburg Vedomosti", the government maintained a monopoly on the printed word, but in 1759 A.P. Sumarokov was allowed to publish the first private magazine in Russia: “Hardworking Bee”, published in 1200 copies.
And in 1759 he wrote an epigram that became famous:
Dancer! You are rich. Professor! You're wretched.
Of course, the head is respectably smaller than the legs.
Alexander Petrovich Sumarokov (1718 – 1777). The son of a general and an aristocrat. At the age of 14 he entered the Gentry Cadet Corps, opened in 1732 by the government of Anna Ioannovna. Art, including literature, occupied a significant place in the corpus. Sumarokov was the first to take up literary work professionally.
Sumarokov's life was extremely sad. He was a nervous man who reacted sharply to the surrounding savagery of morals; had extraordinary ideas about serving the Fatherland, honor, culture, virtue. He was the creator of a new type of drama, the first director, and theater director.
Sumarokov’s first poems are odes from 1739 in a brochure entitled: “To Her Imperial Majesty, the most merciful Empress Anna Ivanovna, the All-Russian autocrat, congratulatory odes on the first day of the new year 1740 from the cadet corps, composed through Alexander Sumarokov.
He was influenced by the work of Trediakovsky, and then Lomonosov, with whom he was friends. Late 40s - early. 50x – discrepancy with Lomonosov.
Sumarokov believed that his poetic activity was a service to society, a form of participation in the political life of the country. According to his political views, he is a noble landowner. He considered serfdom necessary, believed that the state was based on two classes - the peasantry and the nobility. Nevertheless, the nobleman, in his opinion, does not have the right to consider the peasants his property, to treat them as slaves. He must be the judge and commander of his vassals and has the right to receive food from them. Sumarokov believed that the tsar must obey the laws of honor embodied in state laws.
In January 1759, Sumarokov began publishing his own magazine, “The Hardworking Bee.” Published monthly, published in the Academy of Sciences. Published mainly by one person. In the eyes of the government, such a body of independent noble public opinion was undesirable, and the magazine had to be closed.
Being one of Nikita Panin’s friends, after the coup that brought Catherine the Second to power, Sumarokov was close to the palace and received support as a writer. However, by the end of the 60s he found himself in disgrace, because Catherine began to crack down on all kinds of freethinking. Sumarokov gradually made enemies for himself. There was also unhappy love in Sumarokov’s life. He fell in love with a simple girl - his serf, and married her. Relatives of Sumarokov's first wife began a process against him, demanding that his children from his second marriage be deprived of the rights. Although the case ended in Sumarokov’s favor, it caused damage to his health, he began to drink; He became so poor that when he died, there was no money even for a funeral. The writer's coffin was carried in their arms to the cemetery by actors from the Moscow Theater. Besides them, two people came to see him off.
As a poet and theorist, Sumarokov completed the construction of the style of classicism in Russia. The basis of Sumarokov’s concrete poetics is the requirement of simplicity, naturalness, and clarity of poetic language. Poetry should avoid the fantastic and vaguely emotional. Preaches simplicity in verse and prose.
Sumarokov polemicizes a lot with Lomonosov, does not agree with his grammar and word usage. Sometimes he turns directly to the analysis of Lomonosov’s works. Sumarokov considered changing the meaning of a word as a violation of grammatical correctness.
In 1747, Sumarokov published his first tragedy, Horev, and the following year, Hamlet. "Khorev" was installed in the cadet corps in 1949. A kind of cadet troupe was created that played at court. Her soul was Sumarokov. Later he was the director of the theater organized by F. Volkov. (see ticket about the tragedy)
Sumarokov wrote tragedies and comedies. He was a brilliant comedian, but he was soon surpassed in this by Fonvizin, Knyazhnin, and Kapnist. As an author of tragedies he was unsurpassed. In total, Sumarokov wrote 12 comedies: “Tresotinius”, “An Empty Quarrel” and “Monsters”, written in 1750. Then, after 14 years - “Dowry by Deception”, “Guardian”, “Reddy Man”, “Three Brothers Together”, “Poisonous”, “Narcissus”. Then three comedies from 1772 - “Cuckold by Imagination”, “Mother Companion to Daughter”, “Crazy Woman”. Sumarokov's comedies have minimal connection to the traditions of French classicism. All of his comedies are written in prose; none has the full volume and correct arrangement of the composition of the classical tragedy of the West in five acts. Eight comedies have one act, four have three. These are small plays, almost sideshows. Sumarokov very conditionally maintains three unities. There is no unity of action. In the first comedies there is a rudimentary plot in the form of a couple in love, who at the end get married. The composition of the comic characters in them is determined by the composition of the stable masks of Italian folk comedy. They are enlivened by Sumarokov’s language - lively, sharp, cheeky in its unvarnishedness.
The six comedies of 1764–1768 were noticeably different from the first three. Sumarokov switches to the type of comedy of characters. In each play, the focus is on one image, and everything else is needed either to shade it or to create a fiction of the plot. The undoubted masterpiece of Sumarokov’s entire comedic work is his comedy “Cuckold by Imagination.” (In general, I think there’s no need to go into much detail about the comedy, because we were mostly going through tragedy, so I think that’s enough.)
Sumarokov’s poetic creativity amazes with its diversity, richness of genres and forms. Considering himself the creator of Russian literature, Sumarokov sought to show his contemporaries and leave for his descendants examples of all types of literature. He wrote exceptionally a lot and, apparently, quickly. Sumarokov wrote songs, elegies, eclogues, idylls, parables (fables), satires, epistles, sonnets, stanzas, epigrams, madrigals, solemn, philosophical odes, etc. He also translated the Psalter.
In total, Sumarokov wrote 374 parables. It was he who discovered the fable genre for Russian literature. He borrowed a lot from La Fontaine. Sumarokov's parables are often topical, aimed at ridiculing specific disorders in Russian social life of his time. Sometimes they were very small in volume. The most important theme of the fables is the Russian nobility. The language of fables is lively, bright, interspersed with sayings and colloquial expressions... In the mid-18th century, the main direction in the development of fables was determined. 1st model: the fable is written in the middle style, Alexandrian verse. Moral story. 2nd model (Sumarokov model): offers mixed verse, elements of low style - a fable story. In Sumarokov’s satirical works one can feel bile, conceit, and scandalous temperament.
In Lyrics, Sumarokov strives to give a generalized analysis of man in general. The love face gives an image of love in its “pure form.” In songs and elegies, Sumarokov speaks only about love, happy or unhappy. Other feelings and moods are not allowed. We will also not find individual characteristics of lovers and loved ones. There are no facts or events of real life in lyrical poems. Sumarokov wrote songs from the perspective of a man and a woman. The text consists of repeated formulas, devoid of specific character expression. Sumarokov created the language of love as a high feeling. Sumarokov did not publish his songs. Pastoral motifs appear in a number of songs and idylls. Elegies and eclogues are written in iambic hexameter, and songs give all kinds of rhythmic combinations.
1747 “Epistole on Language”, “Epistole on Poetry”. The “Epistole on Language” gives general principles for the assimilation of antiquity. The “Epistole on Poetry” has its own theory, exemplary writers, genres. (first general characteristics, then main samples, then characteristics of individual genres.)
The tragedy of Sumarokov.
Sumarokov, the author of the first Russian tragedies, took advantage of the example of French tragedians of the 17th and 18th centuries. A number of characteristic features of their system are Alexandrian verse (iambic hexameter with a caesura on the 3rd foot), 5 acts, the absence of extra-plot insertions and digressions, the absence of comic elements, “high syllable”, etc. Sumarokov transferred it to his tragedies. However, it cannot be said that Sumarokov borrowed the tragedy from the French, since there it was constantly developing, and, by borrowing, he would have to transfer the final version to Russian soil, i.e. Voltaire's version. Sumarokov built his tragedy on the principles of extreme economy of means, simplicity, restraint, and naturalness. The simplicity of the dramatic plot of his plays does not allow us to talk about intrigue, because... there is no hub of events, the whole action tends to be limited to one peripeteia. The initial situation stretches through the entire tragedy and is lifted at the end. Sumarokov's roles are also usually motionless. The tragedy is filled to a large extent by revealing the main situation in its significance for each pair of heroes separately. Dialogues, especially those of the central characters (lovers), receive a lyrical coloring. No narrative inserts. The central place of the drama, the third act, is marked mainly by an extra-plot device: the heroes draw swords or daggers from their scabbards. (because there is no plot climax). The action of most of Sumarokov's tragedies is attributed to ancient Rus'; here Sumarokov breaks the custom of depicting distant eras and distant countries in tragedy. Unlike the French tragedy, Sumarokov has almost no confidants, their role is extremely small. He either turns into a messenger, or, on the contrary, becomes a separate hero. The departure from the confidante system led to the development and abundance of monologues, since a monologue can replace a false dialogue with a confidant. Monologue is used to communicate to the viewer the thoughts, feelings and intentions of the characters. The desire to reduce the total number of characters. Thus, Sumarokov created a very unified compositional system of tragedy, in which all elements are fused and conditioned by the principle of simplicity and economy.
Sumarokov believed that “tragedy is done in order... to instill in the caretakers love for virtue, and extreme hatred for vices.” Sumarokov’s plays strive to arouse in the viewer admiration for virtue, to influence his emotional sensitivity. She wanted to correct the souls of the audience, not the minds, not the state apparatus. Hence the predominance of happy endings. (Only “Khorev” and “Sinav and Truvor” end tragically for the heroes.) The presence of a clear moral and evaluative characteristic. Before us are either wise, virtuous heroes (Semira, Dimisa, Truvor) or black villains (Dimitri the Pretender, Claudius in Hamlet), the villains die, the virtuous heroes emerge victorious from disasters.
Conflict is understood as the conflict between a person's life and how he should live. (“Dimitri the Pretender”) is not a conflict between feeling and duty. The tragedy of a person who does not live the way he should live. A man's collision with fate. At these moments, the scale of the hero’s personality is revealed. In tragedies, the location of the action is not important. The heroes are devoid of characteristic features. Classicism negatively perceived everything concrete - it was perceived as a distortion of human nature. Existential image of life. A tragic hero must be unhappy. Kupriyanova writes that “the hero of a classical tragedy should be neither good nor bad. He must be miserable." Tragedy elevates viewers and readers (catharsis... blah blah blah ).
The tragedy of Sumarokov gave rise to a tradition. His successors - Kheraskov, Maikov, Knyazhnin - nevertheless introduced new features into the tragedy.
INTRODUCTION
The creative range of Alexander Petrovich Sumarokov is very wide. He wrote odes, satires, fables, eclogues, songs, but the main thing with which he enriched the genre composition of Russian classicism was tragedy and comedy. Sumarokov’s worldview was formed under the influence of the ideas of Peter the Great’s time. But unlike Lomonosov, he focused on the role and responsibilities of the nobility. A hereditary nobleman, a graduate of the gentry corps, Sumarokov did not doubt the legality of noble privileges, but believed that high office and ownership of serfs must be confirmed by education and service useful to society. A nobleman should not humiliate the human dignity of a peasant or burden him with unbearable exactions. He sharply criticized the ignorance and greed of many members of the nobility in his satires, fables and comedies.
Sumarokov considered the monarchy to be the best form of government. But the high position of the monarch obliges him to be fair, generous, and able to suppress bad passions. In his tragedies, the poet depicted the disastrous consequences resulting from the monarchs’ forgetfulness of their civic duty.
In his philosophical views, Sumarokov was a rationalist and looked at his work as a kind of school of civic virtues. Therefore, they put moralistic functions in first place.
This course work is devoted to the study of the work of this outstanding Russian writer and publicist.
BRIEF BIOGRAPHY AND EARLY WORK OF SUMAROKOV
Brief biography of the writer
Alexander Petrovich Sumarokov was born on November 14 (25), 1717 in St. Petersburg into a noble family. Sumarokov's father was a major military man and official under Peter I and Catherine II. Sumarokov received a good education at home, his teacher was the teacher of the heir to the throne, the future Emperor Paul II. In 1732 he was sent to a special educational institution for children of the highest nobility - the Land Noble Corps, which was called the “Knight Academy”. By the time the corpus was completed (1740), two Odes of Sumarokov were published, in which the poet sang the praises of Empress Anna Ioannovna. The students of the Land Noble Corps received a superficial education, but they were assured of a brilliant career. Sumarokov was no exception, who was released from the corps as an aide-de-camp to Vice-Chancellor Count M. Golovkin, and in 1741, after the accession of Empress Elizabeth Petrovna, he became an aide-de-camp to her favorite Count A. Razumovsky.
During this period, Sumarokov called himself a poet of “tender passion”: he composed fashionable love and pastoral songs (“Nowhere, in a small forest”, etc., about 150 in total), which were a great success, he also wrote pastoral idylls (7 in total) and eclogues (total 65). Describing Sumarokov’s eclogues, V.G. Belinsky wrote that the author “did not think of being seductive or indecent, but, on the contrary, he was concerned about morality.” The critic was based on the dedication written by Sumarokov to the collection of eclogues, in which the author wrote: “In my eclogues, tenderness and fidelity are proclaimed, and not indecent voluptuousness, and there are no such speeches that would be disgusting to the ear.”
Work in the eclogue genre contributed to the poet’s development of light, musical verse, close to the spoken language of that time. The main meter that Sumarokov used in his eclogues, elegies, satires, epistles and tragedies was iambic hexameter, a Russian variety of Alexandrian verse.
In the odes written in the 1740s, Sumarokov was guided by the models given in this genre by M.V. Lomonosov. This did not stop him from arguing with his teacher on literary and theoretical issues. Lomonosov and Sumarokov represented two trends of Russian classicism. Unlike Lomonosov, Sumarokov considered the main tasks of poetry not to pose national problems, but to serve the ideals of the nobility. Poetry, in his opinion, should not first of all be majestic, but “pleasant.” In the 1750s, Sumarokov performed parodies of Lomonosov’s odes in a genre that he himself called “nonsense odes.” These comic odes were, to a certain extent, self-parodies.
Sumarokov tried his hand at all genres of classicism, writing sapphic, Horatian, Anacreontic and other odes, stanzas, sonnets, etc. In addition, he opened the genre of poetic tragedy for Russian literature. Sumarokov began writing tragedies in the second half of the 1740s, creating 9 works of this genre: Khorev (1747), Sinav and Truvor (1750), Dimitri the Pretender (1771), etc. In tragedies written in accordance with the canons of classicism, in full Sumarokov's political views became apparent. Thus, the tragic ending of Khorev stemmed from the fact that the main character, the “ideal monarch,” indulged his own passions - suspicion and distrust. “A tyrant on the throne” becomes the cause of suffering for many people - this is the main idea of the tragedy Demetrius the Pretender.
The creation of dramatic works was not least facilitated by the fact that in 1756 Sumarokov was appointed the first director of the Russian Theater in St. Petersburg. The theater existed largely thanks to his energy.
During the reign of Catherine II, Sumarokov paid great attention to the creation of parables, satires, epigrams and pamphlet comedies in prose (Tresotinius, 1750, Guardian, 1765, Cuckold by Imagination, 1772, etc.).
According to his philosophical convictions, Sumarokov was a rationalist, formulated his views on the structure of human life as follows: “What is based on nature and truth can never change, and what has other foundations is boasted, blasphemed, introduced and withdrawn according to the will of each and every person.” without any reason." His ideal was enlightened noble patriotism, opposed to uncultured provincialism, metropolitan gallomania and bureaucratic corruption.
Simultaneously with the first tragedies, Sumarokov began to write literary and theoretical poetic works - epistles. In 1774 he published two of them - the Epistle on the Russian language and On poetry in one book, Instructions for those who want to be writers. One of the most important ideas in Sumarokov’s epistol was the idea of the greatness of the Russian language. In his Epistle about the Russian language, he wrote: “Our beautiful language is capable of everything.” Sumarokov's language is much closer to the spoken language of the enlightened nobles than the language of his contemporaries Lomonosov and Trediakovsky.
What was important for him was not the reproduction of the color of the era, but political didactics, which the historical plot allowed for to be carried out to the masses. The difference was also that in the French tragedies the monarchical and republican mode of government were compared (in “Zinna” by Corneille, in “Brutus” and “Julius Caesar” by Voltaire), in the tragedies of Sumarokov there is no republican theme. As a convinced monarchist, he could oppose tyranny only with enlightened absolutism.
Sumarokov's tragedies represent a kind of school of civic virtues, designed not only for ordinary nobles, but also for monarchs. This is one of the reasons for the unkind attitude towards the playwright of Catherine II. Without encroaching on the political foundations of the monarchical state, Sumarokov touches on its moral values in his plays. A conflict of duty and passion is born. Duty commands the heroes to strictly fulfill their civic duties, passions - love, suspicion, jealousy, despotic inclinations - prevent their implementation. In this regard, two types of heroes are presented in Sumarokov’s tragedies. The first of them, entering into a duel with passion that gripped them, eventually overcome their hesitation and honorably fulfill their civic duty. These include Khorev (the play “Khorev”), Hamlet (a character from the play of the same name, which is a free adaptation of Shakespeare’s tragedy), Truvor (the tragedy “Sinav and Truvor”) and a number of others.
The problem of curbing, overcoming personal “passionate” principles is emphasized in the remarks of the characters. “Overcome yourself and rise higher,” the Novgorod boyar Gostomysl teaches Truvor,
During Sumarokov's lifetime, a complete collection of his works was not published, although many collections of poetry, compiled according to genre, were published.
Sumarokov died in Moscow, 59 years old, and was buried in the Donskoy Monastery.
After the poet's death, Novikov twice published the Complete Collection of all Sumarokov's works (1781, 1787).
Russian literature of the 18th century
Alexander Petrovich Sumarokov
Biography
Alexander Petrovich Sumarokov, the most consistent of the classicist writers, along with the practice of literary activity, was able to provide a theoretical justification for classicism as a literary movement characteristic of mid-century Russia. In literature, Sumarokov acted as a successor and at the same time antagonist of Lomonosov. In 1748, in his “Epistole on Poetry,” Sumarokov writes about Lomonosov: “He is the Malgerb of our countries; he is like Pindar.” Subsequently, Sumarokov recalled the time when he and Lomonosov were friends and daily interlocutors “and took sound advice from each other” (“On versification”). Then the literary, theoretical and personal enmity of the writers began.
A.P. Sumarokov is an outstanding playwright and poet of his time, passionately devoted to literary work, believing in the almighty power of the word addressed to reason. One of the most prolific and active writers of the 18th century, he turned his literary work to the noble class. And his classicism was of a narrow class character, in contrast to the statewide and national character of Lomonosov’s classicism. In the fair words of Belinsky, “Sumarokov was excessively exalted by his contemporaries and excessively humiliated by our time.” At the same time, Sumarokov’s work was an important milestone in the history of the development of the Russian literary process of the 18th century.
Biography
Alexander Petrovich Sumarokov was born on November 14 (25), 1717 into an aristocratic, but by that time impoverished family. Having received his initial education at home, Sumarokov in 1732, at the age of 14, entered the Land Noble Corps, open only to nobles. In this corps, which was obliged to graduate “chiefs” of military, civil and court service, Sumarokov received an excellent education and became familiar with literature and theater. General education subjects such as history, geography, law, languages, fencing and dancing were taught here. The building becomes the center of a new noble culture. Much time was devoted to literature and art. It is not for nothing that future writers studied in the corps at different times: A. P. Sumarokov, M. M. Kheraskov, I. P. Elagin, A. A. Nartov and others. In 1759, a group of students and officers of the corps undertook the publication of the magazine “ Idle time, used for benefit,” in which Sumarokov, who graduated from the corps in 1740, also collaborated. Literary interests also determined the fact that it was in the Noble Corps that the first Russian tragedy, written by Sumarokov, was played and laid the foundation for the creation of the Russian dramatic repertoire. Already during his years of study, Sumarokov’s poetic talent was revealed. His first published works were two odes for the new year, 1740, published as a separate brochure. After completing the course of science, Sumarokov, despite his military service, which was mainly of a formal nature, devoted all his time to literature. He writes odes, elegies, songs, fables, and acts as a playwright, treating literature for the first time as a professional matter.
During his years of study in the corps, Sumarokov developed firm and high ideas about the dignity of a nobleman, about the need for public service to the fatherland, and formed ideal ideas about noble honor and virtue. In the spirit of these ideals, he dreamed of educating a noble society, and he chose literature as a means for this. Sumarokov addressed the government on behalf of the noble community, on whom he focused his main attention. He becomes the ideologist of the noble class, the ideologist of the new nobility born of Peter the Great's time. A nobleman must serve for the benefit of society. And Sumarokov, in turn, protects the interests of the nobles. Seeing in the existing serfdom a completely natural and legalized phenomenon, Sumarokov at the same time opposed the excessive cruelty of the serf-owners, against the transformation of serfdom into slavery. “People should not be sold like cattle,” he stated in his comments on the “Order” of Catherine II. And at the same time, he was convinced that “peasant freedom is not only harmful to society, but also detrimental, and why it is detrimental does not need to be explained.” Recognizing the natural equality of people, he believed that it was upbringing and education that made nobles “the first members of society,” “sons of the fatherland”:
What's the difference between a gentleman and a peasant?
Both he and he are an animated lump of earth,
And if you don’t clear the mind of the lordly peasant,
So I don't see any difference.
("On Nobility")
The nobility, according to Sumarokov, occupying a privileged position in society, must be educated, enlightened, must prove their right to rule the “slaves of the fatherland,” i.e., peasants. In this regard, his programmatic poem was his satire “On Nobility”:
I bring this satire to you, nobleman!
I am writing to the first members of the fatherland.
The nobles know their duty quite well without me,
But many remember one nobility,
Not remembering that born from women and from ladies
Without exception, Adam is the forefather of all.
Are we nobles so that people can work?
Would we have devoured their works because of our nobility?
This satire repeats the main provisions of Cantemir's satire about the nobility of birth and the nobility of merit, about the natural equality of people. “Our honor does not lie in titles,” wrote Sumarokov, “he is the radiant one who shines with heart and mind, the excellent one who surpasses other people in dignity, the boyar who cares about the fatherland.” Sumarokov never managed to bring the nobility closer to the ideal he had conceived.
Being a monarchist and a supporter of enlightened absolutism, Sumarokov sharply opposed monarchs who, in his opinion, do not fulfill their duties to their subjects, forgetting that “we were born for you. And you were born for us.” Sumarokov never tired of reminding us of this in his odes and tragedies. Every now and then he becomes in opposition to the government.
Sumarokov’s life, outwardly full of success and recognition, was extremely difficult. Not seeing worthy representatives of his class among the nobles, he tirelessly denounces the cruel, unenlightened nobles, so far from the ideal he created. He ridicules them in fables and satires, denounces bribery and lawlessness of officials, favoritism at court. The noble society, which did not want to listen to Sumarokov, began to take revenge on the writer. Proud, irritable, accustomed to recognition of his literary successes by writers, Sumarokov, according to the memoirs of his contemporaries, often lost his temper and could not restrain himself. Honest and straightforward, he did not let anyone down. “His indomitability and hysteria are proverbial. He jumped up, cursed, and ran away when he heard the landowners calling the serf servants “boorish tribe.” He reached the point of hysterics, defending his copyright from the encroachments of the Moscow commander-in-chief; he loudly cursed arbitrariness, bribes, and the savagery of society; the noble “society” took revenge on him, driving him crazy, mocking him.”
The name of Sumarokov is associated with the emergence of a permanent “Russian theater for the performance of tragedies and comedies,” the first director of which in 1756 was appointed by Elizabeth Sumarokov. Sumarokov saw in the theater an opportunity to fulfill an educational role in relation to the nobility. The creation of the theater depended largely on the appearance of Sumarokov's tragedies, which made up its repertoire. By the time the theater opened, Sumarokov was the author of five tragedies and three comedies. Contemporaries rightly called him “the founder of the Russian theater.” For five years he was in charge of the theater, where work was extremely difficult: there was no permanent premises, there was not enough money for productions, the actors and director did not receive salaries for months. Sumarokov wrote desperate letters to Shuvalov, entering into constant conflicts. An ardent lover of art and devoted to his work, Sumarokov was neither a sufficiently accommodating person nor a good administrator. In 1761 he had to leave the theater.
The last period of his life was especially difficult for Sumarokov. He moves to Moscow and continues to write a lot. At the end of the reign of Elizabeth Petrovna, he joined the noble opposition, which succumbed to the liberal declarations of Catherine, who by all means went to power. The coup of 1762, which brought Catherine II to the throne, did not fulfill Sumarokov’s political hopes. He stands in opposition to the queen and creates politically acute tragedies “Dimitri the Pretender”, “Mstislav”. In the first tragedy, the plot is based on a sharp exposure of the despot monarch and a call for his overthrow. The nobility is still dissatisfied with the writer. He enjoys fame mainly in literary circles, but it cannot console Sumarokov. Harsh in his views and irreconcilable in his judgments, he alienates the empress. The persecution intensified when he, an aristocrat by birth, the ideologist of the nobility, violating all class prejudices, married a serf girl. The relatives of the first wife began a lawsuit against the writer, demanding the deprivation of the rights of his children from his second wife. The trial ended in favor of Sumarokov. However, bankrupt and entangled in debt, Sumarokov was forced to humiliate himself before the rich man Demidov, who drives him out of the house for an unpaid debt. There are rumors about him all over the city. The Commander-in-Chief of Moscow, Saltykov, organizes the failure of the Sinav and Truvor tragedy. A beggar, abandoned and ridiculed by everyone, Sumarokov sinks and begins to drink. In the poem "Complaint" he writes:
...I have little consolation that the glory will not fade,
Which the shadow will never feel.
What need do I have for my mind?
If only I carry crackers in my bag?
What an excellent writer I am honored for,
If there is nothing to drink or eat?
On October 11, 1777, after a short illness, Sumarokov died. There was not a ruble to bury the poet. According to the testimony of Pavel Ivanovich Sumarokov, the writer’s nephew, Sumarokov was “buried at his own expense by the actors of the Moscow theater” in the cemetery of the Donskoy Monastery.
Sumarokov was the first nobleman writer for whom literature became the main business of his life. It was impossible to live by literature at that time; this largely determined the severity of Sumarokov’s material hardships. In a petition addressed to Catherine II, Sumarokov wrote about his plight: “The main reason for all this is my love for poetry, for I relied on it and on verbal sciences, I cared not so much about ranks and property, as about my muse.” Sumarokov himself was inclined to consider himself the founder of syllabic-tonic poetry, and in an article polemically directed against Lomonosov, “To the senseless rhymers,” he stated that when he began writing, “we didn’t have any poets yet and there was no one to learn from. It was as if I was passing through a dense forest, hiding the dwelling of the muses from my eyes, without a guide...” This, of course, was far from the truth, but Sumarokov’s merits in the development of Russian poetry are undoubted.
If Trediakovsky discovered that Russian poetry should be tonic, and Lomonosov made a true reform, then Sumarokov gave examples of almost all types of tonic verse. Speaking as a playwright, poet, theorist, and critic, Sumarokov believed that his literary activity was a service to society, a form of active participation in the public life of the country. He was a leading man of his time, a noble educator, whose work was highly valued by Radishchev and Novikov.
Sumarokov - theorist of classicism
A.P. Sumarokov, with his literary creativity, contributed to the establishment of classicism on Russian soil. He acted both as a theorist of classicism and as a writer who, in his literary practice, gave examples of the diverse genres provided for by the poetics of classicism. Sumarokov began by writing odes; the first two odes, dedicated to Anna Ioannovna, were published in 1740. In them, the aspiring poet imitated Trediakovsky. From the moment the odes of Lomonosov appeared, Sumarokov experienced a strong influence of his creative genius. However, the ode genre did not become dominant in the work of Sumarokov, who was destined to achieve fame as a great playwright and lyric poet, the creator of love songs, idylls, elegies, and eclogues.
An important literary event was the two poetic epistles published in 1748 by Sumarokov - “On the Russian Language” and “On Poetry”, in which Sumarokov acted as a theorist of classicism. In the first, he talks about the need to enrich the literary language with timeless Church Slavonic words and avoid foreign words. In this he gets closer to Lomonosov. In “Epistole on Poetry” (1747), unlike Lomonosov, Sumarokov, theoretically substantiating the genres of classicism, asserts the equality of all genres, without giving preference to any of them:
Everything is praiseworthy: whether a drama, an eclogue or an ode -
Decide what your nature draws you to...
Subsequently, both of these epistles were revised and made up one - “Instructions for those who want to be writers,” published in 1774.
To Trediakovsky’s reproach for borrowing epistles from Boileau’s “The Art of Poetry,” Sumarokov replied that he “didn’t take much from Boileau,” meaning his understanding of the aesthetic code and his independent development of individual genres. Nevertheless, Sumarokov does not deny his dependence on Boileau’s theory. “My epistle about poetry,” he says, “is all Boalov’s, and Boalo took it from Horace. No: Boalo did not take everything from Horace, and I did not take everything from Boalo..."
The beginning of Sumarokov’s dramatic activity also dates back to the 40s, for he considered theater to be the strongest means of educating the nobility. In his tragedies, one of the most characteristic genres of classicism, Sumarokov poses large, socially significant problems. Contemporaries highly appreciated this type of dramaturgy by Sumarokov, calling him “northern Racine,” the founder of the dramaturgy of Russian classicism.
Tragedies of Sumarokov
In the tragedies, Sumarokov’s political views were especially clearly manifested. He strove to create a harmonious society in which every member of society would know his duties and fulfill them honestly. He longed to return the “golden ages,” believing that they were possible under the existing social order, but for this it was necessary to eliminate the lawlessness and disorder that existed in the absolutist-noble monarchy. His tragedies were supposed to show what a true enlightened monarch should be like; they were supposed to educate the “first sons of the fatherland,” the nobility, arousing in them a sense of civic duty, love for the fatherland, and true nobility. Sumarokov never tired of convincing the monarchs that “we (subjects) were born for you, and you were born for us.” And although Sumarokov constantly repeats that “monarchical rule, I do not say despotic, is the best,” he did not hesitate to sharply condemn monarchs who did not correspond to the ideal he outlined. Standing in opposition to Elizabeth Petrovna, he soon understood the pseudo-enlightened absolutism of Catherine's reign and, while promoting the ideas of enlightened absolutism in his tragedies, at the same time exposed the despotism of the rule of monarchs. The tyrant-fighting tendencies in his tragedies intensified sharply towards the end of the 60s and beginning of the 70s, reflecting the general growth of noble opposition to the regime of Catherine II. The socio-political pathos of Sumarokov's tragedies had a huge impact on the development of subsequent Russian tragedy, which retained its political orientation.
Over 28 years, Sumarokov wrote nine tragedies. The first group of tragedies, 1740-1750, are “Khorev” (1747), “Hamlet” (1748), which was a free adaptation from the French prose translation of Shakespeare’s tragedy, “Sinav and Truvor” (1750), “Ariston” (1750 ), “Semira” (1751), “Dimiza” (1758), later revised and called “Yaropolk and Dimiza” (1768).
Sumarokov’s first tragedy, “Khorev,” was published in 1747. This is the playwright’s first experience; it only outlines the main provisions, motives, and situations that will develop later. The tragedy is addressed to Ancient Rus', however, the connection with ancient Russian history is very conditional, it is actually limited to names, however, it is important to note that, taking stories from his native history, Sumarokov considered them more effective in instilling the “virtue” of the nobility. This, undoubtedly, gave the most pronounced patriotic character to the playwright’s tragedies and was a distinctive feature of Russian classicism, for Western European drama was built primarily on ancient subjects.
In the tragedy “Khorev” the central character is Prince Kiy. His brother Khorev loves Osnelda, the daughter of Zavlokh, expelled from Kyiv by Prince Kiy. Osnelda reciprocates Khorev's feelings, but her love contradicts the duty of a daughter and a patriot. By order of Kiy, who wants to test Khorev’s devotion, the latter must march with an army against his beloved’s father. This is how the conflict between public and personal, between duty and passion, which is characteristic of Sumarokov’s subsequent tragedies, is defined.
The outcome is tragic, and Prince Kiy is to blame for it, having trusted the informer Stalver. In this first tragedy of Sumarokov there is not yet that clarity of the main idea, that rigor and integrity in construction that will be characteristic of his best tragedies, but the main collisions are outlined, and the moralistic, didactic orientation of the tragedy is decisive. A monarch who has subdued the voice of reason to the destructive passion that has gripped him becomes a tyrant for his subjects. The speeches of Khorev and Osnelda contained lessons of noble morality.
The next group of tragedies, in which tyrant-fighting motifs sounded most clearly, were written after a ten-year break: “Vysheslav” (1768), “Dimitri the Pretender” (1771), “Mstislav” (1774). However, in these tragedies, despite the more acute socio-political sound, the plot and compositional structure is subordinated to clarifying the main problem: the relationship of the royal power to its subjects and the subjects to this power. At the center of the tragedies is a monarch invested with power, his subjects - princes, nobles, representatives of a noble family, often subjects of the monarch - two lovers, but this love is undesirable, it is condemned by the law of honor and duty. Devotion to one’s feelings and one’s duty creates a tragic collision. Usually, the basis of a tragic collision is a violation of duty by a monarch who does not know how to control his passions and becomes a tyrant towards his subjects. In Sumarokov's tragedies, the monarch, unable to suppress his passion and attraction, has no right to rule others. And hence, in most tragedies, an important moment in the development of the plot is the action against the tyrant. This performance is successful if it is directed against despots (Hamlet, Demetrius the Pretender). In other cases, when the ruler turns out to be a reasonable monarch (“Semira”, “Vysheslav”) or a monarch who has repented of his actions (“Artistona”, “Mstislav”, etc.), the uprising ends in failure. It is characteristic that the triumph of Sumarokov’s didactic concept of morality leads to happy endings in tragedies (exception: “Sinav and Truvor” and “Khorev”).
Creating models of behavior of a true monarch and a true subject, whose high feelings and thoughts were supposed to educate the Russian nobility, Sumarokov divides his heroes into positive and negative, virtuous and villains, who are revealed to the viewer primarily in their monologues. The action in tragedies is reduced to a minimum; the monologues of the characters are addressed to the audience and are an expression of certain ideas of the author.
The tragedy “Sinav and Truvor”, translated into French, received Voltaire’s approval. Sumarokov’s last tragedies “Vysheslav” (1768), “Dimitri the Pretender” (1771) and “Mstislav” (1774) were written at a time when the playwright was in disgrace and clearly saw that the Russian monarchy was despotic. Sumarokov's opposition to the government and his fight against favoritism were reflected in these tragedies, which were of a clearly political nature.
Sumarokov’s goal is to educate monarchs, pointing out their responsibilities towards their subjects:
He reigns the people to bliss
And leading the common benefit to perfection:
The orphan does not cry under his scepter,
The innocent are not afraid of anyone,
A flatterer does not bow at the feet of a nobleman.
The king is a judge equal to all and a father equal to all.
("Vysheslav")
Based on his ideal of a class monarchy, Sumarokov, with his characteristic passion and insolence, attacked those social phenomena and social forces that he regarded negatively. In his latest tragedies, tyrant-fighting motives intensify. A monarch who is unable to establish order in the state and be the father of his subjects is worthy of contempt; he is a “vile idol”, an “enemy of the people” who must be overthrown from the throne (“Dimitri the Pretender”). Sumarokov started talking about “villains” on the throne. It is not for nothing that the tragedy “Dimitri the Pretender” was included in the collection of the best works of Russian literature, published in Paris in 1800. Its compilers explained the choice of this play by the fact that “its plot, almost revolutionary, is obviously in direct contradiction with the morals and political system of this countries: minor characters (Shuisky, Georgy, Parmen and Ksenia) give speeches about the rights of the people and the responsibilities of sovereigns.” The tragedy features the theme of the violent overthrow of a tyrant by the people. And although Sumarokov means only a palace coup, and the concepts of “people”, “society”, “sons of the fatherland” are nobles, as P. N. Berkov rightly pointed out in his work about Sumarokov, nevertheless the socio-political resonance this tragedy was very strong.
Sumarokov's tragedies had enormous educational significance. The spectators sitting in the hall received moral lessons, listened to high words about duty, nobility, love for the Motherland, and learned to be indignant against tyranny. N.I. Novikov, the most prominent educator of the 18th century, wrote about Sumarokov: “... although he was the first Russian to begin writing tragedies according to all the rules of theatrical art, he succeeded so much in them that he earned the name of northern Racine.” It is characteristic that Sumarokov himself expressed dissatisfaction with the audience. In the preface to “Dimitri the Pretender,” complaining about the frivolity and indifference of the public, he wrote: “You who have traveled, who have been in Paris and London, tell me! Do they gnaw nuts there during the performance and, when the performance is at its peak, do they flog drunken coachmen who have quarreled among themselves, to the alarm of the entire stalls, boxes and theater?
Sumarokov's tragedies, designed for the education and upbringing of the noble class, had a wider resonance and a wider sphere of influence. The play “Dimitri the Pretender,” according to contemporaries, was a “people's favorite” even in the 20s of the 19th century. The socially progressive role of Sumarokov’s tragedies was great, and the type of classical tragedy he created for a long time remained a model followed by modern playwrights and playwrights of later times.
Comedies by Sumarokov
Sumarokov also had his say in the comedy genre. In his “Epistole on Poetry,” the playwright defines the social and educational function of comedy: “The property of comedy is to rule morality through mockery; /Mix and use is its direct charter.” By exposing human vices in a funny way, exposing them, comedy should thereby contribute to liberation from them. In “Epistol,” formulating the theory of the comedy genre, Sumarokov wrote that comedy should be separated from tragedy, on the one hand, and from farcical games, on the other:
For knowledgeable people, don’t write games:
To make people laugh without reason is a gift from a vile soul.
Separating comedy from folk games, Sumarokov nevertheless turned to the practice of folk theater in his comedies. His comedies are small in volume (from one to three acts), written in prose, they often lack a plot basis (this applies especially to Sumarokov’s first comedies), the comedies are characterized by farcical comedy, the characters are a clerk, a judge, a dandy and other characters noted Sumarokov in Russian life.
Imagine a soulless Podyachev in the order,
The judge that he will not understand what is written in the decree.
Imagine me a dandy who turns up his nose,
What a whole century thinks about the beauty of hair,
Who, as he thinks, was born for cupid,
To win over such a fool somewhere.
Striving to imitate primarily the French comedy of Moliere, Sumarokov was far from the comedies of Western classicism. A classical comedy should have consisted of five acts in verse (an example was Moliere’s comedy “The Misanthrope”), it should have compositional rigor, completeness, and obligatory observance of unities (of course, in Western comedy there were deviations from the classical model: he wrote comedies in prose and Moliere). Sumarokov’s imitation of French comedy and Italian interludes was reflected primarily in the borrowing of the characters’ conventional names: Erast, Dulizh, Dorant, Isabella, etc.
Sumarokov wrote twelve comedies, which, although they had a number of undoubted merits, were inferior in their ideological significance and artistic value to his tragedies.
He wrote the first comedies “Tresotinius”, “Monsters”, “An Empty Quarrel” in 1750. The next group of comedies appeared in the 60s: “Dowry by Deceit”, “Guardian”, “Poisonous”, “Reddy Man”, “Narcissus” , “Three Brothers Together”, and finally, in 1772, three more comedies were written - “Cuckold by Imagination”, “Mother Sharing a Daughter”, “Crazy Woman”. Most often, Sumarokov's comedies served as a means of polemics for him, hence the pamphlet-like nature of most of them. Unlike tragedies, Sumarokov did not work on comedies for long. In his first comedies, each of the characters appearing on stage showed the audience his own vice, and the scenes were mechanically connected. In a small comedy there are many characters (in “Tresotinius” - 10, in “Monsters” - 11). The portraiture of the characters made it possible for contemporaries to find out who in reality served as the prototype for this or that character. Real faces, everyday details, negative phenomena of Russian life - all this gave Sumarokov’s comedies, despite the conventionality of the image, a connection with reality. The strongest aspect of Sumarokov's comedies was their language: bright, expressive, it is often colored with the features of a lively dialect. This manifested the writer's desire to individualize the speech of the characters, which is especially characteristic of Sumarokov's later comedies.
The polemical nature of early comedies, often directed against enemies in the literary field, can be traced in the comedy-pamphlet “Tresotinius”, in which Trediakovsky was portrayed in an exaggerated and grotesque form as the main character - a pedantic scientist. A parody of Trediakovsky’s poems is heard in Tresotinius’s song:
Looking at your beauty, I was inflamed, hey!
Ah, may you spare me from my passion,
You torment me, Klymene, and you knocked me off my feet with an arrow.
The images created in the first comedies were of a conventional nature and were far from typical generalizations.
Despite the fact that the method of conventional depiction of characters is also characteristic of the second group of comedies, they nevertheless differ from the first in the greater depth and conditionality of the depiction of the main characters. The second group of comedies, written between 1764-1768, refers to comedies of character, when all the attention is focused on the main character, while other characters serve only to reveal the character traits of the main character. Thus, “The Guardian” is a comedy about the nobleman-usurer, swindler and hypocrite Stranger, “The Poisonous” is about the slanderer Herostratus, “Narcissus” is a comedy about a narcissistic dandy. The rest of the characters are positive characters who act as sounding boards. The most successful in Sumarokov's comedies are the images of negative heroes, in whose characters many satirical and everyday features are noticed, although their depiction is still far from creating a socially generalized type.
One of the best comedies of this period is the comedy "The Guardian", which centers on the image of the prude, miserly nobleman Stranger, fleecing the orphans who came under his care. The “original” of the Stranger was Sumarokov’s relative Buturlin. It is characteristic that he is also depicted as the central character in other comedies (“The Covetous Man,” “Dowry by Deception”). In the comedy “Guardian” Sumarokov does not show the bearer of one particular vice, but draws a complex character. Before us is not only a miser who knows neither conscience nor pity, but also a bigot, an ignoramus, a libertine. With some similarities to Moliere's Tartuffe, Sumarokov creates a generalized satirical image of a Russian vicious nobleman. Both speech characteristics and everyday details contribute to the revelation of character. The speech of the Stranger is full of proverbs and sayings: “the purse is empty, the head is empty”, “what is honor if there is nothing to eat?”, “abuse does not hang at the gate”, “what is taken is holy.” In his sanctimonious repentance, the Stranger turns to God, peppering his speech with Church Slavonicisms: “Lord, I know that I am a rogue and a soulless person, and I have not the slightest love for you or my neighbor; I alone trust in your love for mankind, I cry to you: remember me, Lord, in your kingdom.”
The positive characters of Sumarokov's comedies are devoid of vitality; they often act as sounding boards in comedies - such is Valery in the comedy "Guardian". The iconic names of negative characters, characteristic of classicism, also corresponded to moralizing purposes: Stranger, Kashchei, Herostratus.
The end of the 60s - 70s are characterized by the growth of opposition sentiments towards enlightened absolutism among the progressive nobility and the common intelligentsia. This was the time when Russian educational thought turned to posing the peasant question. The issue of the relationship between landowners and peasants began to be addressed more closely and in a socially meaningful manner in different genres of literature. Attention to everyday life surrounding a person, the desire for a more complex psychological revelation of characters in certain social conditions are characteristic of the best dramatic works of the second half of the century. At this time (between 1766-1769), Fonvizin wrote the first everyday comedy from the life of the Russian provincial nobility, “The Brigadier,” the influence of which affected Sumarokov’s last comedies. Following Fonvizin’s “The Brigadier,” the best play in Sumarokov’s comedy work, “Cuckold by Imagination,” appeared, which, in turn, anticipated the appearance of Fonvizin’s “The Minor” (a certain commonality of situations and characters).
The writer focuses on the life of the provincial poor landowners, Vikul and Khavronya. Limited interests, ignorance, narrow-mindedness characterize them. At the same time, the characters in Sumarokov’s comedy are not one-sided. Making fun of the savagery and absurdity of these people, who talk only “about sowing, about reaping, about threshing, about chickens,” whose peasants walk around the world, Sumarokov also shows traits that evoke sympathy for them. Vikul and Khavronya are touching with their mutual affection (here they anticipate Gogol’s “Old World Landowners”). “Cuckold by Imagination” is the pinnacle of Sumarokov’s comedic creativity.
Poetry of Sumarokov
Sumarokov’s diverse creativity was also manifested in the richness of poetic genres. Sumarokov sought to provide examples of all types of poetry provided for by the theory of classicism. He wrote odes, songs, elegies, eclogues, idylls, madrigals, epigrams, satires, and parables. In his poetry, two directions were fundamental - lyrical and satirical. He began writing love songs in the first decade of his creative activity. In the field of love lyrics, which enjoyed great success among his contemporaries, Sumarokov made undoubted discoveries. His lyrics are addressed to man, to his natural weaknesses. Despite the still conventional depiction of the lyrical hero, in his songs Sumarokov strives to reveal the inner world, depth and sincerity of the hero or heroine’s feelings. His lyrics are distinguished by sincere simplicity, spontaneity, they are characterized by sincerity and clarity of expression. After the lyrics of Peter the Great's time, Sumarokov's lyrics both in the field of content and in the field of technique of verse took a big step forward.
Here is an example of one of those love songs that created Sumarokov’s first fame:
Those hours disappeared when you were looking for me,
And all my joy has been taken away by you.
I see that you have become unfaithful to me now,
Against me, you have become completely different.
My moan and sadness are fierce,
imagine
And remember those moments
How nice I was to you.
Look at the places where you met me,
They will bring back all the tenderness as a memory.
Where are my joys? Where has your passion gone?
They are gone and will never come back to me.
Another life has arrived;
But did I expect this?
A precious life is gone,
Hope and peace.
Sumarokov often uses the technique of antithesis to reveal
Sumarokov Alexander Petrovich was born in Moscow in 1717. He is known to contemporary readers as a poet and playwright.
Alexander Petrovich grew up in a family of nobles. He received his upbringing and initial education at home. At the age of 15 he entered the Land Noble Corps. Here his activity as a young poet begins.
Sumarokov is known to his fans as a writer of love songs that have received success and recognition from society. In his lines, the poet uses the theme of interpersonal conflicts, which he later begins to use in his tragedies. The most famous of them: “Khorev” (1747), “Hamlet” (1748), “Sinav and Truvor” (1750). Poetic tragedies became an incentive for the playwright to create a theater in Russia, which was headed by Sumarokov himself.
During the reign of Catherine II, the popularity of Alexander Petrovich reached its full bloom. He has support in the circles of Novikov and Fonvizin. His works are aimed at ridiculing bribe-takers, landowners who brutally treated their serfs.
But in 1770, a conflict arose between Sumarokov and Saltykov. In this situation, the empress supported the poet, and he wrote her a mocking letter. This event had a negative impact on his literary position.
Throughout his life, the playwright wrote the most interesting works of comedy and tragedy. But in his dying years, he somewhat lost his popularity, which contributed to his passion for bad habits. The consequence is the sudden death of Sumarokov in 1777.
