Essays. Poetic creativity of Karamzin Main genres

The popularity of the story “Poor Liza,” which we will analyze, was so great that the surroundings of the Simonov Monastery (it is there that the tragic events described in the work take place) became the place of a kind of “pilgrimage”; admirers of Karamzin’s talent thus expressed their attitude to the fate of their favorite heroine .

The plot of the story “Poor Liza” can safely be called traditional: a poor peasant girl is cruelly deceived by a rich and noble man, she cannot stand the betrayal and dies. As we see, nothing particularly new is offered to the reader, but into this hackneyed plot Karamzin brings genuine human interest in the characters, he describes their story in a confidential, intimate manner, he is drawn to the world of the heroes’ spiritual experiences, in contact with which he himself experiences deep and sincere feelings that find expression in numerous lyrical digressions that characterize both the heroes, and, first of all, the author himself, his humanistic position, and willingness to understand each of the heroes.

The image of Liza became a very major artistic discovery for its time, Karamzin’s main idea sounded not even polemical, but defiantly: “... and peasant women know how to love!” Let’s pay attention to the exclamation mark, the author insists on his own, ready with the story of “poor Liza “to prove this assertion, which at first could only cause a smile for most “enlightened readers” at best.

The image of Lisa in the story "Poor Lisa" was created in line with the contrast between rural life, close to nature, pure and chaste, where the value of a person is determined only by his human qualities, and urban, conventional and in this conditionality spoiled, spoiling a person, forcing him to adapt to circumstances and lose face for the sake of "decency", the observance of which is - in human terms - very expensive.

In the image of the heroine, Karamzin highlights such a trait as selflessness. She works “tirelessly” to help her mother, who called her “divine mercy, nurse, the joy of her old age and prayed to God to reward her for everything that she does for her mother.” Suffering from grief caused by the death of her father, she “to calm her mother, tried to hide the sadness of her heart and appear calm and cheerful.” The girl’s human dignity is manifested in the fact that she proudly and calmly bears her cross, she cannot take money that she has not earned, she sincerely and naively believes that she is unworthy to be the “master’s” chosen one, although she feels great love for him. The scene of the heroes' declaration of love is permeated with poetry; in it, along with conventions, one can feel a genuine feeling, poetically embodied in the emotional experiences of the heroes, to which the pictures of nature are consonant - the morning after the declaration of love is called "beautiful" by Lisa. The images of “shepherdess” and “shepherdess” most fully convey the spiritual purity of the characters and the chastity of their attitude towards each other. For some time, the heroine’s spiritual purity transformed Erast: “All the brilliant amusements of the great world seemed insignificant to him in comparison with the pleasures with which the passionate friendship of an innocent soul nourished his heart. With disgust, he thought about the contemptuous voluptuousness with which his feelings had previously reveled.”

The idyllic relationship between the “shepherdess” and the “shepherdess” continued until Lisa informed her lover about the marriage of a rich son to her, after which they, maddened by the fear of losing each other, crossed the line separating “platonic love” from sensual, and In this, Liza turns out to be incomparably higher than Erast, she completely surrenders to a new feeling for herself, while he tries to comprehend what happened, to look at his beloved girl in a new way. A wonderful detail: after her “fall,” Lisa is afraid that “the thunder will kill me like a criminal!” What happened had a fatal impact on Erast’s attitude towards Lisa: “Platonic love gave way to feelings that he could not be proud of and that were no longer new to him.” This is precisely what caused his deception: he was fed up with Lisa, her pure love, in addition, he needed to improve his material affairs with a profitable marriage. His attempt to pay off Lisa is described by the author with stunning force, and the words with which he actually expels Lisa from his life speak of his true attitude towards her: “Escort this girl from the yard,” he orders the servant.

Lisa's suicide is shown by Karamzin as the decision of a person for whom life is over primarily because he was betrayed, he is not able to live after such a betrayal - and makes a terrible choice. Scary for Lisa also because she is devout, she sincerely believes in God, and suicide for her is a terrible sin. But her last words are about God and her mother, she feels guilty before them, although she is no longer able to change anything, too terrible a life awaits her after she learned about the betrayal of a man whom she trusted more than herself. ..

The image of Erast in the story "Poor Liza" is shown by the author as a complex and contradictory image. He truly loves Lisa, he tries to make her happy and he succeeds, he enjoys his feeling for her, those new sensations for himself that are caused by this feeling. However, he still cannot overcome in himself what could probably be called the influence of light; he rejects secular conventions to some extent, but then he again finds himself in their power. Is it possible to blame him for his cooling towards Lisa? Could the heroes be happy together if this cooling did not exist? An innovation in the creation of an artistic image by Karamzin can be considered the depiction of the mental suffering of Erast, who drives Lisa out of his new life: here the “villainous act” of the hero is experienced by him so deeply that the author cannot condemn him for this act: “I forget the man in Erast - I’m ready to curse him - but my tongue does not move - I look at the sky, and a tear rolls down my face.” And the ending of the story gives us the opportunity to see that the hero suffers from what he did: “Erast was unhappy until the end of his life. Having learned about Lizina’s fate, he could not be consoled and considered himself a murderer.”

Sentimentalism is characterized by a certain “sensitivity”, which the author of the story himself is distinguished by. Such deep experiences may seem strange to a modern reader, but for Karamzin’s time it was a true revelation: such a complete, deepest immersion in the world of the heroes’ spiritual experiences became for the reader a way to know himself, an introduction to the feelings of other people, talentedly described and “lived” the author of the story "Poor Liza", made the reader spiritually richer, revealed to him something new in his own soul. And, probably, in our time, the author’s ardent sympathy for his heroes cannot leave us indifferent, although, of course, both people and times have changed a lot. But at all times, love remains love, and loyalty and devotion have always been and will be feelings that cannot but attract the souls of readers.

1. New!

   An innovative writer who developed a new direction in European literature, N. M. Karamzin proved himself in the artistic and journalistic work “Letters of a Russian Traveler,” which stood on a par with the main work of English sentimentalism...

2. New!

   Russian youth. Karamzin's book had a huge influence on Russian literature. Belinsky wrote about the author: “He transformed the Russian language, removing it from the stilts of Latin construction and heavy Slavism and bringing it closer to a living, natural, colloquial...

3. New!

   N. M. Karamzin began his creative career as a translator, and the very selection of foreign works for translation already testifies to his tastes and emerging aesthetic principles. Thus, in Gesner’s idyll “The Wooden Leg”, translated by Karamzin...

4. New!

   Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin becomes the founder of sentimentalism in Russia. The son of a landowner in the Simbirsk province, in his youth he served in the guard, from where he retired with the rank of lieutenant. Travels around Europe, and in 1791, settling in Moscow, becomes...

5. New!

   The criterion of beauty and effectiveness was the main one for Karamzin as an artist; the criterion of strength decided the matter for him as a historian and political thinker. There is no need to prove the weakness of both of these criteria. Marfa Posadnitsa evokes the admiration of Karamzin the esthete....

6. New!

   The so-called reform of the literary language carried out by Karamzin was expressed not in the fact that he issued some decrees and changed the norms of the language, but in the fact that he himself began to write his works in a new way and place translated works in his almanacs... .

LIFE AND WORK OF N. M. KARAMZIN

Introductory article by P. Berkov and G. Makagonenko

(Sections 1, 3, 6, 8 were written by P. Berkov; introduction, sections 2, 4, 5, 7, 9-11 - G. Makogonenko.)

Karamzin's literary heritage is enormous. Diverse in content, genres and form, it captures the complex and difficult path of development of the writer. But of Karamzin’s vast literary heritage, the attention of science has been drawn only to the artistic creativity of the 1790s: Karamzin entered the history of Russian literature as the author of “Letters of a Russian Traveler,” stories (primarily, of course, “Poor Liza”) and several poems, like founder of the school of Russian sentimentalism and reformer of the literary language. The activities of Karamzin the critic are almost not studied, his journalism is ignored. “The History of the Russian State” is considered as a scientific work and on this basis is excluded from the history of literature. Excluded - contrary to its content and character, contrary to the perception of contemporaries, contrary to the opinion of Pushkin, who believed that Russian literature of the first two decades of the 19th century “can proudly exhibit before Europe” along with several odes of Derzhavin, fables of Krylov, poems of Zhukovsky, first of all, “History” Karamzin.

Thus, precisely that part of Karamzin’s legacy (criticism, journalism and “History of the Russian State”) that actively participated in the literary movement of the first quarter of the 19th century is excluded from the general process of development of literature. Following a long tradition, our science, even speaking about Karamzin’s activities in the 19th century, still considers him only as the head of the school that brought the theme of man into literature and created a language for revealing the life of the heart, that is, it persistently pulls a hare’s sheepskin coat onto the shoulders of the mature Karamzin youthful sentimentalism.

And this famous Karamzin sentimentalism is usually considered without taking into account the entire real content of the writer’s enormous literary work in the 1790s, without historical specificity, without taking into account the evolution of the young writer’s artistic views.

The task of a concrete historical study of the entire legacy of this great writer is long overdue. Without such a study, it is impossible to understand either the strengths or weaknesses of Karamzin’s literary work, or the writer’s important victories for literature; it is impossible to determine his actual role and place in Russian literature.

1

Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin was born on December 1, 1766 on his father’s small estate near Simbirsk. The future writer spent his childhood in the village. After a short stay in a boarding house in Simbirsk, Karamzin was taken to Moscow, where he was assigned to a private boarding house for university professor Schaden. Schaden's classes were conducted according to a program very close to the university one, and in his last year of study, Karamzin even attended different classes at the university. Karamzin left the boarding school as a humanitarian-educated man. A good knowledge of German and French allowed him to get acquainted with Western literary novelties in the original.

In 1783, Karamzin arrived in St. Petersburg: enlisted, according to the noble customs of that time, as a boy for military service, after completing his education, he was supposed to enter the regiment, in which he had long been enrolled. Army service weighed heavily on him. His early interest in literature determined his decision to try his luck in this field. Karamzin’s first literary experience that has come down to us is a translation of the idyll of the Swiss poet Gesner “The Wooden Leg.” The translation was published in 1783.

The death of his father at the end of 1783 gave Karamzin a reason to ask for resignation, and, having received it, he left for Simbirsk. Here he meets a translator who came from Moscow, a freemason I. P. Turgenev, who captivated the gifted young man with stories about the greatest Russian educator, writer and well-known publisher N. I. Novikov, who created a large book publishing center in Moscow. Wanting to study literature deeply and seriously, Karamzin listened to Turgenev’s advice and went with him to Moscow, where he met Novikov.

An active collector of literary forces, Novikov widely attracted young people who had graduated from the university to his publications. Karamzin was noticed by him, his abilities were appreciated: first Novikov involved him in translating books, and later, from 1787, he entrusted him with editing, together with the young writer A. Petrov, the first Russian magazine for children - “Children's Reading”. At the same time, the activities of Radishchev, Krylov and Knyazhnin were unfolding in St. Petersburg. Fonvizin, sick and persecuted by Catherine, did not give up and in 1787 tried to publish his own satirical magazine “Friend of Honest People, or Starodum.”

Karamzin became friends with A. Petrov. They settled together in an old house that belonged to the publisher Novikov. Karamzin remembered the years of friendship with Petrov all his life. In 1793, Karamzin dedicated the lyrical essay “A Flower on the Coffin of My Agathon” to his memory. The freemason A.M. Kutuzov, who lived in the same Novikov house, had a great influence on the development of Karamzin at this time. Kutuzov was closely associated with Radishchev; perhaps he told Karamzin a lot about his St. Petersburg friend. However, Kutuzov’s range of interests was different from that of the future author of “Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow”: he was attracted to philosophical, religious and even mystical issues, and not political or social ones.

At this time in his life, Karamzin was deeply interested in various philosophical and aesthetic concepts of man. His letters to the then famous and popular Swiss philosopher and theologian Lavater (in 1786-1789) indicate a persistent desire to understand man, to know himself from the standpoint of religion. These letters are also interesting with information about the aspiring writer’s reading range: “I read the works of Lavater, Gellert and Haller and many others. I cannot give myself the pleasure of reading much in my native language. We are still poor in prose writers (Schriftstellern). We have several poets worth reading. The first and best of them is Kheraskov. He composed two poems: “Rossiada” and “Vladimir”; his last and best work remains ununderstood by my compatriots. Fourteen years ago Mr. Novikov became famous for his witty writings, but now he wants to write nothing more; perhaps because he found another and more reliable means of being useful to his homeland. In Mr. Klyucharev we now have a poet-philosopher, but he doesn’t write much” ( Correspondence between Karamzin and Lavater. Reported by Dr. F. Waldman. Prepared for printing by J. Grot. St. Petersburg, 1893, pp. 20-21.).

Karamzin’s conclusion: “We are still poor in prose writers” is fair. Indeed, by the mid-1780s, Russian prose had not yet emerged from its infancy. In the next decade, thanks to the activities of Radishchev, Krylov and, first of all, Karamzin himself, Russian prose will achieve remarkable success.

The work of Karamzin, an aspiring writer, in the Novikov children's magazine was of great importance to him. Addressing a children's audience, Karamzin managed to abandon the “high style”, Slavic vocabulary, frozen phraseology and difficult syntax. Karamzin's translations in "Children's Reading" are written in a "medium style", pure Russian, free from Slavicisms, in simple, short phrases. Karamzin’s efforts in updating the syllable had the greatest success in his original, “truly Russian story “Eugene and Yulia” (“Children’s reading”, 1789, part XVIII). The literary and pedagogical goals of the children's magazine prompted the young Karamzin to create a new syllable. This was how his future stylistic reform was prepared.

In addition to active collaboration in “Children’s Reading,” Karamzin was seriously and enthusiastically engaged in translations. In 1786, he published Haller’s poem “The Origin of Evil,” which he translated, which argued that the evil that causes suffering to people lies not in society, not in social relations, but in man himself, in his nature. The choice of material for translation was undoubtedly prompted by his Masonic friends - Kutuzov and Petrov.

Living in Moscow, working a lot, actively collaborating in Novikov publications, Karamzin found himself drawn into complex and contradictory relationships with his new friends. Their interest in literature, moral issues, and diverse book publishing and journalistic activities were dear to him, and he learned a lot from them. But the purely Masonic and mystical interests of Kutuzov and other participants in the Novikov circle were alien to him. A trip abroad, which Karamzin went on in the spring of 1789, helped him finally part with the Masonic circle.

2

Karamzin worked in literature for about forty years. He began his activities at the menacing glow of the French Revolution, and ended during the years of the great victories of the Russian people in the Patriotic War and the maturation of the noble revolution, which broke out on December 14, 1825, a few months before the death of the writer. Time and events left their mark on Karamzin’s beliefs and determined his social and literary position. That is why the most important condition for a true understanding of everything Karamzin did is a concrete historical consideration of the writer’s creative heritage in its entirety.

Karamzin went through a long and difficult path of ideological and aesthetic quest. At first he became close to the freemason writers - A. M. Kutuzov and A. A. Petrov. On the eve of his trip abroad, he discovered Shakespeare. He was attracted by the powerful and integral characters he created of people who actively participated in the turbulent events of their time. In 1787, he completed a translation of Shakespeare's tragedy Julius Caesar. He read with enthusiasm the novels of Rousseau and the works of Lessing. He translated his tragedy “Emilia Galotti,” in which the German educator punished “the bloodthirsty tyrant who oppresses innocence”; in 1788 the translation went out of print. In 1787, with the publication of a translation of Shakespeare's tragedy and the writing of the original poem "Poetry", which formulated the idea of ​​​​the high social role of the poet, Karamzin's literary activity began, freed from Masonic influences. The philosophy and literature of the French and German Enlightenment determined the characteristics of the aesthetic convictions that formed in the young man. Enlightenment scholars aroused interest in man as a spiritually rich and unique personality, whose moral dignity does not depend on property status and class. The idea of ​​personality became central both in Karamzin’s work and in his aesthetic concept.

Karamzin’s social beliefs developed differently. As a true noble ideologist, he did not accept the idea of ​​social equality of people - central to Enlightenment ideology. Already in the magazine “Children's Reading” a moralizing conversation between Dobroserdov and children about the inequality of fortunes was published. Dobroserdov taught the children that only thanks to inequality does the peasant cultivate the field and thereby obtain the bread the nobles need. “So,” he concluded, “through the unequal division of fate, God binds us more closely with a union of love and friendship.” From his youth until the end of his life, Karamzin remained faithful to the conviction that inequality is necessary, that it is even beneficial. At the same time, Karamzin makes a concession to enlightenment and recognizes the moral equality of people. On this basis, at this time (late 80s - early 90s) Karamzin developed an abstract, dreamy utopia about the future brotherhood of people, about the triumph of social peace and happiness in society. In the poem “Song of Peace” (1792) he writes: “Millions, embrace as a brother embraces a brother,” “Make a chain, millions, children of one father!” You have been given the same laws, you have been given the same hearts!” Karamzin merged the religious and moral teaching about the brotherhood of people with the abstractly understood ideas of the enlighteners about the happiness of a free, unoppressed person. Drawing naive pictures of the possible “bliss” of the “brothers,” Karamzin persistently repeats that this is all a “dream of the imagination.” Such dreamy love of freedom opposed the views of Russian enlighteners, who selflessly fought for the realization of their ideals, and opposed, first of all, the revolutionary convictions of Radishchev. But in the conditions of Catherine’s reaction in the 1790s, these beautiful dreams and constantly expressed faith in the beneficence of education for all classes alienated Karamzin from the camp of reaction and determined his social independence. This independence was manifested primarily in relation to the French Revolution, which he had to observe in the spring of 1790 in Paris.

That is why Karamzin admitted the optimistic nature of his beliefs in the early 90s. “We considered the end of our century to be the end of the main disasters of mankind and thought that it would entail an important, general combination of theory with practice, speculation with activity; that people, morally confident in the elegance of the laws of pure reason, will begin to fulfill them in all accuracy and, under the canopy of peace, in the shelter of silence and tranquility, will enjoy the true blessings of life.”

This faith did not shake when the French Revolution began. Naturally, Karamzin could not welcome the revolution. But he was in no hurry to condemn her, preferring to carefully observe events, trying to understand their real meaning.

Unfortunately, the question of Karamzin’s attitude to the French Revolution is incorrectly illuminated by science. It was customary, with the light hand of M.P. Pogodin, to characterize Karamzin’s position according to his fifth part of “Letters of a Russian Traveler,” published in 1801, where a sharply negative assessment of the revolution was given. However, for a long time V.V. Sipovsky ( See V.V. Sipovsky. N. M. Karamzin is the author of “Letters of a Russian Traveler.” St. Petersburg, 1899.) established that the fifth part of the “Letters” was created at the very end of the 1790s, that Karamzin deliberately passed off his late view of the revolution as the beliefs of the time when he was in France. Karamzin clearly did not want the reader to know his true attitude towards the revolution, which he witnessed and the progress of which he closely watched. And no matter how obscure this question is by Karamzin himself, and then by researchers of his work, we have at our disposal both direct and indirect evidence that quite clearly characterizes Karamzin’s true attitude to the French Revolution.

What is this evidence? In 1797, in the French magazine “Northern Spectator” (“Spectateur du Nord”) (it was published in Hamburg), Karamzin published an article “A few words about Russian literature.” At the end of it, in order to show foreign readers “how we see things,” he published a part previously written (apparently in 1792-1793), “Letters of a Russian Traveler,” dedicated to France, but not included by him in Russian edition of “Letters”, published in the same 1797. “He,” Karamzin writes about himself in the third person, “heard about the French revolution for the first time in Frankfurt am Main: the news excites him extremely.”

Cases keep Karamzin in Switzerland for several months. “Finally,” says this part of the “Letters,” “the author says goodbye to the beautiful Lake Geneva, attaches a tricolor cockade to his hat, and enters France.” He lives in Lyon for some time, then “stays for a long time in Paris”: “Our traveler is present at stormy meetings in the national assembly, admires Mirabeau’s talents, pays tribute to the eloquence of his opponent Abbot Maury and compares them with Achilles and Hector.” Further, Karamzin writes about what he was going to tell Russian readers about the revolution: “The French revolution is one of those phenomena that determine the fate of mankind for many years. A new era is opening. It was given to me to see it, and Rousseau foresaw it...” After a many-month stay in Paris, Karamzin, leaving for England, “sends his last farewell to France, wishing her happiness.” Karamzin returned to Moscow in the summer of 1790.

From January of the following year, Karamzin began publishing the Moscow Journal, in which a special section was occupied by reviews of foreign and Russian political and artistic works, and of performances of Russian and Parisian theaters. It was in these reviews that Karamzin’s public position and his attitude towards the French Revolution were most clearly revealed. From the numerous reviews of foreign books, it is necessary to highlight a group of works (mainly French) devoted to political issues. Karamzin recommended to the Russian reader the work of an active participant in the revolution, the philosopher Volney, “Ruins, or Reflections on the Revolutions of the Empire,” and Mercier’s book about Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Wary of censorship, Karamzin briefly but expressively characterized them as “the most important works of French literature in the past year” ( "Moscow Journal", 1792, January, p. 15.). Reviewing the translation of Thomas More’s “Utopia,” Karamzin, noting the poor quality of the translation, reacted with sympathy to the content of the world-famous work: “This book contains a description of an ideal or mental republic, similar to Plato’s republic...” Although Karamzin believed that “many the ideas of “Utopia” can never be put into action,” such reviews taught the reader, at a time when the young French republic was looking for ways to its real establishment, to reflect on the characteristic features of the “mental republic.”

Karamzin calls Franklin's autobiography “a worthy book.” Its value lies in its instructiveness. Franklin, a real historical figure, tells about himself how he, a poor printer, became a politician and, together with his people, “humbled the pride of the British, granted freedom to almost all of America and enriched the sciences with great discoveries.” This review is important primarily as an expression of Karamzin’s ideal of a man of the 90s: the writer admires Franklin precisely because he was active, lived by political interests, and that his soul was captured by an active love for people, for freedom.

The promotion of acutely political works in the years when turbulent events unfolded in France testifies to Karamzin’s deep attention to these events. That is why he never condemned the revolution on the pages of his magazine.

The appearance of a special critical department in the magazine stemmed from Karamzin’s conviction that criticism helps the development of literature. Criticism, according to Karamzin, was supposed to teach taste, demand hard work from authors, cultivate a sense of pride in artistic achievements and disdain for rank. But in Karamzin’s understanding of the Moscow Journal era, criticism is, first of all, a review. The reviewer had two goals. Firstly, to popularize the ideas of new works and widely inform the reader. Guiding the reader’s reading, Karamzin argues, is one of the most important tasks of a critic. First of all, foreign books were subjected to such reviews. Secondly, the reviewer's task is to teach the author. Most of the reviews devoted to Russian books were frankly didactic in nature.

The reviews most fully and clearly captured Karamzin’s aesthetic views. On the pages of the Moscow Journal he established himself as an active exponent of sentimentalism. By the early 1790s, European sentimentalism had reached a remarkable flowering. Russian sentimentalism, which began its history in the 1770s, only with the advent of Karamzin became a rich and dominant trend in literature.

Sentimentalism, an advanced art inspired by Enlightenment ideology, asserted itself and won in England, France and Germany in the second half of the 18th century. The Enlightenment as an ideology that expresses not only bourgeois ideas, but ultimately defends the interests of the broad masses of the people, brought a new look at man and the circumstances of his life, at the place of the individual in society. Sentimentalism, exalting man, focused its main attention on the depiction of mental movements and deeply revealed the world of moral life. But this does not mean that sentimentalist writers are not interested in the outside world, that they do not see the connection and dependence of a person on the morals and customs of the society in which he lives. Enlightenment ideology, defining the essence of the artistic method of sentimentalism, opened up to a new direction not only the idea of ​​personality, but also its dependence on circumstances.

The man of sentimentalism, contrasting the wealth of property with the wealth of individuality and inner world, the wealth of his pocket with the wealth of feeling, was at the same time devoid of fighting spirit. This is due to the duality of the Enlightenment ideology. The enlighteners, putting forward revolutionary ideas and resolutely fighting feudalism, remained themselves supporters of peaceful reforms. This revealed the bourgeois limitations of the Western Enlightenment. And the hero of European sentimentalism is not a Protestant, he is a fugitive from the real world. In the cruel feudal reality, he is a victim. But in his solitude he is great, for, as Rousseau asserted, “man is great in his feeling.” Therefore, the hero of sentimentalism is not just a free person and a spiritually rich personality, but he is also a private person, fleeing from a world hostile to him, not wanting to fight for his real freedom in society, staying in his solitude and enjoying his unique “I”. This individualism of both French and English sentimentalism was progressive at the time of the struggle against feudalism. But already in this individualism, in this indifference to the fate of other people, in concentrating all attention on oneself and the complete lack of fighting spirit, the traits of selfishness clearly appear, which will blossom in full bloom in the bourgeois society established after the revolution.

It was these very features of European sentimentalism that allowed the Russian nobility to adopt and master its philosophy. Developing primarily the weak aspects of the new direction, what limited its objective revolutionary character, a group of writers in the conditions of reaction after the defeats of the peasant war of 1773-1775 established sentimentalism in Russia. The ideological and aesthetic rearmament of the nobility was carried out already in the 70s and 80s by M. Kheraskov, M. Muravyov, A. Kutuzov, A. Petrov. In the 90s, sentimentalism became the dominant trend in noble literature, and Karamzin headed the school.

The philosophy of the free man created by the French Enlightenment was near and dear to Russian enlighteners. But in their teaching about man they were original and original, expressing those ideal features that were formed on the basis of the living historical activity of the Russian people. Not a “natural”, not a natural, not a private person, deprived of his national conditioning, but a real historical figure, a Russian man who has done infinitely much for his fatherland, a person whose patriotic feeling determines his human dignity - this is who attracted the attention of educational writers .

Lomonosov also identified the main features of the ideal of a person as a human citizen. The hero of Fonvizin's "Undergrowth" Starodum, expressing the essence of his moral code, says: "I am a friend of honest people." The traveler Radishchev, in the introduction to the book “Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow,” writes about himself: “I looked around me - my soul became wounded by the suffering of humanity.” It is this ability to be “hurt” by the suffering of humanity, to live the life of the whole society, to be able to sympathize and act for the good of people and the fatherland, and was declared by Russian educational writers to be the main personality trait.

In the 1790s, Karamzin became the leader of Russian sentimentalists. His literary friends - old and young, students and followers - united around Karamzin's regular publications. The success of the new direction, undoubtedly, was facilitated primarily by the fact that it met the living needs of its time. After many years of fruitful activity of French and Russian enlightenment writers, after artistic discoveries that changed the face of art, on the one hand, and after the French Revolution, on the other, it was impossible to write without relying on the experience of advanced literature, not to take into account and not to continue, in particular , traditions of sentimentalism. At the same time, it should be remembered that Karamzin was closer to the sentimentalism of Stern and - in his own way - to Rousseau (he valued him primarily as a psychologist, lyricist, poet in love with nature) than to the artistic experience of Russian enlightenment writers. That is why he could not accept their ideal of a man-doer who asserts his dignity in generally useful activities. Their militant citizenship, their selfless service to the noble cause of the struggle for human liberation, was alien to him.

But in the specific historical conditions of Russian life in the 1790s, at a time when an important need of the time was the need for a deep disclosure of the inner world of the individual, to understand the “language of the heart,” and the ability to speak this language, the activity of Karamzin the artist was of great importance , had a serious and profound influence on the further development of Russian literature. Karamzin’s historical merit was that he was able to satisfy this need. No matter how political conservatism weakened the power of the artistic method of the new art, Karamzin and the writers of his school updated literature, brought new themes, created new genres, developed a special style, and reformed the literary language.

Karamzin's critical speeches in the Moscow Journal cleared the way for a new direction. There are few reviews of Russian books in the magazine. But it is characteristic that, assessing the works of his time, Karamzin first of all notes as their significant drawback the lack of fidelity, accuracy in depicting the behavior of the characters and the circumstances of their lives. A peculiar generalization of Karamzin’s position as a critic is his statement: “Drama must be a true representation of community life.” Karamzin was close to Rousseau’s position on this issue, who in the novel “Emil, or On Education” devoted a special chapter to the role of travel in understanding the objective existence of peoples. “Letters of a Russian Traveler” by Karamzin himself, published at the same time in the Moscow Journal, painted not only a portrait of the soul of their author - the reader found in them an objective picture of society, accurate information about the culture, social life of several European countries, real biographies of famous writers, many specific information and exact facts. In the article “A few words about Russian literature,” Karamzin perhaps most fully and most definitely expressed his position on this issue: “I saw,” he wrote, “the first nations of Europe, their morals, their customs and those smallest character traits that are formed under the influence of climate, degree of civilization and, most importantly, government structure.”

One of the first Russian books reviewed by Karamzin in the Moscow Journal was a separate edition of Kheraskov’s poem “Cadmus and Harmony”. Having recounted its contents and drawn attention to its merits, the reviewer carefully notes its imperfections, errors and “malfunctions”. The lack of fidelity in the depiction of the era is the reviewer's main reproach. The poem, he writes, “resounds with novelty, this is contrary to the spirit of those times from which the fable is taken.”

Most reviews of Russian books are devoted to translations of foreign works into Russian. They focus on the quality of translation. Such reviews are a new and interesting phenomenon in the history of Russian criticism; they clearly taught taste and taught a lesson in stylistics.

The appearance of the Russian translation of Richardson's novel “The Memorable Life of the Maiden Clarissa Garlov” forced Karamzin to analyze the translation in detail. The critic asks the question: what is the merit of the novel, so beloved by the public? And he answers: “in the description of ordinary scenes of life,” in that the author is distinguished by “excellent art in describing details and characters.” Such a judgment not only stated the merits of the sensational novel, but also drew the attention of Russian authors to the need to “describe ordinary scenes of life” and master the skill of depicting details and characters.

“Poor Liza” by Karamzin himself was a kind of artistic realization of these demands of the critic, and the fact that the story appealed to the taste of a wide reader testifies to the timeliness of Karamzin’s struggle for the democratization of literature, which he understood very limitedly.

Karamzin expressed his attitude towards the normative poetics of classicism most frankly in his review of Corneille’s tragedy “The Cid”. Recognizing the poetic merits of “The Cid,” Karamzin resolutely does not accept Corneille’s aesthetic code, entirely giving preference to Shakespeare in the past and Lessing in the present.

In 1788, Lessing's tragedy "Emilia Galotti" in Karamzin's translation was published. Four years later, he published a large critical article on the production of “Emilia Galotti” on the Russian stage. The tragedy attracts the critic because the playwright, revealing the intimate life of his characters, showed at the same time that a person cannot separate himself from society, from the social and political circumstances surrounding him, that happiness is not inside a person, but depends on laws and on actions of the monarch. Analyzing the tragedy, Karamzin directly states that the hope of its hero Odoardo in the justice of the monarch is illusory: “What means remained for him to save her (his daughter Emilia - G.M.)? Should he resort to laws where the laws spoke through the mouth of the one against whom he should have asked?” Appreciating Lessing for his deep “knowledge of the human heart,” Karamzin speaks with approval of how circumstances force Emilia “to speak in the language of Cato about the freedom of the soul.” Karamzin leads the reader to the idea of ​​the individual’s right to resistance, passive, to be sure, but still resistance to the tyrant and, in general, to anyone who “wants to force another person into bondage.” With approval, the critic quotes Odoardo’s words: “It seems that I can already hear the tyrant coming to kidnap my daughter from me. No no! He won’t kidnap or dishonor her!” Fleeing from the tyrant's violence, Odoardo stabs his daughter to death. It is for this that Karamzin praises the tragedy, considering it “the crown of Lessing’s dramatic creations.”

Karamzin’s critical works during the period of the Moscow Journal are also accompanied by two articles written in the winter and spring of 1793 - “What the author needs” and “Something about the sciences, arts and education.” The reviewer's experience suggested to Karamzin the need to determine the requirements that should be placed on the work and, consequently, on its author. “Syllables, figures, metaphors, images, expressions - all this touches and captivates when it is animated by feeling.” But feelings are determined by the social position of the author. What are the writer’s beliefs, these are the feelings that he inspires in the reader, because the author needs not only talent, knowledge, a vivid imagination, but “he also needs to have a kind, gentle heart.” Here Karamzin formulates his famous demand: the writer “paints a portrait of his soul and heart.”

It is generally accepted that Karamzin’s subjectivist position was manifested in this demand. Such a conclusion is erroneous, because Karamzin’s words must be considered historically and specifically, based on his understanding of the soul. Having recognized, following the Enlightenment, that it is not class affiliation that determines the value of a person, but the riches of his inner, individually unique world, Karamzin thereby had to decide for himself what distinguishes one person from another, in what way the individual expresses himself. As a young man, Karamzin thought about the question - what is the soul? After all, the properties of the soul should constitute the special, unique qualities of a person. Experience taught Karamzin, and a lot was revealed to him. In the 90s, he already knows that the main thing in a person, in her soul, is the ability to “rise to a passion for good,” “the desire for the common good.” As we can see, for Karamzin the public interests of the individual are important. The writer is also an individually unique person, and by the nature of his activity, he should be even more likely to have a “desire for the common good.” Such a soul does not separate him from the world of people, but opens the way “into the sensitive chest” to “everything that is sorrowful, everything that is oppressed, everything that is tearful.”

In the spring of 1793, the article “Something about the sciences, arts and education” was written. This is a hymn to man, his successes in the sciences and arts. Karamzin is deeply convinced that humanity is moving along the path of progress, that it was the 18th century, thanks to the activities of great educators - scientists, philosophers and writers - that brought people closer to the truth. Misconceptions have always existed and will always exist, but they are like “alien growths that will sooner or later disappear,” for man will definitely come “to the truth pleasing to the goddess.” Having mastered the advanced philosophy of his time, Karamzin believes that “enlightenment is the palladium of good morals.” Enlightenment is beneficial for people of all conditions.

Those legislators who think that science is harmful to anyone, that “some state in civil society” should “creep in gross ignorance” are mistaken. “All people,” continues Karamzin, “have a soul, have a heart: consequently, everyone can enjoy the fruits of art and science, and whoever enjoys them becomes a better person and a calmer citizen.” True, Karamzin immediately stipulates his understanding of the role of enlightenment, and this reservation is typical for a figure who, due to his noble limitations, does not accept the idea of ​​equality of fortune: “To the calmest, I say, for, finding everywhere and in everything a thousand pleasures and pleasantries, he has no reason grumble at fate and complain about one’s lot.”

In the article, Karamzin polemicized with Rousseau, who, in his treatise “On the Influence of the Sciences on Morals,” without accepting the contemporary society based on the inequality of people, came to the erroneous conclusion that the development of sciences does not improve, but corrupts morals, that man, once , at the dawn of civilization, who enjoyed natural freedom, has now lost it. Rousseau's pathos lies in the denial of the system of inequality. These democratic views of Rousseau are alien to Karamzin. But he does not enter into polemics on a social issue, but only disagrees with the extreme conclusions of the great thinker and considers it his duty to confirm the Enlightenment belief in the fruitful influence of science on morals. That is why he declares so decisively that enlightenment is the palladium of good morals, since the more intensively enlightenment develops, the sooner all states will find happiness. No matter how limited Karamzin’s position was, the writer’s speech in defense of enlightenment, recognition of his beneficence for all classes, praise for the sciences and great ideologists of the 18th century, expressed during the years of the ongoing revolution in France, had important social significance.

This article is also interesting because it indirectly characterizes Karamzin’s attitude towards the French Revolution. The fact is that the article was written in the spring of 1793, after the execution of Louis XVI (he was executed on January 21, 1793). As we see, neither the trial of the French king, nor his death sentence passed by the convention, nor the execution itself shook Karamzin’s faith in the Enlightenment or caused him to be indignant at the revolution. On the contrary, he ended the article with a direct appeal to legislators and, judging by the terminology, entirely borrowed from revolutionary journalism, to legislators who were not crowned: “Legislator and friend of humanity! You want the public good: let enlightenment be your first law!”

The French Revolution and especially the execution of Louis XVI, as is known, caused an intensification of the Russian reaction led by Catherine. Karamzin, in 1791, in “Letters of a Russian Traveler,” talking about his visit to the Leipzig University professor Platner, names the name of his student Radishchev, who was convicted by Catherine and sent to the Ilimsk prison. In 1792, when by order of the Empress Novikov was imprisoned without trial in the Shlisselburg fortress, Karamzin writes and publishes the ode “To Mercy,” calling on Catherine to grant amnesty to Novikov. In 1793, after the execution of Louis XVI, Karamzin wrote praise to the great educators who helped humanity move towards the truth. All these are not only facts of personal nobility and courage, but also evidence of the convictions of a person far from the reactionary camp.

3

The Moscow Journal differed from the Russian “periodical works” of the second half of the 18th century. Here there were not only original and translated fiction, poetry and dramatic works, traditional for Russian journalism of that time, but also permanent departments of literary and theatrical criticism, interesting “anecdotes” ( Anecdoton - unpublished (Greek).), that is, previously unknown facts, “especially from the lives of glorious new writers,” varied in content and a curious “mixture.” The young publisher categorically refused to publish works with political, religious and Masonic themes, either out of reluctance to be subjected to censorship persecution or even simple nit-picking, or out of fear that his magazine, conceived as an exclusively literary undertaking, could gradually turn into a pompous philosophical one. a religious and moral organ, like the most boring “Conversations with God,” the first books of which, on instructions from Moscow Freemasons, Karamzin translated in the mid-1780s and which were published in separate issues as a “periodical work.”

Published for only two years (1791-1792), the Moscow Journal was a great success among readers, although at first Karamzin had only three hundred subscribers. Later, during the period of Karamzin’s special fame as a writer, a new edition of the Moscow Journal (1801-1803) was required. It published the then largest poets of the older generation - M. M. Kheraskov, G. R. Derzhavin, as well as Karamzin’s closest friends - poet I. I. Dmitriev and A. A. Petrov. In addition, prominent writers of those years - poets and prose writers - Yu. A. Neledinsky-Meletsky, N. A. Lvov, P. S. Lvov, S. S. Bobrov, A. M. Kutuzov and others took part in it. The participation of such significant literary forces undoubtedly added shine to Karamzin's journal.

However, the most valuable thing in all departments of the magazine belonged to the publisher himself. “Letters of a Russian Traveler” (not completely), the stories “Liodor”, “Poor Liza”, “Natalia, the Boyar’s Daughter”, short stories and essays (“Frol Silin”, “Village”, “Palemoya and Daphnis. Idyll”) were published here "), the dramatic passage "Sofia" and a number of poems by Karamzin. The departments “Moscow Theater”, “Parisian Performances”, “About Russian Books”, “Mixture”, “Anecdotes” were apparently conducted by Karamzin alone. He also made numerous translations - from “Tristram Shandy” by L. Stern, “Evening” by Marmontel, etc.

Despite the participation of writers of different literary movements and schools in Karamzin’s publication, “Moscow Journal” nevertheless entered the history of Russian culture as an organ of noble sentimentalism that had been defined by that time, which is primarily due to the decisive role of Karamzin himself in the magazine.

The most important in its social and literary significance and the largest in volume of Karamzin’s work in the Moscow Journal was “Letters of a Russian Traveler,” which was published from issue to issue and ended with the first letter from Paris. For a long time, Russian literary criticism held the opinion that this work of Karamzin represents his real letters to his familiar Pleshcheev family. Now this point of view, under the influence of a number of evidence, has been rejected, and “Letters of a Russian Traveler” is considered a work of fiction with many episodic characters and the main character - a “traveler”, and no matter how autobiographical and close to reality, it is still not “letters” and not a “travel journal” kept by the author abroad and then literary processed.

The readership success of “Letters of a Russian Traveler,” great and undoubted, is explained primarily by the fact that Karamzin managed to combine in this work the transfer of his experiences, impressions and moods, that is, material that is purely personal, subjective, with lively, vivid and interesting material for those who have never been there. border with the presentation of factual materials. Landscapes, descriptions of the appearance of foreigners whom the traveler met, folk morals, customs, various topics of conversation, the fate of people about whom the author learned, characteristics of writers and scientists whom he visited, excursions into the field of painting, architecture and history, analyzes of theatrical performances, the very details of the journey, sometimes funny, sometimes prosaically protocol, sometimes touching - all this, written in a relaxed, lively manner, was fascinating for readers of Catherine’s and Pavlov’s times, when, due to revolutionary events in France, travel abroad was prohibited.

Although in the center of the “Letters” there is always the image of the author, the image of the “traveler,” it does not, however, obscure the objective world, countries, cities, people, works of art, everything that was, if not more interesting to the reader, then, in any case, case, but less interesting than the hero’s experiences. Of course, for the author of a sentimental description of a real journey, the outside world was often valuable only insofar as it was the occasion for the traveler’s “self-discovery”; this determined the selection of factual material included in the “Letters”, its coverage, the language in which it was described, every detail of style - right down to punctuation, designed to emphasize the expression of emotions.

Belinsky later noted this objective, historical significance of “Letters of a Russian Traveler,” as opposed to the author’s relatively weakly revealed subjective tendencies.

However, one circumstance that is usually not taken into account should be noted: when analyzing “Letters of a Russian Traveler,” literary scholars perceive this work as a whole, in the form in which it was published later, at the end of the 18th and even at the beginning of the 19th century, when the last parts were published books (England). A little more than half of the “Letters” were published in the “Moscow Journal”, and the overall intention of the work was not yet clear - to show the traveler’s perception of European reality in its three main manifestations: the police statehood of the German kingdoms, which stifled the political freedom of the nation and determined the development of the intellectual life of the people - philosophy and literature; revolutionary France, which destroyed the high culture of the past and seemed to give nothing in return, and, finally, the “reasonable” constitutionality of Switzerland and England, which, in Karamzin’s opinion, ensured the interests of both the individual and the people as a whole.

The journal text of “Letters from a Russian Traveler” covers the stay of the hero of the work in Germany (more precisely, not in Germany, which did not yet exist as a united state, but in Prussia and Saxony) and in Switzerland, his journey through southeastern France and arrival in Paris. It is possible that the idea of ​​the book was still unclear to Karamzin himself, who at first only innocently narrated about what he saw, heard, experienced and changed his mind during his trip to foreign lands. But he spoke so captivatingly, so interestingly and in such a language that, judging by the memoirs and letters of readers of those years, it was “Letters of a Russian Traveler” that were read first of all in the Moscow Journal. No matter how entertaining the vicissitudes of the wanderings of the hero of the “Letters” were, they alone were the point: someone else’s way of life, alien morals, a new range of concepts from the field of state, philosophy, literature - all this was of great educational significance, the “Letters” not only entertained, but taught, made comparisons, comparisons, reflections, made me think.

The incompleteness of the journal text of “Letters of a Russian Traveler” deprived readers of the opportunity to understand another feature of this work, perhaps the most important - the national position of the author. Although the title indicated that these were letters not from a traveler in general, but from a Russian traveler, although in a number of places the hero, in a conversation with foreign writers and scientists, talks about Russian literature, about translations of their works into Russian, reflects on Russian history, about Peter the Great, about the changes that have occurred in the Russian language over just fifty years - however, all this is not given in close-up, but imperceptibly, as the material is presented. In one place, although not in the text of the Moscow Journal, Karamzin even contrasts the universal with the national, saying that one must first be human and then become Russian. We do not know how Karamzin’s contemporaries reacted to this statement, but many literary scholars believe that Karamzin’s “noble cosmopolitanism” was manifested here. However, such a judgment is completely erroneous: those who express it forget when, under what conditions and for what purpose these words were written by Karamzin. If we remember that they were pronounced (or printed) at a time of particular aggravation of the reactionary policy of Catherine’s government towards revolutionary France, the progressive significance of Karamzin’s position at that time will become clear.

An equally significant role among Karamzin’s works published in the Moscow Journal was played by his stories on modern themes (“Liodor”, “Poor Liza”, “Frol Silin, a Benevolent Man”), as well as the historical story “Natalia, the Boyar’s Daughter” , dramatic passage "Sofia", fairy tales, poems.

Karamzin's stories were especially important in the development of Russian narrative prose. In them, Karamzin turned out to be a major innovator: instead of processing traditional old stories taken from ancient mythology or ancient history, instead of creating new versions of “eastern stories” that were already boring to readers, either utopian or satirical, Karamzin began to write works mainly about modernity, about ordinary, even “simple” people like the “villager” Liza, the peasant Frol Silin. In most of these works, the author is present as a narrator or character, and this again was an innovation; it created in readers, if not the confidence that they were being told about a real event, then at least the impression of the reality of the facts being narrated.

Karamzin’s desire to create in his stories an image or even images of modern Russian people - men and women, nobles and peasants - is very significant. Already at this time, his aesthetics was dominated by the principle: “Drama must be a true representation of the common life,” and he interpreted the concept of “drama” broadly - as a literary work in general. Therefore, even with some unusual plot, for example, in the unfinished “Liodor,” Karamzin built the image of the heroes, striving to be “faithful to the community.” He was the first - or one of the first - to introduce biography in Russian literature as a principle and condition for constructing the image of a hero. These are the biographies of Liodor, Erast and Lisa, Frol Silin, even Alexei and Natalya from the story “Natalya, the Boyar’s Daughter.” Believing that the human personality (character, as Karamzin continued to say following the writers of the 18th century) is most revealed in love, he built each of his stories (with the exception of “Frol Silin”, which is not a story, but an “anecdote”) on love story; “Sofia” was built on the same principle.

The desire to give a “correct picture of community life” led Karamzin to interpret such a pressing problem for the noble society of Catherine’s time as adultery. “Sofia” and later the stories “Julia”, “Sensitive and Cold” and “My Confession” are dedicated to her. As a counterpoint to modern violations of marital fidelity, Karamzin created “Natalia, the Boyar’s Daughter” - an idyll projected into bygone times.

The greatest success fell on the story "Poor Lisa".

The seduction of a peasant or bourgeois girl by a nobleman - a plot motif often found in Western literature of the 18th century, especially in the period before the French Revolution of 1789 - was first developed in Russian literature by Karamzin in Poor Liza. The touching fate of a beautiful, morally pure girl, the idea that tragic events can also occur in the prosaic life around us, that is, that facts representing poetic plots are also possible in Russian reality - contributed to the success of the story. It was also of considerable importance that the author taught his readers to find the beauty of nature, and, moreover, close by, and not somewhere far away, in exotic countries. An even more important role was played by the humanistic tendency of the story, expressed both in the plot and in what later came to be called lyrical digressions - in remarks, in the narrator’s assessments of the actions of the hero or heroine. These are the famous phrases: “For even peasant women know how to love!” or: “My heart is bleeding at this moment. I forget the man in Erast - I’m ready to curse him - but my tongue does not move - I look at the sky, and a tear rolls down my face. Oh! Why am I writing not a novel, but a sad true story?”

Literary scholars note that Karamzin condemns the hero of the story from an ethical, not a social point of view, and ultimately finds moral justification for him in his subsequent mental anguish: “Erast was unhappy until the end of his life. Having learned about Lizina’s fate, he could not console himself and considered himself a murderer.” This remark of literary scholars is valid only up to a certain limit. For Karamzin, who in these years was thinking about the problem of love as a feeling invested in a person by nature, and about the contradictions that arise when this natural feeling collides with laws (see below about the story “Bornholm Island”), the story “Poor Liza” was important as an initial formulation of this question. In the minds of Karamzin, the story of a young nobleman, a naturally good man, but spoiled by social life and at the same time sincerely - even if only in separate moments - striving to go beyond the boundaries of the feudal morality of the society around him, represents a great drama. Erast, according to Karamzin, “was unhappy until the end of his life.” Condemnation of his crime against Lisa, constant visits to her grave is a lifelong punishment for Erast, “a nobleman with a fair mind and a kind heart, kind by nature, but weak and flighty.”

Even more complex than his attitude towards Erast is Karamzin’s attitude towards the heroine of the story. Lisa is not only beautiful in appearance, but also pure in thoughts and innocent. In Karamzin’s portrayal, Lisa is an ideal, “natural” person, not spoiled by culture. That is why Erast calls her his shepherdess. He tells her: “For your friend, the most important thing is the soul, the sensitive, innocent soul - and Lisa will always be closest to my heart.” And the peasant woman Liza believes his words. She lives completely with pure, sincere human feelings. The author finds a justification for this feeling of Lisa towards Erast.

What is the moral idea of ​​the story? Why should a beautiful human person perish, who has not committed any crime against the laws of nature and society?

Why, in the words of the author, “at this hour integrity had to perish!”? Why, following tradition, Karamzin writes: “Meanwhile, lightning flashed and thunder struck”? However, Karamzin softens the traditional interpretation of a storm after an event as a manifestation of the wrath of the deity: “It seemed that nature was lamenting about Liza’s lost innocence.”

It would be incorrect to claim that Karamzin condemned his heroine for losing her sense of “social distance,” for forgetting her position as a peasant woman (apparently not a serf), or “for violating virtue.” If “at this hour integrity had to perish,” it means that Lisa’s fate is predetermined from above and the beautiful girl is not to blame for anything. Why did “nature complain”?.. Most likely, the idea of ​​the story is that the structure of the world (not modern, but in general!) is such that what is beautiful and fair cannot always be realized: some can be happy, like, for example, idyllic Lisa's parents or the heroes of "Natalia, the Boyar's Daughter", others - she, Erast - cannot.

This is essentially the theory of tragic fatalism, and it permeates most of Karamzin's stories.

The story “Natalya, the Boyar’s Daughter” is important not only because, as noted above, it contrasts “ancient virtuous love” with the violations of family fidelity common in Catherine’s time in noble families.

Karamzin called “Natalia, the boyar’s daughter” “truth or history.” Let us remember that he also called “Poor Liza” a true story. For him and after him, for many years in Russian literature, the word “byl” became a term defining a narrative genre with a non-fictional plot and gradually replaced the old term “fair story”, “true story”, etc. It is difficult to imagine that, naming a series of his tales, Karamzin resorted in this case to a literary device in order to arouse in readers a special interest in his works.

The main significance of “Natalia, the Boyar’s Daughter” was that in this story Karamzin addressed a problem that attracted the attention of Russian writers - if not always, then certainly since the time of Peter the Great - the problem of “national - universal.”

For readers of Karamzin, who stated in “Letters of a Russian Traveler” that one must feel oneself first of all as a human being and then as a Russian, the author’s words were probably somewhat unexpected that he loved “these times,” “when Russians were Russians, when they they dressed up in their own clothes, walked in their own gait, lived according to their own customs, spoke in their own language and according to their own heart, that is, they spoke as they thought.” These words sounded an unveiled reproach to their contemporaries that they had ceased to be themselves, to be Russian, that they were not saying what they thought, that they were ashamed of their historical past, in which the “national” and “universal humankind” were harmoniously combined and in which there is something finish your studies The plot of “Natalia, the Boyar’s Daughter” is structured in such a way that in it a “universal” problem received a “national”, “Russian” solution. By this, the writer again, but using historical material, showed that in an artistic and poetic sense, Russian reality and history are not inferior to the reality and history of European peoples.

However, the interest and significance of “Natalia, the Boyar’s Daughter” lies only in the fact that Karamzin created a historical idyll in a sentimental-romantic spirit. Even more significant was the fact that from depicting the “life of the heart” in a narrowly personal or ethical sense, as was the case in his other works, he moved on to the interpretation of the old theme of Russian literature of the 18th century - “man (nobleman) and the state.” Hiding in the Volga forests, the hero of the story, Alexey Lyuboslavsky, the son of a boyar, innocently slandered before the sovereign (young! - Karamzin notes as a mitigating circumstance), learns about the attack on the Russian kingdom by external enemies; Alexei immediately decides to “go to war, fight the enemy of the Russian kingdom and win.” He is driven solely by his noble concept of honor - loyalty to the sovereign and the consciousness of the obligation to serve the fatherland: “The king will then see that the Luboslavskys love him and faithfully serve the fatherland.” Thus, in “Natalia, the Boyar’s Daughter” Karamzin showed that the “personal” is often inextricably linked with the “general”, “state” and that this connection can be no less interesting for the artist and for the reader than the “life of the heart” in pure , so to speak, the form.

Karamzin's literary activity during the period of the Moscow Journal is characterized by great stylistic diversity, testifying to the persistent quest of the young author. Along with “Letters of a Russian Traveler” and the stories “Poor Liza”, “Natalia, the Boyar’s Daughter”, “Liodor” - on the one hand, and works with an ancient flavor - on the other, there are also translations from Ossian into the original dramatic passage “Sophia” ”, written completely in the spirit of the playwrights of Sturm and Drang and partly Shakespeare (cf. Sophia’s last monologue “Stormy winds! tear the black clouds of the sky” and King Lear’s monologue “Roar, winds!”). But, simultaneously with the “Sturmer” tendencies, in Karamzin’s dramatic passage one can feel an organic connection with the old dramatic tradition of the Russian 18th century: the positive characters of the play bear standard “speaking” names, for example, Dobrov; the heroine, like the female characters in the comedies of Fonvizin, Kapnist and other Russian playwrights of the last third of the 18th century, is called Sofia.

4

Karamzin's poetic activity in our science is covered one-sidedly. Usually only one group of poems dating back to the second half of the 1790s is considered. This allows us to declare Karamzin the creator of subjective, psychological lyrics that captured the subtlest states of the soul of a person who has become isolated from society. In reality, Karamzin's poetry is richer. In the first period, the poet did not take a subjectivist position, and therefore the social connections of man and interest in the objective world around him were not alien to him.

Karamzin’s manifesto of this time is the poem “Poetry,” written back in 1787 and published in 1792 in the Moscow Journal. Somewhat straightforwardly, without poetic independence, Karamzin formulates the idea of ​​​​the great educational role of poetry:

In all, in all countries, holy poetry was the Teacher of people, their happiness.

Political and civil-patriotic poems appear on the pages of the Moscow Journal. In the summer of 1788, Sweden declared war on Russia. Karamzin dedicated his poem “War Song” to this event. Following Derzhavin’s patriotic odes, Karamzin appeals to the “Russians,” “in whose veins flows the blood of heroes”; “Hurry there, O son of Russia! To defeat countless enemies,” Karamzin knows how to subordinate his humane-sentimental feeling to a keenly realized patriotic duty. The end of this poem is typical:

Gubi! When the enemy dies, Struck by your courage, Wash away the blood from yourself with the tears of your heart! You have amazed your fellow brothers!

Karamzin's political program is expressed in the poem “Once upon a time there was a good king in the world.” As the author points out, this is a translation of Lefort’s “Song” from the melodrama “Peter the Great” by Jean Bouly, which he saw during his stay in Paris in the spring of 1790. Retelling the content of the melodrama, Karamzin quotes Peter’s words that the goal of his reign is “to elevate the rank of man in our fatherland,” that he strives “to be the father and educator of millions of people.” The “Song” talks about how Peter “gathers goodness,” “the soul, the heart decorates the Enlightenment with flowers” ​​in order to “illuminate the minds of people with his wisdom.” For Karamzin, Peter is an example of an enlightened monarch who, relying on the wisdom of philosophers, benefactors of humanity, makes the life of his subjects happy.

Karamzin’s attitude towards Catherine is different. He didn't glorify her. And when, at her command, Nikolai Novikov was arrested, the poet came out with an ode “To Mercy” (1792), where he not only calls on the Empress to show mercy to a person known throughout Russia, but, based on his concept of enlightened absolutism, defines the conditions, the fulfillment of which will allow consider her autocratic rule enlightened. He wrote: “As long as you do not forget the right with which a person was born... as long as you give freedom to everyone and do not suppress the light in their minds, as long as your trust in the people is visible in all your affairs, until then you will be sacredly honoured...”

In the 80s, when Karamzin’s talent was taking shape, the largest and brightest poet was Derzhavin, who was closely connected with his time. The innovative character of Derzhavin’s poetry was manifested in the fact that, having assimilated the enlightenment ideal of man, he led his hero onto the high road of life, making his mind and heart capable of enjoying the joys of the living human existence of the individual and reverently responding to the sorrow of fellow citizens, rebelling with indignation at untruth, glorify with delight the victories of their fatherland and its brave sons - Russian soldiers.

Derzhavin’s poetry was close to Karamzin precisely because of its persistent interest in man. Only the hero of most of Karamzin’s poems lived more quietly, more modestly; he was deprived of the civic activity of Derzhavin’s heroes. Karamzin was incapable of being angrily indignant, threateningly reminding “rulers and judges” of their high duty to their subjects, or rejoicing loudly and noisily. It is as if he listens to what is happening in his heart, captures his life, unknown to anyone, but in its own way great. So friend and poet A. Petrov died - the poem “To the Nightingale” captured the pain and groans of a grieving soul. Autumn has arrived: “In the gloomy oak forest, yellow leaves are falling to the ground with a noise,” “the late geese are heading south in the village.” A painful melancholy creeps into the heart when looking at “the pale autumn” (“Autumn”). The poem "Cemetery" is a dramatic dialogue between two voices. “It’s scary in the grave, cold and dark!” - says one; “Quiet in the grave, soft, calm,” convinces another. Death is terrible for an earthly person who is in love with life; he, “feeling horror and trembling in his heart, hurries past the cemetery.” He is consoled by the one who trusted God and in the grave “sees the abode of eternal peace.” Life is not hopeless suffering - “but God also gave us joy.” This is how the program poem of this time, “The Merry Hour,” is written. Having known sadness and melancholy, grief and suffering, Karamzin’s lyrical hero exclaims: “Brothers, pour some glasses!” “Let’s forget everything sad that confused us in life; Let us sing and rejoice in this pleasant, sweet hour.” To sing and rejoice, and not to indulge in despair, and not to be alone, but to be with friends - this is what the human soul seeks. That is why the overall tone of the poem is bright, not clouded by fear, mysticism, or despair: “Let our heart brighten, let peace shine in it,” the poet proclaims.

Faith in life, despite all the suffering and sorrow that it brings down on a person, the spirit of optimism permeates the wonderful ballad “Count Gvarinos”. Karamzin's ballad about the knight Gvarinos is a hymn to man, praise to courage, convictions that make him invincible, capable of overcoming adversity.

Attention to man determines the poet’s interest in the world around him, and above all in nature: dying nature in “Autumn”, a picture of the revival of spring in “Spring Song of a Melancholic”, a description of the Volga, on the banks of which the poet was born (“Volga”), and etc. But concentration on fluid and changing mental movements prevented Karamzin from seeing the beauty of the objective world. The poet's intention did not receive artistic realization - his nature is conventional, devoid of the unique features of a living and rich world, accuracy and objectivity. The experience of Derzhavin, who at that time was discovering in his poems Russian nature in all its uniqueness, brightness and poetry, did not help Karamzin either.

Having stopped publishing the Moscow Journal, Karamzin enthusiastically devoted himself to new plans and ideas. He was preparing a new almanac “Aglaya”, wrote stories, poems, and worked on the continuation of “Letters of a Russian Traveler”. And at this time, unexpected political events caused an ideological crisis, which became a milestone in his creative life.

5

This happened in the summer of 1793. In July, Karamzin went to the Oryol estate to rest. In August, new news about French events confused the writer's soul. In a letter to Dmitriev, he wrote: “... the terrible events of Europe excite my whole soul.” With bitterness and pain he thought “about the destroyed cities and the death of people.” At the same time, the essay “Athenian Life” written ended with an autobiographical confession: “I am sitting alone in my rural office, in a thin dressing gown, and I see nothing in front of me except a burning candle, a worn-out sheet of paper and Hamburg newspapers, which... will notify me about the terrible madness of our enlightened contemporaries."

What happened in France? The struggle of the right-wing deputies of the convention (Girondists), expressing the interests of the bourgeoisie, frightened by the scale of the popular revolution, and the Jacobins, representatives of the truly democratic forces of the country, reached its climax. In the spring, an uprising raised by counter-revolutionaries broke out in Lyon. The Girondins supported him. A grandiose uprising against the revolution began in the Vendée. Saving the revolution, relying on the uprising of the Parisian sections (May 31 - June 2), the Jacobins, led by Robespierre, Marat and Danton, established a dictatorship. It was these events that unfolded in June - July 1793, which Karamzin learned about in August, that plunged him into confusion, frightened him, and pushed him away from the revolution. The old system of views collapsed, doubt crept in about the possibility of humanity to achieve happiness and prosperity, and a system of openly conservative beliefs emerged. An expression of Karamzin's new ideological position, full of confusion and contradictions, were the article-letters - “Melodorus to Philalethes” and “Philalethes to Melodore”. Melodorus and Philaletus are not different people, they are the “voices of the soul” of Karamzin himself, this is the confused and confused old Karamzin and the new Karamzin, looking for other, different from the previous, ideals of life.

Melodor sadly admits: “The Age of Enlightenment! I don’t recognize you - in blood and flame I don’t recognize you, among murders and destruction I don’t recognize you!” The fatal question arises: how to live further? Seek salvation in selfish happiness? But Melodore knows that “there is no happiness for good hearts when they cannot share it with others.” Otherwise, asks Melodore, “what can I, you and everyone live on? What did our ancestors live on? How will the offspring live?” The collapse of faith in the humanistic ideals of the Enlightenment was Karamzin's tragedy. Herzen, who was acutely experiencing his spiritual drama after the suppression of the French Revolution of 1848, called these hard-won confessions of Karamzin “fiery and full of tears” ( A. I. Herzen. Collection op. in 30 volumes, vol. VI. M., publishing house of the USSR Academy of Sciences, 1955, p. 12.).

Since Karamzin-Melodor could not cope with his doubts, he had to live according to the system of Philaletus, who continued to search for “the source of bliss in our own breast.” In the autumn of 1793, a new period of Karamzin’s creativity began. Disappointment in the ideology of the Enlightenment, disbelief in the possibility of freeing people from vices, since passions are indestructible and eternal, the conviction that one should live away from society, from a life filled with evil, finding happiness in enjoying oneself, also determined new views on the tasks of the poet.

The philosophy of Philalethes pushed towards the path of subjectivism. The personality of the author became the center of creativity; autobiography found expression in revealing the inner world of the yearning soul of a person fleeing from public life, trying to find peace in selfish happiness. New views were expressed most fully in poetry.

In 1794, Karamzin wrote two friendly letters - to I. Dmitriev and A. Pleshcheev, in which, with journalistic acuity, he outlined new, deeply pessimistic views on the problems of social development. He once “deluded himself with dreams,” “loved people with ardor,” “wished good for them with all his soul.” But after the revolution that shook Europe, the crazy dreams of philosophers became clear to him. “And I see clearly that with Plato we cannot establish republics.” Conclusion: if a person is not able to change the world so that it is possible to “reconcile the tiger with the lamb”, so that “the rich make friends with the poor and the weak forgive the strong,” then he must give up the dream - “so, let’s extinguish the lamp.” New, subjective poetry diverted the reader's attention from political problems to moral ones. A person is weak and insignificant, but he can find his happiness in this sad world.

Love and friendship - this is how you can console yourself under the sun! We should not seek bliss, But we should suffer less.

Having immersed a person in the world of feeling, the poet forces him to live only the life of the heart, since happiness is only in love, friendship and enjoyment of nature. This is how poems appeared that revealed the inner world of a self-contained personality (“To himself”, “To the poor poet”, “The Nightingale”, “To the unfaithful”, “To the faithful”, etc.). The poet preaches the philosophy of “painful joy”, calls melancholy a sweet feeling, which is “the most gentle overflow from sorrow and melancholy to the joys of pleasure.” The poem “Melancholy” was a hymn to this feeling.

In the poem “The Nightingale,” Karamzin, perhaps for the first time with such courage and determination, contrasted the real, actual world with the world of moral feelings, the world created by the human imagination.

Now Karamzin puts art above life. Therefore, the poet’s duty is to “invent”, and a true poet is “a skilled liar.” He admitted: “My friend! essentiality is poor: Play in your soul with your dreams.” The poet considers it his duty to “capture hearts with harmony,” he calls his poems “trinkets.” Karamzin calls the prepared collection of his works “My trinkets”; he defiantly declares his intention to write for women, to be pleasing to “beauties” (“Message to Women”).

In 1794, Karamzin wrote the “trinket” “The Heroic Tale “Ilya Muromets”. The appeal to Russian antiquity was carried out from an aesthetic point of view. Wanting to lose himself “in the magic of red fiction,” the poet turns to a new muse - “Lies, untruths, the ghost of truth - now be my goddess.” With the help of a new muse, the epic hero Ilya Muromets was turned into a lover, into a courtly knight. His love adventures develop in the conventional country of “red fiction”.

“The Heroic Tale” was written in blank, rhymeless verse. Karamzin himself indicated that he wrote after “our ancient songs,” which were “composed in such verse.” And although the verse of the fairy tale was far from the verse of folk songs, Karamzin’s experience attracted the attention of sentimentalist poets, and after “Ilya Muromets” M. Kheraskov wrote the “magic story” “Baharian”, N. Lvov - “Dobrynya”, etc. Russian poetry also adopted the stylistic manner of the “fairy tale” - a free, relaxed conversation between the poet and his reader.

By creating new lyrics, Karamzin updated Russian poetry. He introduced new genres that we would later encounter in Zhukovsky, Batyushkov and Pushkin: the ballad, a friendly message, poetic “little things”, witty trinkets, madrigals, etc. Dissatisfied, like some other poets (for example, A. Radishchev) , the dominance of iambic, he uses trochee, widely introduces rhymeless verse, and writes in three-syllable meters. In elegiac, love lyrics, Karamzin created a poetic language to express all complex and subtle feelings, to reveal the life of the heart. Karamzin’s phraseology, his images, poetic phrases (such as: “I love - I will die loving”, “glory is an empty sound”, “the voice of the heart is clear to the heart”, “love feeds on tears, grows from grief”, “friendship is a priceless gift”, “ joy of careless youth”, “winter of sorrow”, “sweet power of the heart”, etc.) were adopted by subsequent generations of poets; they can be found in Pushkin’s early lyrics.

The meaning of Karamzin as a poet is clearly and succinctly defined by Vyazemsky: “With him the poetry of feeling, love of nature, gentle ebbs of thought and impressions was born, in a word, inner, soulful poetry... If in Karamzin one can notice some lack of brilliant properties of the happy poet, he had a sense and awareness of new poetic forms.”

The collapse of faith in the possibility of the advent of a “golden age”, when a person would find the happiness he so needed, determined Karamzin’s transition to the position of subjectivism. But this escape from pressing issues of socio-political life weighed on Karamzin. By persistently studying history and modernity, he strives to find a way out of the impasse into which he was driven by the dramatic events of the French Revolution.

In 1797, Karamzin wrote “A Conversation about Happiness,” where for the last time he confronts the heroes already familiar to us - Melodorus and Philalethes. Melodore asks a question that is the most important question of educational philosophy: “How to achieve happiness?” Philalethes teaches: “A person must be the creator of his own well-being, bringing passions into a happy balance and forming a taste for true pleasures.” Melodor now no longer obediently listens to his friend and, not wanting to accept selfish happiness, objects: “But if I don’t find good food for myself, can I enjoy it with the most excellent taste? Admit that a peasant living in his dark, stinking hut... cannot find many pleasures in life.” Melodore, as we see, poses a cardinal social question in solving the problem of human happiness. Philalethes tries to prove that a peasant can also be happy, since happiness “dwells in his heart”: “The peasant loves his wife, his children, rejoices when it rains on time... True pleasures equalize people.”

Melodore, but agreeing with his friend’s position, ironically answers him: “Your philosophy is quite comforting, but not many will believe it.” Karamzin was the first to not believe it. He firmly decided to break with his subjectivist aesthetics, which justified the writer’s social passivity. This decision indicated that the ideological crisis had begun to be overcome.

6

Two volumes of the almanac "Aglaya" (1794-1795) replaced the "Moscow Journal". They published poems and stories from the period of ideological crisis.

In “The Island of Bornholm,” which in a certain sense can be considered one of the best works of Karamzin the prose writer, the artistic techniques of the author’s narrative style that had developed by that time are clearly visible: the story is told in the first person, on behalf of an accomplice and witness to what is unspoken - happened on a deserted, rocky Danish island; the introductory paragraph of the story presents a wonderful picture of early winter in a noble estate and ends with the narrator’s assurance that he is telling “the truth, not fiction”; the mention of England as the extreme limit of his journey naturally leads the reader to think about the identity of Karamzin, the author of “Letters of a Russian Traveler,” and the character of the narrator in the story “The Island of Bornholm.”

In this story, Karamzin returned to the problem posed in “Poor Liza” - the responsibility of people for the feelings invested in them by nature.

Karamzin brought the drama “The Islands of Bornholm” into the depths of the noble family. The incompleteness of the story's plot does not interfere with the revelation of its plan. In the end, it is not so important who Lila, a prisoner of a coastal dungeon, is to the Grevzend stranger - a sister (most likely) or a young stepmother, the main thing is that in the drama that took place in an ancient Danish castle, two principles collide: feeling and duty. The Gravesend youth states:

Nature! you wanted me to love Lila.

But this is opposed by the complaint of the owner of the castle, the father of the Gravesend stranger: “Why did heaven pour out the whole cup of its wrath on this weak, gray-haired old man, an old man who loved virtue, who honored his holy laws?”

In other words, Karamzin wanted to find an answer to the question that tormented him: is “virtue” compatible with the requirements of “Nature”, moreover, do they not contradict each other, and who, in the end, is more right - the one who obeys the laws of the “sacred” Nature,” or one who honors “virtue,” “the laws of heaven.” The final paragraph of the story with strongly emotionally charged phrases: “in sorrowful thoughtfulness”, “sighs pressed my chest”, “the wind blew my tears into the sea” - should, apparently, ultimately show that Karamzin sets “the laws of heaven”, "virtue" is higher than the "law of innate feelings." After all, in “Poor Liza” the narrator looks at the sky and a tear rolls down his cheek.

The action of the same theory of tragic fatalism is demonstrated by Karamzin in the small story “Sierra Morena”, which, as one might think, is a reworking of the unfinished “Liodor”.

When originally publishing Sierra Morena, Karamzin accompanied the title with a subtitle that was later omitted - “an elegiac excerpt from N’s papers.” In other words, “Sierra Morena” by its nature is not an oral narrative, like “Poor Liza”, “Natalia, the Boyar’s Daughter”, “Bornholm Island”, especially “Liodor”, but lyrical notes of a person who suffered a tragic misfortune, but already who managed to conquer himself to some extent, partially overcome his grief, who managed, if not to find peace of mind, then, in any case, to emerge from a state of despair and plunge into cold indifference. This N, who returned from romantic, sultry Spain to his homeland, “to the country of the sad north,” living in rural solitude and listening to the storms, also, like the heroes of “Poor Lisa” and “The Island of Bornholm,” is a victim of fate, the play of some fatal , unknown forces. He is overwhelmed by a spontaneous feeling of love for the beautiful Elvira, who, shortly before the appointed wedding day, lost her fiancé and, in despair, spends many hours at the monument she erected to commemorate the death of Alonzo. And again the question arises about the “laws of nature,” the “sacred laws of innate feelings.” Elvira answered the hero of the story to his fiery feelings. But she is internally restless - she violated the “laws of heaven.” And the punishment of heaven befalls her: during her wedding with the hero of the story, Alonzo appears in the church, who, as it turned out, did not die, but was saved in a shipwreck; Having learned about his fiancee's betrayal, he immediately commits suicide. Shocked, Elvira goes to the monastery. The hero of the story, having experienced moments of frenzy, dead and terrible stupor, after unsuccessful attempts to meet Elvira, goes to travel, and in the East, on the ruins of Palmyra, “once glorious and magnificent,” “in the arms of melancholy,” his heart “softened.”

“Sierra Morena” stands somewhat apart from Karamzin’s prose works, reminiscent in style of the exotic stories of the German writers “Storm and Drang” and at the same time anticipating Marlinsky thirty years before the latter appeared in print. For all its unusualness for Russian literature of that time, starting with the title, the colorfulness of the landscape, the lyrical emotion of the language, the swiftness and unexpectedness of the development of the plot, the “violent flame” of passions was unusual for Karamzin’s contemporary Russian readers. “Sierra Morena” is interesting not only for these aspects, but also for the author’s persistent desire to depict a quick, unprepared, although justified by facts, change in the hero’s mental states, the desire to reveal the psychology of a person who has suffered a difficult personal drama, overthrown from the heights of happiness into the abyss of grief and despair.

7

The Jacobin stage of the French Revolution, frightening Karamzin, led to his transition to conservative positions. But the revolution still continued its complex and contradictory course. The Jacobin leaders, led by Robespierre, also ended their lives on the scaffold. Firmly deciding to call on history, and not philosophy, for help, Karamzin again began to carefully look at what was happening in France. He outlined his new opinion about revolutionary events in the 1797 article “A few words about Russian literature”: “I hear many pompous speeches for and against, but I am not going to imitate these loudmouths. I confess that my views on this subject are not mature enough. One event gives way to another, like waves in a stormy sea, and people want to consider the revolution as something completed. No no. We will still see many amazing phenomena - the extreme excitement of minds speaks for that.” The admission that his opinions about the revolution are still “not mature enough,” that he does not want to “imitate the loudmouths,” is very significant: it is evidence that the crisis has begun to be overcome. Now Karamzin already recognizes his own judgments about the revolution of the Aglaya period as immature and precocious. It was necessary to wait for the further development of the revolution, and he waited, preparing collections of “Aonidas” and translations for the “Pantheon of Foreign Literature.”

New events were not long in coming - on November 9 (18 Brumaire according to the revolutionary calendar), 1799, General Bonaparte carried out a coup and declared himself the first consul of the French Republic. The period of strangulation of the revolution and liquidation of the republic began. The end of the ten-year revolutionary war of the people was truly stunning. The revolution, having started with the liquidation of the monarchy, seemed to have exhausted itself, and embarked on the path of self-liquidation and the revival of a new monarchy. Karamzin immediately realized that Bonaparte is a “monarch-consul” and that, although he is still called the “savior of the republic” in France, he will undoubtedly revive a new empire, since everyone is already “obeying the genius of one man.”

Such an outcome of the revolution required a theoretical explanation. Where was he to be found? Karamzin turned to the works of Montesquieu and Rousseau. In the history of mankind, Montesquieu saw the existence of three types of government - republic, despotism and monarchy. Despotism - a state system that is contrary to human nature, humiliating and enslaving him - must be destroyed. A republic (aristocratic or, better, democratic) is an ideal system that a philosopher would most like, but is not feasible under current conditions, since the people have not yet been enlightened. A republic is a bright dream of humanity, a matter of the distant future. The monarchy remained. Monarchy, softened by enlightenment, inspired by philosophy, is recognized by Montesquieu as the best form of modern government of peoples.

Rousseau, in The Social Contract, put forward the democratic idea of ​​popular sovereignty and defended not a monarchy, but a republic as an exemplary government. But at the same time, Rousseau stipulates that “a democratic form of government is mainly suitable for small states, an aristocratic one for medium-sized ones, and a monarchical one for large ones” ( J. J. Rousseau. Favorite op. in 3 volumes, M., Goslitizdat, volume I, 1961, p. 692.). These views have become widespread.

The majority of Russians (with the exception of Radishchev) and Western educators accepted both Montesquieu's theory and Rousseau's additions. Karamzin also accepted this political concept, because it seemed to him to explain the course of development of the French Revolution. The incomprehensible became clear. Tracing the development of advanced educational ideology in the 18th century, Karamzin wrote: “From the very half of the eighth to the tenth centuries, all extraordinary minds passionately desired great changes and news in the establishment of societies; they were all, in a sense, enemies of the present, lost in the flattering dreams of the imagination. Everywhere some kind of internal displeasure was revealed, people were bored and complained from boredom, they saw only evil and felt the chains of good. Astute observers expected the storm; Rousseau and others predicted it with striking accuracy; Thunder struck in France..."

But the storm has already passed. The people, according to Karamzin, having paid dearly for attempting to implement the ideas of equality and freedom within the republic, after many years of severe trials began to return to the rule that was first destroyed. France, he argues, is a large country, the monarchy in it has developed historically, and its destruction turned out to be disastrous for the nation. In accordance with these views, Karamzin writes: “France, in its greatness and character, should be a monarchy” ( "Bulletin of Europe", 1802, No. 17, p. 78.).

The political experience of the French Revolution, as Karamzin understood it, determined his assimilation of the political concept of the French enlighteners. Russia is a vast country, “half the world,” and therefore must also be ruled by a monarch. The monarchy will save the people from anarchy and anarchy, will provide the necessary benefits to the people and the nation and, above all, the “reliable use of their freedom” for each subject. Having overcome the ideological crisis, Karamzin, developing new convictions, was filled even at this time with deep optimism. “The revolution explained ideas,” he writes, “we saw that civil order is sacred even in its most local or accidental shortcomings; that his power for the peoples is not tyranny, but protection from tyranny.” The experience of the revolution taught both peoples and kings a lot. “But the ninth for the tenth century should be happier, having assured the people of the need for legal obedience, and the sovereigns of the need for beneficent, firm, but paternal rule.”

The political concept seemed to be supported by the events of the beginning of the century. Alexander I, who ascended the throne, marked his reign with a number of important political actions: he destroyed the Secret Expedition, gave an amnesty to political “criminals” who had been imprisoned in the fortress by Catherine and Paul or exiled to different provinces of Russia, and created a commission to draw up laws.

Karamzin wrote in Vestnik Evropy that all Russian citizens are already enjoying the “most important good,” which is “the current peace of hearts.” The phrase is notable because it is a quote from Montesquieu. In “The Spirit of Laws” we read: “The political freedom of a citizen is peace of mind, which comes from confidence in one’s safety” ( "The Spirit of Laws". The work of the famous French writer de Montescu, part 1, St. Petersburg, 1839, p. 270.). The theory seemed to be confirmed by practice. This was how the illusions were reinforced that Alexander’s activities would bring good to Russia. It must be said that in those years this illusion became widespread. Even the revolutionary Radishchev, without changing his convictions, but realistically taking into account the circumstances, found it possible to take part in the work of the commission for drafting laws and in the poem “The Eighteenth Century” to express a feeling of gratitude to Alexander for his first manifestos.

It was in these specific political circumstances that Karamzin decided to do everything possible to become the voice of that “general opinion” of people who succumbed to illusions, who were looking for ways to influence Alexander, who wanted to help the tsar in his work for the good of the people. The activity of a writer should have become the activity of a citizen - one cannot indulge in the search for happiness in one’s heart, separating oneself from people with the Chinese shadows of one’s imagination. This had to be done especially since, as Karamzin himself noted, “we do not want to convince ourselves that Russia is already at the highest level of good and perfection.” Great works lay ahead, and Karamzin wanted to take part in them. That is why he appeared in 1801-1803 with a whole series of political works: he wrote an ode to the occasion of the coronation of Alexander, “Historical words of praise to Catherine II”, published “Bulletin of Europe”, filled with political articles-recommendations.

The “Historical Eulogies to Catherine II” gives a deeply erroneous assessment of the empress’s reign. But the work is interesting in other ways: it sets out the program of Alexander’s reign. Karamzin set out the program of laws defined by Montesquieu, hiding behind the “Mandate” of Catherine II, who, by her own admission, “robbed” the French enlightener by retelling in her essay the main articles of the “Spirit of Laws”. Directly following the author of The Spirit of Laws, Karamzin defines in the Lay the understanding of the monarchy, the meaning of monarchical rule for a large country, and the content of the concepts of “political freedom” and “equality.” Contaminating two important articles of the “Nakaz” (and therefore the “Spirit of Laws”) and adding something of his own, Karamzin formulates the main provisions of his concept, which he wants to make Alexander’s concept as well. “The object of autocracy,” he writes, “is not to take away people’s natural freedom, but to direct their actions to the greatest good.” Further, referring to Catherine’s “Order”, Karamzin develops an understanding of freedom and equality: “The monarch, having said that autocracy is not the enemy of freedom in civil society, defines it as follows: “It is nothing more than peace of mind that comes from security , and the right to do everything permitted by the laws, and the laws should not prohibit anything except what is harmful to society; they must be so elegant, so clear that everyone can feel their necessity for all citizens: and this is the only possible civil equality.” Substituting the question of social equality with political equality, equality before the laws, led in the new conditions to a direct justification of serfdom. Special articles were devoted to this issue (for example, “Letter from a Villager”).

Approving Alexander’s intention to prepare new laws (creating a commission and defining the program of its work with a special rescript), Karamzin connects their publication with the development of education: “When minds are not ready for better laws, then prepare them; when it is necessary for the happiness of the people to change their customs, then lead by example." Enlightenment is needed both to prepare the people for new laws and so that “people can enjoy and be content in any state of a wise political society.”

Education should be twofold: moral education, “common in all countries,” and “political education of the citizen, different in the form of government.” Since Russia has a monarchical government, it must instill in citizens “love for the fatherland, for its institutions and all the qualities necessary for their integrity.” Consequently, it should “instill in a person reverence for the monarch, who unites in himself state powers and, so to speak, the image of the fatherland.” Karamzin, as we have seen, came to the political concept of enlightened absolutism the hard way, overcoming a system of subjectivist beliefs that pushed him to preach egoistic happiness. Now he sincerely believed in the salvation of the Russian autocracy, softened by enlightenment. That is why he actively and selflessly asserted his political ideal both in journalistic articles in “Bulletin of Europe”, and in works of art of that time, and later, in “History of the Russian State”. Objectively, this position ideologically strengthened Russian tsarism. In historical circumstances, when with each year of the new century the reactionary role of the autocracy became more and more obvious, using the immense power of power in order to keep Russia on the old, feudal-serf paths of development, to protect the interests of the nobility and, above all, its right to own peasants, such Karamzin’s position, especially actively expressed in the 1810s, alienated the advanced camp from him.

In full accordance with the political concept of the Enlightenment, Karamzin not only proved the salvation of the monarchy for France and Russia, but with the same fervor defended the republican system and republican freedom for small countries and peoples. In the very first issue of “Bulletin of Europe” for 1802, Karamzin defended the rights of Switzerland, believing that freedom should be restored there. “A voice is heard in the Alps,” he writes, “demanding the restoration of the ancient Helvetic freedom destroyed by the reckless French directors. Republican freedom and independence belong to Switzerland as much as its granite and snowy mountains.” This, of course, could not be written by the ideologist of the reaction.

Karamzin had the task, immediately after the great and dramatic events of the French Revolution, to answer many important questions raised by life itself about the social and political existence of peoples. It was not his fault, but his misfortune that he gave incorrect answers to some of them, but could not answer others. But his undoubted merit was his desire to figure everything out. He boldly discussed emerging issues, proposed his solutions, thereby educating Russian society. Thus, defending republican freedom for Switzerland, Karamzin later, at the end of the same year, once again returned to its fate, since important events took place there: Bonaparte “respected the independence of the Swiss.” And again, a historical surprise awaited Karamzin - the beginning of an independent republic became at the same time the beginning of an “internecine war”: “This unfortunate land now represents all the horrors of an internecine war, which is the action of personal passions, evil and insane egoism. This is how people’s virtues disappear.”

The great theorist Rousseau argued for the possibility of a republic in small countries. Practice has made an amendment - egoism triumphs in republics, which divides people, embitters them against each other, makes them indifferent to the fate of the fatherland, “and without high popular virtue, a republic cannot stand.” It turned out that modern political events, as if from a new side, reinforced Karamzin’s conviction that the only salvation of peoples was in the monarchy. He writes: “This is why monarchical government is much happier and more reliable: it does not require extraordinary things from citizens and can rise to the level of morality at which republics fall.” But Karamzin is not satisfied with drawing such a conclusion - he wants to understand why virtues are destroyed in the republics, why selfishness, selfishness, and enmity of people triumph there. He is looking for an answer and offers it to the public, and it must be said that Karamzin’s answer is of great importance, testifying to the writer’s ability to notice new phenomena in social relations.

Karamzin comes to the conclusion: “The corruption of Swiss morals began from the time when Tele’s descendants decided to serve other powers for money; returning to their fatherland with new habits and alien vices, they infected their fellow citizens with them. The poison acted slowly in the clean, mountain air... The trading spirit, over time, having taken possession of the Swiss, filled their chests with gold, but exhausted the proud, exclusive love of independence in their hearts. Wealth made the citizens selfish and was the second reason for the moral decline of Helvetia.”

Karamzin saw the corrupting role of the spirit of trade, showed how acquisitiveness, the thirst for wealth, trade destroy virtues and destroy the true freedom of citizens even in republics, how bourgeois relations turn the republic into an empty phrase and destroy the human personality. The note about Switzerland is not accidental. Following Switzerland, Karamzin’s attention is drawn to the North American republic. A new article (translated) about the morals and way of life in the republic overseas appears in the “Bulletin of Europe”. “The spirit of trade,” it says, “is the main character of America. Everyone is trying to buy. Wealth with poverty and slavery are in stark contrast... People are rich and rude; especially in Philadelphia, where the rich live only for themselves, eat and drink in boring uniformity" ( "Bulletin of Europe", 1802, No. 24, pp. 315-316.). How quickly the virtues disappeared! After all, the North American republic was born quite recently, before the eyes of the young man Karamzin. And after two decades, morals here too are corrupted, rich republicans turn out to be slave owners, wealth has made citizens selfish, “high popular virtue is falling,” and without it there can be no true republic ( Such judgments by Karamzin completely categorically reject the opinion of some researchers who attribute to him the idea that man is by nature an egoist and therefore human nature is antisocial. Karamzin has repeatedly emphasized, and in this article clearly states, that circumstances change a person, that “wealth makes citizens selfish.”).

8

A new flowering of Karamzin’s literary activity began in 1802, when he began publishing the journal “Bulletin of Europe”. Karamzin was already the largest, most authoritative of the writers of his generation; his name was spoken first in literary circles. Over the past decade, he has grown as a thinker and as an artist.

The government liberalism of the new reign and censorship relaxations allowed him to speak out in the new magazine more freely and on a wider range of issues, to speak out with awareness of his role in modern literature, his place in the literary process, his right and even duty to publicly express his thoughts.

What in Catherine's times Karamzin had to conceal - his orientation towards European liberalism - now he could preach without fear, and this was expressed primarily in the name of the new magazine - “Bulletin of Europe”. There was a whole program in this. At the same time, this did not mean a rejection of national traditions or disdain for Russian life and domestic issues. Against. But everything was considered in relation to “universal”, “European” reality, history.

In Karamzin’s artistic and literary works published in the “Bulletin of Europe” (1802-1803), two lines are clearly noticeable: the first is an interest in the inner world of modern man, in the “life of the heart,” but complicated by the doctrine of “characters” that came from the literature of the 18th century; the other is historical, the result of understanding the historical events that he witnessed during 1789-1801. They were connected to some extent and in some way explained each other. At the same time, these were a satirical line and a heroic line.

Even in his second letter from Lausanne in “Letters of a Russian Traveler,” Karamzin expressed his opinion on the relationship between “temperament” and “character.” Here he considers temperament to be the basis of a person’s “moral being,” and character to be the “random form” of the latter. “We are born with a temperament,” Karamzin continued, “but without a character, which is formed little by little from external impressions. Character depends, of course, on temperament, but only partly, depending, however, on the type of objects acting on us.” He further clarifies his understanding of these terms: “The special ability to receive impressions is temperament; the form that these impressions give to a moral being is character.”

In the “Bulletin of Europe” for 1803, Karamzin published a work that, in terms of genre, is neither a story, nor a story, nor an essay; most likely it can be called a psychological study. Karamzin entitled it “Sensitive and Cold. Two characters." This topic had long attracted his attention, but only by the beginning of the 19th century, these “two characters” were identified in Karamzin’s mind as the main, perhaps the only from his point of view, forms of manifestation of inner life in people.

However, the most important feature of this small, but very profound work is that neither the “sensitive” Erast nor the “cold” Leonid are “positive heroes” for the author. Each of them is negative in its own way. Karamzin doesn’t seem to want to choose one over the other and is trying to show that neither the first nor the second gave people what they could have given. And with all this, it is noticeable that Karamzin portrays the “sensitive” Erast with some irony, even with elements of satire.

An attempt to depict the formation of the “character” of a “sensitive” is Karamzin’s unfinished novel “A Knight of Our Time” - a work that is not sufficiently appreciated in the history of literature and is interesting as an experience in a psychological novel based on autobiographical material.

At the same time, in this work the author with great sympathy portrays a society of provincial nobles, honest, straightforward, imbued with a consciousness of their own and class dignity. “A Knight of Our Time” is also of interest because it was the first work in Russian literature that analyzed child psychology. “My Confession” analyzed the formation of the “character” of the “cold” one who was a victim of bad upbringing. Karamzin quite consciously wrote a satirical work. Everything here, starting with the title, which to a certain extent parodies the title of Rousseau’s famous work, represents a satire - a satire on noble education, on the dissolute behavior of young nobles, on fashionable noble marriages, etc.

The general egoism that Karamzin saw in many of his contemporaries worried and confused the writer. “Cold” Leonid, who does everything “as it should” and does not violate the norms of noble behavior in any way, at the same time disgusts the writer: “His favorite thought was that everything here is for man, and man is only for himself.” But Leonidas is also an example of a “modern man” who maintains external decency and limits his desires to some semblance of morality. The hero of “My Confession” represents complete moral emptiness. After reading this work, one may even get the impression that Karamzin has no faith in the spiritual powers of the nobility, that his satire, as it were, draws a line under the history of the mental and moral development of this class. The meaning of “My Confession” becomes especially clear when comparing this work with Karamzin’s journalistic articles, which set out his views on the role and significance of the nobility in Russian life and history.

In the same 1802, when “My Confession” was created, Karamzin wrote: “The nobility is the soul and noble image of the entire people... The glory and happiness of the fatherland should be especially precious to them, the nobles... Not everyone can be warriors and judges, but everyone can serve the fatherland,” all types of activities for the benefit of the homeland are “useful.” Thus, Karamzin’s satire in “Sensitive and Cold”, “My Confession”, probably also in “A Knight of Our Time” is a satire of the nobility and is directed against those nobles who, by the way of their lives, show that the glory and happiness of the fatherland do not represent anything to them values ​​that do not want to serve the fatherland, that do not want to be useful to it.

Analyzing the reality around him, peering into the noble society of his time, the mature Karamzin became convinced that the main social and educational line of Russian literature of the 18th century, satirical, had legal rights to exist in his time, and this explains his appeal to satire in “ Sensitive and cold" and in "My Confession". However, in accordance with the general aesthetic principles that he had developed by the end of the 18th century, Karamzin’s satire is very different from similar works of satirists of the previous period. Therefore, it happened that historians of Russian literature did not notice Karamzin’s peculiar satire, believing that sentimentalism does not recognize satire at all.

Studying the social and educational experience of Russian literature of the 18th century, Karamzin could not help but notice how much importance his predecessors attached to national heroic themes. From the beginning of the 19th century, Karamzin realized his role as the ideological leader of the Russian nobility and understood what a powerful means of education can be skillfully processed heroic-historical material. It was precisely as an objective and deeply emotional school of noble valor and noble patriotism that he began to understand history at that time.

If Karamzin’s satire showed what a nobleman, the owner of a huge country, is and what he should not be, then history and fiction with national heroic themes were supposed to teach the noble reader what his ancestors were and what he himself should be.

One of the last works of fiction in prose written by Karamzin was the historical story “Marfa Posadnitsa” (1803), written long before the craze for Walter Scott’s novels began in Russia. Here his attraction to the classics, to antiquity as an unattainable ethical model, which was determined in the mid-1790s in the “historical” idyll-utopia “The Life of Athens,” reached its highest degree. G. A. Gukovsky partly correctly noted that “Karamzin’s Novgorod heroes... are ancient heroes, in the spirit of classical poetics. And classical memories clearly loom over the story. It is not for nothing that Karamzin mentions “legions” next to the “veche” and “posadniks”. Karamzin, describing the republican virtues, admires them in an aesthetic sense; the abstract beauty of heroism captivates him in itself” ( G. A. Gukovsky. Karamzin. - “History of Russian Literature”, vol. V, M.-L., Publishing House of the USSR Academy of Sciences, 1941, p. 79.).

Indeed, the struggle of the Novgorodians with Moscow is presented in “Marfa Posadnitsa” in a stylized antique form, just like other historical events in the programmatic article “On incidents and characters in Russian history that can be the subject of fiction.” But this is not the classicism of Corneille and Racine, Sumarokov and Lomonosov. “Classicism” of Karamzin in “Marfa Posadnitsa” is a kind of parallel to the classicism of the tragedies of M.-Zh. Chenier, elegies by A. Chenier, paintings by David, with the only difference that for the Russian writer, ancient plasticity served not the goals of the revolution, but the education of his noble compatriots.

In “Marfa the Posadnitsa” the most important issues of Karamzin’s worldview were resolved: the question of the republic and the monarchy, of the leaders and the people, of historical, “divine” predestination and the individual’s struggle with it - in a word, everything that the French Revolution that passed before his eyes taught him which culminated in the transformation of Consul Bonaparte into Emperor Napoleon; everything that he found in ancient history, in Western literature, everything that manifested itself, according to his concepts, in the doomed to failure struggle of republican Novgorod, behind which stands moral rightness, with monarchical Moscow - the embodiment of strength and political cunning. At the same time, in this story by Karamzin, his old concept of tragic fatalism, the doom of the “best” in this world, was revealed with renewed vigor. The theme of “Vadim of Novgorod,” which was developed from different perspectives in Russian drama at the end of the 18th century, also found its new illumination in Karamzin in the form of the cult of Vadim depicted in passing. It is also characteristic that Karamzin often calls the inhabitants of Novgorod, the Novgorodians, the word “citizens,” the use of which as a translation of the French revolutionary term “citoyens” was strictly prohibited under Paul.

Karamzin only pretended to be the publisher of a manuscript of some Novgorod writer that he allegedly found, thereby separating his position from that of the imaginary author. However, this does not save the situation. Karamzin's sympathies are clearly on the side of Marfa and the Novgorodians; this is expressed not only in the magnificent, although not without contradictions, image of Marfa Posadnitsa, but also in the deliberate weakness of the argument that Karamzin puts into the mouth of Prince Kholmsky, who demands submission from the Novgorodians to Moscow. The writer’s attitude towards monarchical Moscow and republican Novgorod is formulated most clearly in the part of the story where he forces Mikhail the Brave to talk about the battle of John’s “legions” with the troops of Miroslav: “Some fought for honor ( It is possible that Karamzin’s manuscript contained “power,” but he either under pressure from censorship or by his own decision added “honor.”), others for honor and liberty."

At the end of the story, Prince Kholmsky reads John’s oath on his own behalf and on behalf of all his successors to guard the benefit of the people; if the oath is broken, says John, “let his generation perish”; and here Karamzin states in a footnote that “the line of John was cut short.” Perhaps here is a hidden warning from the historically minded Karamzin to the young Emperor Alexander - to remember the duties of an ideal sovereign to “guard the benefit of the people.”

“Marfa the Posadnitsa,” revealing the tragedy of free Novgorod and Marfa Boretskaya, revealed the contradictions in the writer’s worldview. Historical correctness in its depiction is undoubtedly on the side of Novgorod. And at the same time, Novgorod is doomed, gloomy omens foreshadow the imminent death of the free city, and the predictions really come true. Why? Karamzin does not answer, cannot answer, just as he could not answer why poor Liza should die, why Alonzo should commit suicide in Sierra Morena, why misfortune should break out at Bornholm Castle.

Karamzin's prose and poetry had a strong impact on contemporary and subsequent Russian literature. True, his closest students, with the exception of Zhukovsky and Batyushkov, were untalented, or even simply mediocre epigones, who picked up the purely external techniques of the early period of their teacher’s work and turned out to be unable to understand his complex, contradictory, unreconciled development.

First of all, the writers of the new generation learned from Karamzin an elegant and rich literary language, and this is one of his greatest merits, although soon after Pushkin’s speech his language became outdated. However, it is from Karamzin that in Russian literature of the 19th century the search for means for the precise expression of emotional experiences, the “language of the heart” comes.

Historians of the Russian literary language and literary scholars have long and persistently talked about Karamzin’s “language reform”. At one time, all the changes that occurred in the Russian literary language at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries were attributed entirely to Karamzin. In recent decades, the role of his predecessors - Novikov, Fonvizin and Derzhavin - has already been taken into account. The more carefully the literature of the last quarter of the 18th century is studied, the clearer it becomes that many of Karamzin’s older contemporaries and peers - I. A. Krylov, A. N. Radishchev, M. N. Muravyov, V. S. Podshivalov, V. T. Narezhny, I.I. Martynov and others - prepared the ground for his “language reform”, working in the same direction with him both in the field of prose and in the field of verse, and that this general process found its most vivid and authoritative embodiment in Karamzin.

The most valuable and important thing in what is called Karamzin’s “language reform” was the rejection of dilapidated Slavic vocabulary, which, according to tradition, was used only in the written literary language and was gradually crowded out of the colloquial speech of the educated strata of Russian society. Karamzin’s rejection of Slavicisms began during his work at Children’s Reading. Perhaps this refusal is due to the influence of Novikov, whose articles of this time are completely free from lexical and syntactic Slavicisms. The point of view he acquired in his youth later became a consciously applied principle. Of course, the rejection of Slavic vocabulary required Karamzin to create Russian linguistic correspondences, which he almost always succeeded in.

No less important is the activity of Karamzin as the creator of a significant number of neologisms of a different order, partly created by him on the model of the corresponding foreign words, partly representing simply Russian translations - tracing papers, partly being foreign words to which the writer gave a Russian guise.

It is generally accepted that Karamzin allegedly destroyed the “division” of the Russian literary language into three styles established by Lomonosov - “high”, “mediocre” and “low” - and turned to the living spoken language of the educated circles of his contemporary society. This judgment is not entirely accurate.

Karamzin had before his eyes not the language of Lomonosov, but the language of the epigones of the author of the argument “On the Use of Church Books in the Russian Language.” These inept writers, who misunderstood Lomonosov’s brilliant ideas, despite his warnings, began to flood the literary language with rare Slavic words and phrases, flaunted ponderous grammatical constructions, and turned literary works into something inaccessible to the “average” reader. Karamzin spoke not against Lomonosov, but against Elagin and other members of the Russian Academy; he quoted from their writings and fought with them.

It was not so easy for Karamzin to refute Lomonosov’s stylistic principles and, most importantly, it was not necessary at all.

Following the ancient theoreticians of stylistics and applying their teachings on three styles to the Russian (“Russian”) language, Lomonosov did nothing fundamentally new in this regard. The depth and greatness, the genius of his discovery lay in the fact that he determined the lexical and stylistic relationships of the two elements of the “Russian”, that is, literary Russian language - book Church Slavonic and colloquial Russian. Lomonosov connected the ancient doctrine of high, middle and low styles with his discovery of the relationship between the Slavic and Russian languages, and this was his great service to Russian culture. Such styles, different in nature, still exist today in the language of every highly cultured people with a large, developed literature. And if we called one style of fiction “bookish” and not “high”, and another “literary-colloquial” and not “mediocre” and, finally, a third “colloquial” and not “low”, then there is no cancellation, Moreover, the “destruction” of Lomonosov’s doctrine of the three styles cannot be seen in this. Ancient theorists and Lomonosov were right: they discovered objective laws of style, depending on the theme, task and purpose of a literary work.

Lomonosov did not at all give preference to high style, as is sometimes said, but quite reasonably and historically correctly indicated the scope of application of each style in the corresponding genres.

In turn, Karamzin did not write all his works in prose and poetry in the same colloquial language of the literary educated strata of Russian society. “Marfa the Posadnitsa” is decidedly different from “Poor Liza”; “Sierra Morena” is stylistically very different from “Natalia, the Boyar’s Daughter”, “My Confession”. And Karamzin had his own “high” style - in “Marfa Posadnitsa”, “Historical eulogy to Empress Catherine II”, “History of the Russian State”. However, those genres - poetic and prosaic - that he cultivated required a “average” style in every style. We can say that Karamzin did not have a “low” style, this is correct; however, “My Confession” is still written in a “reduced” style compared to “Poor Lisa,” “The Island of Bornholm,” and “The Life of Athens.”

Karamzin, a master of the plot story, lyrical essay, psychological sketch, autobiographical novel, studied mainly with people of the next generation, starting with A. Bestuzhev-Marlinsky and continuing with Pushkin, Lermontov and other writers of the 1830s.

9

Overcoming the ideological crisis also led to a change in aesthetic beliefs. Karamzin abandons his previous subjectivist position. Based on his experience working at the Moscow Journal, after many years of silence, in changed circumstances he feels the need to present his new views in detail. Thus the need for criticism arises again. In 1797, Karamzin wrote two major articles: “A few words about Russian literature,” which he published in a French magazine, and a preface to the second collection “Aonid.” In the preface, he not only gives a critical assessment of poetic works that tend toward classicism, but also shows how the lack of naturalness and fidelity to nature makes them “inflated” and cold. Karamzin began to reiterate that a writer must find poetry in everyday objects that surround him and are well known to him: “... a true poet finds the poetic side in the most ordinary things.” The poet must be able to show “shades that hide from the eyes of other people,” remembering that “one bombast, one thunder of words just deafens us and does not reach the heart,” on the contrary, “moderate verse is engraved in the memory.”

Here Karamzin no longer confines himself to criticism of classicism, but also criticizes sentimentalist writers, that is, his followers who persistently instilled sensitivity in literature. For Karamzin, sensitivity and emphasized sentimentality are as unnatural and far from nature as the rhetoric and “bombastic” poetry of classicism. “There is also no need to constantly talk about tears,” he writes, “applying various epithets to them, calling them shiny and diamond-like, “this way of touching is very unreliable.” Clarifying his position, Karamzin formulates the demand for the psychological truth of the image, the need to talk not about a person’s feelings in general, but about the feelings of a given individual: “... it is necessary to describe the striking reason for them (tears - G.M.), to mean grief not only in general terms which, being too ordinary, cannot produce a strong effect on the heart of the reader, but are special, having to do with the character and circumstances of the poet. These features, these details and this, so to speak, personality assure us of the truth of the description and often deceive us, but such deception is the triumph of art.” This judgment is not accidental for Karamzin in the late 1790s. In a letter to A.I. Vyazemsky dated October 20, 1796, he wrote: “It is better to read Hume, Helvetius, Mably, rather than complain in languid elegies about the coldness and fickleness of beauties. Thus, soon my poor muse will either retire completely, or... will translate metaphysics with Plato’s Republic into poetry for Canton” ( "Russian Archive", 1872, p. 1324.).

In the scientific literature, the opinion has long been established that during the period of publication of “Bulletin of Europe” Karamzin abandoned criticism. The basis for such an opinion is the preface to the magazine, in which Karamzin wrote: “But does criticism really teach how to write, aren’t models and examples much more powerful.” It is only through a misunderstanding that these words of Karamzin can be passed off as a denial of the importance and significance of criticism for literature. From all Karamzin’s speeches in the new magazine, it is clear that he refuses not criticism, but reviews of the type that he wrote in the Moscow Journal.

Instead of reviews, Karamzin in Vestnik Evropy began to write serious articles devoted to the pressing tasks of literature - about the role and place of literature in public life, about the reasons slowing down its development and the emergence of new authors, about language, about the importance of the national identity of literature, etc. d. Karamzin’s articles in Vestnik Evropy raised criticism to a new level: from individual and private comments about the books under review, the critic moved on to presenting a strictly thought-out, fundamentally new program for the development of literature. Literature, Karamzin now argued, “must have an influence on morals and happiness,” every writer is obliged to “help the moral education of such a great and strong people as the Russian one, develop ideas, show new colors in life, nourish the soul with moral pleasures and merge it in sweet feelings for the benefit of other people." Karamzin, as we see, knew how to sensitively grasp the needs of the time and understand the needs of the reader.

But at the same time, since the late 90s, voices of dissatisfaction with the activities of that Karamzin, most of whose works, written at a time of ideological crisis, comprised the collection “My Trinkets,” began to be heard more and more often in society. Even in circles close to Karamzin, this dissatisfaction was expressed openly. Since 1801, meetings of the “Friendly Literary Society” began in Moscow, which united very young writers - Andrei and Alexander Turgenev, the Kaisarov brothers, Zhukovsky, Merzlyakov and others. At meetings, members of the society read reports. In a report on Russian literature, Andrei Turgenev, a young educator, aspiring writer and critic, especially zealously attacked Karamzin: “I’ll tell you frankly: he (Karamzin - G.M.) is more harmful than useful to our literature...” ( “Russian bibliophile”, 1912, No. 1, p. 29.) Karamzin’s harm was seen in the fact that he expressed interest in private topics, in “trinkets”, and encouraged imitation. “...Let the Russians continue to write worse...,” it was further said, “but they would write more original, more important, and not so much apply themselves to petty issues...” ( Right there.) Karamzin, according to A. Turgenev, exhausts “the heat of his soul in trinkets”, opposes “the good and success of everything domestic” ( Ibid., page 30.). But Karamzin has not exhausted his soul in trifles for a long time. While his works, written at the time of the triumph of subjectivity, were criticized in various circles, he decisively and boldly developed a program for the development of literature along the path of national identity, wanting to contribute to “the good and success of everything domestic.”

In a number of articles in Vestnik Evropy, Karamzin outlined his positive program for the development of literature. The “great subject” of literature is concern for the moral education of the Russian people. In this education, the main role belongs to patriotic education. “Patriotism,” says Karamzin, “is love for the good and glory of the fatherland and the desire to contribute to them in all respects.” There are many patriots in Rus', but patriotism is not characteristic of everyone; since it “requires reasoning,” insofar as “not all people have it.” The task of literature is to instill a sense of patriotic love for the fatherland in all citizens. We must not forget that Karamzin also included love for the monarch in the concept of patriotism. But at the same time, Karamzin’s patriotism was not limited to preaching monarchism. The writer demanded that literature instill patriotism, because Russian people still do not know themselves well, their national character. “It seems to me,” continues Karamzin, “that we are too humble in our thoughts about our people’s dignity, and humility in politics is harmful. “Whoever does not respect himself will, without a doubt, be respected by others.” The stronger the love for one’s fatherland, the clearer the citizen’s path to his own happiness. Having rejected the cult of selfish solitary life, Karamzin shows that only on the path of fulfilling public positions does a person acquire true happiness: “We must love the benefit of the fatherland... love for our own good produces in us love for the fatherland, and personal pride produces national pride, which serves support of patriotism." That is why “it is closest and most kind to Russian talent to glorify the Russian.” “Russians must be taught to respect their own,” - such a task can only be accomplished by nationally distinctive literature.

What is the path to this identity? Karamzin writes an article “On incidents and characters in Russian history that can be the subject of fiction.” This article should be considered as a kind of manifesto of the new Karamzin. It opens the last, extremely fruitful, period of the writer’s creativity. It is natural, therefore, that previous beliefs in it are radically revised. Patriotic education can best be implemented through concrete examples. The history of Russia provides magnificent and invaluable material for the artist. The subject of the image should be real, objective reality, and not “Chinese shadows of their own imagination”; the heroes should be historically specific Russian people, and their characters should be revealed in patriotic deeds. The writer is no longer a “liar” who knows how to “invent pleasant inventions”, forcing the reader to forget himself in the “magic of red fiction”. An artist, sculptor or writer is, according to Karamzin, an “organ of patriotism.” The basis of a writer’s activity should be the conviction that “his work is not useless for the fatherland,” that he, as an author, helps fellow citizens “to think and speak better.”

The writer must portray "heroic characters" that he can easily find in Russian history. Karamzin immediately offers some stories in which the character of the Russian person was clearly revealed. This is Oleg, “the conqueror of the Greeks”; Svyatoslav, who “spent his entire life in the field, shared his needs and labors with faithful comrades, slept on damp ground, under the open sky.” Svyatoslav is also dear to Russians because he was “born of a Slav woman.” His legendary courage serves as an expression of Russian character traits that were formed in ancient times. Karamzin tells how, surrounded by Greek warriors with his retinue, Svyatoslav did not flinch and, inspiring the warriors to fight, made a speech “worthy of a Spartan or Slav”: “... let us lie here with our bones: the dead have no shame.”

Along with the description of heroic male characters, Karamzin expresses the desire to create “a gallery of Russian women famous in history.” He made one of these Russian women, Marfa Posadnitsa, the heroine of the story of the same name. As if generalizing his new view of man, Karamzin formulates one of the most important properties of the national Russian character, namely his ability to emerge “from home obscurity to the folk theater.”

The new tasks and new themes that Karamzin put forward to the writers required, naturally, a new language. He calls on authors to write in “simple Russian words”, to abandon the previous focus on the salon, on the tastes of the ladies, arguing that the Russian language by its nature has the richest possibilities that allow the author to express any thoughts, ideas and feelings: “We’ll leave it to our dear society ladies assert that the Russian language is rude and unpleasant.” Writers, Karamzin believes, “do not have such a kind right to judge falsely. Our language is expressive not only for high eloquence, for loud, picturesque poetry, but also for tender simplicity, for the sounds of the heart and sensitivity. It is richer in harmony than French, it is more capable of pouring out the soul in tones, it presents more analogous words, that is, consistent with the action being expressed: a benefit that only indigenous languages ​​have!

The program for the development of literature proposed by Karamzin the critic met the urgent needs of modern times. From the first years of the 19th century, literature faced the problem of national identity and nationality. It was raised in the last century; the ideology of the Enlightenment stood at its cradle.

In the 19th century, the ideas of nationality received further and profound development in Krylov’s work. Simultaneously with Krylov, a group of young writers associated with the educational ideology of the last century was active in literature (N. I. Gnedich, A. F. Merzlyakov, V. T. Narezhny, etc.). Differing in many ways from the fabulist - both in the degree of democracy and, most importantly, in the scale of talent, they, each in their own way, solved the same range of problems as Krylov. The motto of the new era was the demand for the originality of literature,

Karamzin's call to turn to history and in it to look for the key to the originality of literature and art was met with enthusiasm by the literary community of that time. In the journal of the leading writer I. Martynov, associated with the sons of Radishchev, Gnedich and Batyushkov, a response immediately appeared that belonged to Alexander Turgenev. Welcoming the anonymous article (like many other critical articles of Karamzin, the article “On incidents and characters in Russian history that can be the subject of fiction” was published without a signature), Turgenev at the same time tried to expand the range of subjects, to challenge some of those proposed by Vestnik Evropy "

In 1818, Karamzin, in connection with his acceptance as a member of the Russian Academy, made a speech at its ceremonial meeting; this speech was his last great critical speech. There is a lot of official, obligatory, even ceremonial in the speech. But it also contains Karamzin’s own thoughts about the tasks of criticism in new conditions and about some of the results of the development of literature along the path of originality.

At the end of his speech, Karamzin spoke about the special features of the Russian national character, which had developed over the centuries, and about the need for writers to depict this character. Assessing literature for a decade and a half of the 19th century, Karamzin is optimistic about its further movement along the path of nationality. “The Great Peter, having changed many things, did not change everything that was fundamentally Russian: either because he did not want to, or because he could not, for even the power of autocrats has limits,” this is Karamzin’s first initial thesis. “While we are similar to other European peoples,” he continues his thought, “we also differ from them in some abilities, customs, and skills, so that although it is sometimes impossible to distinguish a Russian from a Briton, we can always distinguish Russians from the British: the national " Immediately after this, Karamzin gives his definition of the nationality of literature: “We will apply this truth to literature: being a mirror of the mind and feelings of the people, it must also have something special in itself, imperceptible in one author, but obvious in many... There are sounds of the heart Russian, is the play of the Russian mind in the works of our literature, which will be even more distinguished by them in its further successes.”

10

Since 1804, Karamzin devoted himself entirely to work on the “History of the Russian State.” However, the study of chronicles, archival materials and book sources did not tear him away from modernity: closely following Alexander’s domestic and foreign policies, he became more and more worried about the fate of Russia. And when an unexpected circumstance (an acquaintance and conversation with the emperor’s sister Ekaterina Pavlovna) opened up the opportunity for him to have a direct impact on Alexander, he, true to his political concept of enlightened absolutism, could not help but take advantage of it. This is how the “Note on Ancient and New Russia” appeared (presented to Alexander in March 1811) - a complex, contradictory, sharply political document. In fact, it contains two themes: proof (for the umpteenth time!) that “autocracy is the palladium of Russia,” and boldly expressed criticism of Alexander’s rule, the assertion that the actions of the government are characterized by disregard for the interests of the fatherland, as a result of which “Russia is filled with dissatisfied."

The first topic resulted in a political lesson to the king, flavored with historical excursions. No longer hiding behind the “Order,” but directly referring to Montesquieu, Karamzin taught what Alexander should do as an autocrat and how he should do it, and what he should not and dare not do. From the same position, it was proven that in the monarchy the support of the throne is the nobility, and therefore any infringement of its rights is unacceptable. Karamzin once again proves the need to preserve serfdom in Russia, arguing “that for the firmness of the state it is safer to enslave people than to give them freedom at the wrong time, for which it is necessary to prepare a person through moral correction; But do our system of wine farming and the terrible successes of drunkenness serve as a saving preparation for this? A similar maxim belongs to the landowner. The Decembrist Nikolai Turgenev, having familiarized himself with the “Note,” conveyed with amazing accuracy his disagreement with Karamzin: “What especially outraged me in this note was that Karamzin sometimes appears here as a herald of the class, which in Russia is called the nobility ( Nikolai Turgenev. Russia and Russians, vol. I. M., 1915, p. 341.).

The first theme of the Notes was not new. Karamzin personally outlined to the Tsar what he had already written about more than once. What was new was a critical attitude towards Alexander's reign. In “The Note,” for the first time, anger made Karamzin’s pen angry and merciless.

Based on facts, he paints a bleak picture of the foreign policy situation of Russia, brought to humiliation by stupid diplomacy; analyzes in detail the government's feckless attempts to solve important economic problems. Karamzin openly declares: “...we will not hide evil, we will not deceive ourselves and the sovereign.” Not wanting to deceive, Karamzin sharply condemns Alexander's latest reforms. Karamzin’s criticism of Alexander-Speransky’s reforms gave rise to the tradition of interpreting the “Note” as a reactionary document. By the way, none other than Baron Korf was one of the first in his work “The Life of Count Speransky” to express this opinion, which has become so firmly established in literature, that the “Note” was “the result of the talk of the then conservative opposition.” This judgment stemmed from the reactionary beliefs of Korf, who believed that Alexander and Speransky in this activity “were ahead of the age of their people” ( M. Korf. Life of Count Speransky, vol. I. St. Petersburg, 1861, p. 143.). Korf deliberately distorted the meaning of the Note. Beginning in 1801, Karamzin publicly demanded reforms, suggested ways to draw up new laws in the spirit of the “Nakaz”, and welcomed Alexander for creating a commission to establish new laws. Karamzin responded to the manifesto on the organization of ministries with an article in Vestnik Evropy, in which, approving the reform of the state apparatus, he explained to his readers what to expect from ministers and ministries.

In fact, in his “Note” Karamzin opposes those transformations “whose beneficialness remains doubtful until now.” The government, for example, does not develop school education, does not want to promote the education of all states, focusing only on the nobility. What does Karamzin offer? Let scientists be invited from abroad, but, most importantly, it is necessary to create “our own scientific state” from representatives of democratic circles. Karamzin calls on Alexander not to spare “money to increase the number of state-owned students in gymnasiums; meager parents, sending their sons there... and miserable poverty in ten to fifteen years would have produced a fortune in Russia. I dare say that there is no other real means for success in this intention.”

Karamzin also opposed the reform of ministries carried out by Speransky in 1809. What is his objection? The emptiness and insignificance of the reform. She, as Karamzin shows, does not pursue any state goals. “The main mistake of the legislators of this reign” he sees “in excessive respect for the forms of state activity.” All such actions, Karamzin declares, “are to show off dust.” But isn't that fair? Regarding Speransky’s reforms, N. Turgenev spoke about them almost in Karamzin’s words: “... Speransky adhered too much to the form... He prescribed the forms of business papers, in a word, he apparently believed in the omnipotence of orders, paper circulars and all sorts of forms » ( Nikolai Turgenev. Russia and Russians, vol. I, pp. 384). Criticism of the reform of the ministry, the inaction of the commission for drafting laws, and the government policy in the field of education in Russia were criticisms of Alexander. “Note” is a document intended for one reader. It was to him that Karamzin told that his rule not only did not bring the promised good to Russia, but even more entrenched a terrible evil, giving rise to impunity for the actions of government embezzlers. These pages cannot be read without excitement.

The ministries established on the Western model, says Karamzin, became the official patrons of bribe-takers, robbers, thieves and simply fools, such as the officials of the empire, from police captains to governors. The government’s reluctance to deal with the interests of the people gave rise to “the indifference of local leaders to all sorts of abuses, robbery in the courts, brazen bribery of police captains, chamber chairmen, vice-governors, and most of all the governors themselves.” Karamzin asks the question: “...what are most governors like these days?” And he fearlessly answers: “People without abilities and allow their secretaries to profit from all sorts of untruths or without conscience and profit themselves. Without leaving Moscow, we know that the governor of such and such a province is a fool - and for a very long time! such and such a robber - and for a very long time! The earth is full of rumors, but the ministers don’t know it or don’t want to know!”

Despite the monarchism of the author of the "Note", it captured a true picture of the plight of Russia, left at the mercy of governors - fools and robbers, "bribe-taking" police captains and judges. The “Note” characterizes the ministers evilly and tells the truth about the tsar himself, who turns out, according to Karamzin, to be an inexperienced person with little understanding of politics, a lover of the external forms of institutions and not occupied with the good of Russia, but with the desire to “show off.” Karamzin’s trouble was that he could not draw the necessary lesson for himself from real political experience. True to his political concept of enlightened absolutism, he again turned to Alexander, wanting to instill in him the idea that he should become an autocrat in the image and likeness of the monarch from Montesquieu's The Spirit of the Laws. The narrow-mindedness of the nobility kept him in these positions and took cruel revenge on him, throwing him further and further away from the increasingly louder revolutionary Russia that was declaring itself.

The “note”, when it reached Alexander, caused him irritation. For five years, with his coldness, Alexander emphasized that he was dissatisfied with the historian’s way of thinking. Only after the publication of “The History of the Russian State” in 1818 did Alexander pretend to forget his displeasure with the “Note”. Karamzin, faithful to his previous political convictions, again began to use his position to teach Alexander to reign. In 1819, he wrote a new note, “Opinions of a Russian Citizen,” in which, condemning the tsar’s plans for new intervention in Polish affairs, he accused Alexander of violating his duty to the fatherland and the people, pointing out that his actions were beginning to bear the character of “autocratic tyranny.” “Opinion” was read to Alexander by Karamzin himself. A long and difficult conversation ensued. Alexander, apparently, was extremely indignant at the historian, and he, no longer restraining himself, proudly declared to him: “Sovereign! You have a lot of ego. I'm not afraid of anything. We are all equal before God. What I tell you is what I would have told your father, sir! I despise today’s liberals, I love only that freedom that no tyrant can take away from me... I no longer ask for your favor, I am speaking to you, perhaps for the last time.” Arriving home from the palace, Karamzin wrote a postscript to “Opinion” - “For posterity,” where he spoke about this meeting, apparently preparing for any surprises. The voluntary work undertaken by the writer to act as an adviser to the monarch turned out to be infinitely difficult. What could be done next when, Karamzin admitted, “my soul has cooled down?..”

On December 18, 1825, four days after the uprising on Senate Square, Karamzin wrote a “New Addition” to “Opinion,” where he reported that after a conversation with Alexander in 1819, he “did not lose his favor,” which he again considered it necessary to take advantage of. Alexander, as Karamzin understood, “did not demand his advice,” but the writer considered it his duty to teach the tsar, draw his attention to the misfortunes of Russia, and insist on fulfilling his promise to give firm laws. In the face of posterity, Karamzin testified: “I did not remain silent about taxes in peacetime, about the absurd G (Uryev) financial system, about formidable military settlements, about the strange choice of some important dignitaries, about the Ministry of Education or Eclipse, about the need to reduce the army fighting only Russia, about the imaginary correction of roads, so painful for the people, and finally about the need to have firm laws, civil and state.”

This is Karamzin’s last bitter confession about his relationship with Alexander. Until the end of his days, he courageously taught the king, gave advice, acted as an intercessor for the affairs of the fatherland, and all to no avail! Alexander, Karamzin states, listened to his advice, “although for the most part he did not follow it.” A writer-historian and citizen, Karamzin sought the tsar’s trust and mercy, animated by “love for humanity,” but “this mercy and power of attorney remained fruitless for the dear fatherland.”

A historically fair assessment of Karamzin’s place and role in the literary movement of the first quarter of the 19th century is possible only with an understanding of the complexity of his ideological position and the contradictions between the writer’s subjective intentions and the objective sound of his works. In many ways, Herzen’s perception of Karamzin is instructive for us in this regard. Karamzin for him is a writer who “made literature humane,” in his appearance he felt “something independent and pure.” His “History of the Russian State” is a “great creation”; it “greatly contributed to the conversion of minds and the study of the fatherland.”

But, on the other hand, “one could predict in advance that because of his sentimentality, Karamzin would fall into the imperial snare, as the poet Zhukovsky later did.” Indignant at despotism, trying to ease the hardships of the people, advising the tsar, Karamzin remained faithful to the idea that only autocratic power would bring good to Russia. And “the idea of ​​a great autocracy,” Herzen wrote with anger, “is the idea of ​​great enslavement” ( A. I. Herzen. Collection op. in 30 volumes, vol. VII, pp. 190-192.).

Having seen the monstrous vices of Alexander's autocracy, Karamzin, at the same time, from the standpoint of reaction, condemned the Decembrists who raised the uprising. In the last year of his life, Nicholas I patronized him.

11

Karamzin worked for twenty-one years on “The History of the Russian State” - from 1804 to January 1826, when an illness began that turned out to be fatal. On May 21 he died. The "story" was not completed. The unfinished twelfth volume ended with the phrase: “The nut did not give up...”

Until 1816, Karamzin lived alone in Moscow or in the Moscow region, busy with his work. For ten years he practically did not participate in literary and social life. By December 1815, the first eight volumes were completed, which the historian considered possible to publish. The official position of the historiographer obliged him to present the work to Alexander. February 2

In 1816 Karamzin arrived in St. Petersburg. But the emperor was vindictive: he did not forget “Notes on Ancient and New Russia” and did not accept Karamzin. Karamzin lived in the capital for a month and a half, humiliated and insulted by the tsar. “I just didn’t tremble with indignation at the thought that I was being kept here in a useless and almost insulting manner...” he wrote to Dmitriev. “They’re strangling me here, under the roses, but they’re strangling me” ( N. M. Karamzin according to his writings, letters and reviews of contemporaries. Materials for biography. With notes and explanations by M. Pogodin, part II. M., 1866, p. 147.). Finally, he was told that he needed to go to pay his respects to Arakcheev. Having indignantly refused at first, Karamzin was forced to pay a visit to the all-powerful temporary worker. On another occasion, Alexander accepted Karamzin’s tribute - and permission to publish “History” was received.

Printing took two years; Only in February 1818, eight volumes of the History were published. The success exceeded all expectations: a multi-volume work with a scientific title, published in a circulation of three thousand copies, eight volumes of prose at a time of triumph of poetic genres were sold out in one month. At the end of the same year, the second edition began to appear. Educated Russia eagerly began to read History. Karamzin's entry into the literature of the 1910s turned out to be triumphant.

but “History” was not only read and praised - it gave rise to lively, passionate debates, and was condemned. The year of publication of “History” is the year of the gathering of the forces of advanced Russia; noble revolutionaries were preparing to fight the autocracy; At this time, the question was raised about the release of the impoverished serf peasant. In History, Karamzin, true to his convictions, wrote that only autocracy is beneficial for Russia. The clash between advanced Russia and Karamzin was inevitable. The future Decembrists did not want to take into account all the richness of the content of the huge work and rightly rebelled against its political idea, which was expressed with particular clarity in the preface and in the dedication letter of “History” to Alexander. Nikita Muravyov, in a special note, analyzed the preface, dedication and first chapters of the first volume, severely condemning the political concept of their author. Muravyov showed his note to Karamzin, who, having become acquainted with it, agreed to its distribution.

But Karamzin continued to work and enthusiastically set to work on the ninth and tenth volumes, dedicated to the reigns of Ivan the Terrible and Boris Godunov. Without changing his ideological positions, Karamzin did not remain deaf to the turbulent political events of 1819-1820 and changed the emphasis in “History” - the writer’s focus was now on the autocrats who had retreated from their high responsibilities and taken the path of autocracy, tyranny and despotism. Trying in the first volumes to follow the example of the chroniclers - to describe, but not to judge, Karamzin in the ninth and tenth volumes followed the Roman historian Tacitus, who mercilessly condemned the tyrants.

The ninth volume was published in 1821. It made an even bigger impression than the first eight. Now the Decembrists became Karamzin’s main admirers: they immediately understood the enormous political significance of the work, which eloquently showed all the horrors of unlimited autocracy. Never before has a Russian book been read with such enthusiasm as the ninth volume of History. According to the Decembrist N. Lorer, “in St. Petersburg the streets are so empty because everyone is deep in the reign of Ivan the Terrible” ( N. Lorer. Notes of the Decembrist. M., 1931, p. 67.). The noble and aristocratic circles associated with the court sounded the alarm. Karamzin was accused of helping the people realize that there were tyrants among the Russian tsars. The Decembrists were in a hurry to use this work for their propaganda purposes. Ryleev, having read the ninth volume, wrote with admiration: “Well, Grozny, well, Karamzin! “I don’t know what to be more surprised at, the tyranny of John, or the gift of our Tacitus” ( K. Ryleev. Complete collection of poems. Writers' Publishing House in Leningrad, 1934, p. 418.). Using materials from the ninth volume, Ryleev began to write a number of new works - historical thoughts, dedicating the first to Kurbsky. Karamzin’s “History” gave many subjects to Ryleev and suggested ways of artistic depiction of some historical characters (for example, the psychologism of the image of Godunov). Pushkin now showed close and deep attention to “History”.

The controversy surrounding “History”, conflicting assessments of Karamzin’s new work, the resounding success of the public, the close attention of writers to it - all this objectively testified that Karamzin’s last work was a necessary work, that in the period from 1818 to 1826, even during his lifetime author, he played an important, very special, still little-studied role in literary life. What was obvious to contemporaries, which Belinsky repeatedly confirmed (“History” “will forever remain a great monument of Russian literature”), turned out to be lost in subsequent times. Somehow it turned out that “History of the Russian State” fell out of the history of literature. Literary scholars study only Karamzin’s works of the 1790s. The multi-volume work, as it were, became the property of historians. They replaced his study with a repetition of the Decembrist sharply critical assessments of the political concept of “History”.

Pushkin was the first to reconsider his view of History. In 1826, he expressed a new and profound judgment about this work and tried to explain how the denial of Karamzin’s advanced political concept by Russia led to an underestimation of the truly enormous content of the multi-volume work of an honest writer. Karamzin's work, according to Pushkin, was a new discovery for all readers. “Ancient Russia seemed to be found by Karamzin, like America by Colomb. They didn’t talk about anything else for a while.” But, Pushkin testifies with bitterness, despite such popularity of “History,” “no one in our country is able to explore Karamzin’s enormous creation - but no one said thanks to the man who retired to his scientific office during the most flattering successes and devoted 12 whole years of his life to the silent and tireless labors... The young Jacobins were indignant; a few isolated reflections in favor of autocracy, eloquently refuted by the correct account of events, seemed to them the height of barbarity and humiliation. They forgot that Karamzin published his History in Russia; that the sovereign, having freed him from censorship, with this sign of power of attorney in some way imposed on Karamzin the obligation of all possible modesty and moderation. He spoke with all the fidelity of a historian, he referred to sources everywhere - what more could be asked of him? I repeat that “The History of the Russian State” is not only the creation of a great writer, but also the feat of an honest man" ( A. S. Pushkin. Complete collection op. in 10 volumes, vol. VIII. M.-L., publishing house of the USSR Academy of Sciences, 1949, pp. 67-68.). Pushkin’s reproach that Karamzin’s “huge creation” has not been studied sounds modern and is addressed primarily to literary historians.

“Russian autocracy,” modern historians admit, “which once played a progressive role in the historical process, contributed to the unification of the main state territory of Russia and the cohesion of disparate Russian feudal lands into a single state whole, and later acted in the person of Peter I as the initiator of important state reforms, to what we are studying time (the reign of Alexander I. - G.M.) has long lost its progressive historical force" ( History of the USSR, vol. II Ed. M. V. Nechkina. M., Gospolitizdat, 1949, p. 42.). Karamzin’s fundamental and irreparable mistake was to absolutize this relatively progressive role of the autocracy. It seemed to him that the history of Russia confirms the concept of the Enlightenment, and if the autocracy was once progressive, then it should be preserved in the future. But Karamzin did not just want to repeat once again what he had already written about more than once. His “History” was supposed to teach his fellow citizens and the king.

For the “common citizen,” according to Karamzin, understanding the experience of history “reconciles... with the imperfection of the visible order of things, as with an ordinary phenomenon in all centuries” ( H. M. Karamzin. History of the Russian State, vol. I. St. Petersburg, 1818, p. IX.). Denying the revolutionary path, not trusting the creative energy of the people, Karamzin naturally emphasized that a citizen will understand from history that everything necessary for the development of Russia and for his private good comes from the hands of the monarch. But history should also teach kings. “Rulers and legislators,” he writes, “act according to the instructions of history and look at its sheets, like sailors at the drawings of the seas.” Using the examples of the reign of Russian monarchs, Karamzin wanted to teach how to reign. Recognizing the right of the monarch to “curb” “rebellious passions,” he emphasizes that this curbing should be carried out in the name of establishing an order where it would be possible to “harmonize the benefits of people and grant them all possible happiness on earth” ( Right there.). The lesson to the tsar acquired an acutely political, topical character when, using numerous examples, Karamzin showed how easily, simply, and, most importantly, often, Russian autocrats retreated from their high obligations, how they became autocratic rulers, betraying the interests of the fatherland and fellow citizens, how for many years A bloody regime of despotism was established in Russia. The ninth and tenth volumes are an example of such an acutely topical political lesson, which was perceived by readers due to the objective content of the facts collected by the writer, regardless of the general monarchical concept of the entire work.

But the content of the multi-volume “History” was far from exhausted by this. Pushkin was the first to say that “several individual reflections in favor of autocracy are eloquently” refuted by the “true account of events.” These words of Pushkin should be understood in the sense that Karamzin’s judgments about autocracy do not cover the entire enormous content of “History”, that the multi-volume work was not reduced to proving a meager political thesis, that there was something in it for which Karamzin could be called “ a great writer,” for which he should have said “thank you.” Belinsky wrote about the same thing: “... Karamzin was not the only one to captivate Pushkin - several generations were finally captivated by his “History of the Russian State,” which had a strong influence on them not just with its syllable, as they think, but much more with its spirit, direction, and principles. Pushkin entered into its spirit so deeply, was so imbued with it, that he became a decisive knight of Karamzin’s “History...” ( V. G. Belinsky. Complete collection cit., vol. VII. M., publishing house of the USSR Academy of Sciences, 1955, p. 525.). It is clear that when Belinsky wrote about the “spirit”, “direction” and “principles” of “History”, he did not mean Karamzin’s political concept, but something else, more important and significant. What exactly? What was the value of Karamzin’s “History” not only to readers, but also to writers - Pushkin, Belinsky?

“History” is a work of art, which is why its content is broader, richer than a scientific work; it captures not only Karamzin’s political ideal, but also his artistic concept of the national Russian character, the Russian people, his patriotic feeling for the fatherland, for everything Russian. In terms of genre, Karamzin’s “History” is a new phenomenon: it was not a scientific work and did not resemble the usual genres of classicism and sentimentalism. Karamzin was looking for his own path. For him now the main thing was the desire to “depict the real world.” An appeal to history convinced him that the real life of the nation is filled with true poetry. This means that it was necessary to be precise first of all. Hence Karamzin the artist’s desire to refer to the source - a chronicle, a document, a memoir. Karamzin collected and systematized thousands of facts, many of them new, which he personally discovered in chronicle sources; relying on all previous materials, he gave a coherent account of the course of Russian history over several centuries; finally, he provided his work with the most valuable notes, in which he used documents that were later lost - all this gave Karamzin’s work scientific value and scientific interest. Consideration of the “History of the Russian State” by Russian historiography is natural.

But despite all the originality and, most importantly, the incompleteness of the search for a new genre, “History” is the only major work of Russian literature. Using historical material, it taught literature to see, understand and deeply appreciate the poetry of real life. The hero of Karamzin’s work was the homeland, the nation, its proud destiny, filled with glory and great trials, and the moral world of the Russian person. Karamzin enthusiastically glorified the Russian, “accustoming Russians to respect their own.” “We agree,” he wrote, “that some peoples are generally more enlightened than us: for the circumstances were happier for them; but let us also feel all the blessings of fate in the reasoning of the Russian people; Let us stand boldly along with others, say our name clearly and repeat it with noble pride.”

“History” tells about numerous events that were sometimes decisive for the existence of the state and nation. And everywhere, first of all, the character of the Russian man was revealed, living a high and beautiful life, in the interests of the fatherland, ready to die, but not humble himself before the enemy. Karamzin set himself the task of “revitalizing great Russian characters”, “raising the dead, putting life into their hearts and words into their mouths.” Political convictions prevented the artist from seeing the true traits of national character in ordinary representatives of the people, in particular in the farmer, who not only plowed, but also created culture and fought for the glory of the fatherland. That is why Karamzin’s focus is on princes, monarchs, and nobles. But when describing some eras under the pen of Karamzin, the main character of “History” became the people; It is not without reason that he pays special attention to such events as “the uprising of the Russians at Donskoy, the fall of Novgorod, the capture of Kazan, the triumph of popular virtues during the interregnum” ( H. M. Karamzin. History of the Russian State, vol. I, p. XIV.) etc. It was precisely because Karamzin felt like an artist when he wrote “History” that he was able to fulfill his intention and created a collective, generalized image of the people.

Karamzin's work enriched literature with new experience. Writers found not only a variety of subjects in Karamzin. He joined the general struggle for the nationality of literature, solving this problem in his own way, now as an artist, acting by example. In his “History” “there are sounds of the Russian heart, there is a play of the Russian mind.” We know that Karamzin was alien to the democratic understanding of nationality. He condemned the social activity of the farmer. His ability for a historically active life was understood in a limited way. And yet, as an artist, Karamzin managed to capture the features of the Russian character, to reveal the “secret of nationality,” which is expressed not in a suit, not in a kitchen, but in a mindset, a moral code, a language, a manner of understanding things.

Karamzin was alien to historicism. He was not yet able to show the historical conditioning of a person’s beliefs. His heroes, no matter when they lived - in the 9th or 16th centuries - speak and feel like true patriots - Karamzin's contemporaries. But it is pointless to reproach Karamzin for anti-historicism: when he wrote his work, the time for historicism had not yet arrived in Russia. At the same time, History largely cleared the way to historicism. And not only by a collection of historical facts, not only by a scrupulous restoration of entire eras of people’s life, but also by showing the historically changing morals, customs, tastes of the people, and the developing culture of Rus'. The affirmation of the immutability of the moral code of the Russian person as a heroic character, always capable of performing a feat in the name of the common good, had its positive meaning precisely during the years of the rapid development of romanticism with its disappointed, morally sick hero fleeing from public life into the world of his own soul.

An important artistic feature of “History” was the entertaining nature of the narrative. Karamzin showed himself to be a wonderful storyteller. As a subtle artist, he knew how to select the necessary facts, dramatize the story, and captivate the reader with the depiction of not fictitious, but actually past events. “The main advantage” of “History,” noted Belinsky, “is the entertaining nature of the story and the skillful presentation of events, often in the artistic depiction of characters...” ( V. G. Belinsky. Complete collection cit., vol. I, p. 60.) The main characters of the ninth and tenth volumes - Ivan the Terrible and Boris Godunov - are drawn as complex, contradictory characters. Using the experience of his literary work in the 1790s, Karamzin boldly and successfully introduced psychologism into literature as an important principle for revealing the inner world of a person.

“History” was also of extreme interest from the point of view of language. In an effort to accustom the reader to respect the national, Russian, Karamzin first of all taught him to love the Russian language. The fear of the “rudeness” of the Russian language, which previously forced him to listen more closely to the language of noble salons, is now alien to him. Now he listens to both how they speak on the street and how ordinary people sing. He highly valued folk song and, just during the years of work on “History,” he was going to publish a collection of Russian songs. He happily drew a new vocabulary from the chronicles, confident that many Old Russianisms would worthily enrich the modern Russian language. In addition, while working on “History,” he successfully selected the best words to express the content, gave new meaning to old ones, and enriched words with new shades and meanings. A lot of effort was devoted to stylistic finishing. The style of “History” is diverse. Karamzin knows how to convey the liveliness of action and the drama of an event, the psychological depth of experience and the patriotic impulse of the soul, high feelings and laconicism, the aphoristic speech of a Russian person. Belinsky repeatedly emphasized that only in “History” did Karamzin’s language reveal the desire to be a Russian language. Assessing the style of “History,” he wrote: this is “a marvelous carving on copper and marble, which neither time nor envy will destroy, and the like of which can only be seen in Pushkin’s historical experience: “The History of the Pugachev Rebellion” ( Ibid., vol. III, p. 513.)

Karamzin's works of the 1790s played a major role in Russian literature, but they had a passing significance. Karamzin also failed to create a new genre for historical narration - he wrote “The History of the Russian State.” But even in the form in which this work took shape, it played no less than Karamzin’s work of the 90s, but an infinitely greater role in the literary life of the first quarter of the 19th century. “In the History of the Russian State,” wrote Belinsky, “all of Karamzin, with all the enormity of the services he provided to Russia and with all the inability to ensure the unconditional dignity in the future of his creations. The reason for this - we repeat - lies in the type and nature of his literary activity. If he was great, then not as an artist-poet, not as a thinker-writer, but as a practical figure, called upon to pave the way among the impassable wilds, clear the arena for future leaders, prepare materials so that brilliant writers of various kinds would not be stopped in their tracks. its need for preliminary work" ( V. G. Belinsky, Complete collection. cit., vol. IX, pp. 678-679.). We must know and be able to appreciate those creations with which Karamzin selflessly paved the way for many writers, and primarily Pushkin.

P. Berkov

WAYS OF EVOLUTION

Stories occupy a special place in the work of Karamzin the writer. In total, during the period from 1791 to 1803, he wrote more than a dozen stories: “Frol Silin, a Benevolent Man” (1791), “Liodor” (1791), “Poor Liza” (1792), “Natalia, the Boyar’s Daughter” (1792) , “The Island of Bornholm” (1793), “Sierra Morena” (1793), “Julia” (1794), “My Confession” (1802), “Martha the Posadnitsa, or the Conquest of Novagorod” (1802), “A Knight of Our Time "(1803), "Sensitive and Cold" (1803), etc. These works have some common features. They are small in volume, which was especially striking to readers accustomed to multi-volume novels of the 18th century. There are very few characters in the stories, and all of them are close and understandable to the reader, unlike the “high” heroes of classicism. It is not the outwardly entertaining adventures of the heroes, but their inner world that becomes the subject of artistic research. Psychological observations of Karamzin the narrator in fiction, and above all in the genre of the story, make it possible to establish the dependence of the processes occurring in the inner life of a person on external circumstances and impressions (which corresponded to the spirit of the sensualistic attitude to the problem of the soul). Man, according to the writer, is not initially virtuous or evil; he is endowed only with a certain temperament, which by its nature does not yet have an ethical coloring and can lead to both virtue and vice, both happiness and suffering, depending on the events that happen to a person on his life path .

First of all, speech (saturated with emotional vocabulary, exclamations, confused phrases that directly show how excited the hero is) helps to understand the moods and experiences of the characters in Karamzin’s stories. The inner world of a person is also revealed in the “pattern” of his behavior - how important are the gestures that are imperceptible at first glance, the manner of moving or speaking, the tears that flash in the eyes or the flicker of a smile! The author himself speaks about the moods and states of his characters, and finally, one can understand a person’s inner world by “seeing” the world around him through his eyes; the landscape itself in Karamzin’s stories becomes consonant with the state and mood of the characters and the narrator. There are few events in the stories, and they are structured clearly and sequentially; the author avoids anything that could confuse or burden the thought. In addition, Karamzin creates in each of his stories the figure of a narrator (“story” was understood in Russian literature of the 18th – early 19th centuries, right up to Pushkin and Gogol, as a genre in which the very manner of presenting events—narration)—acquired special significance. A story is what is told, and how important it is to feel who the narrator is, what his views on life are, his attitude towards people, his understanding of the world around him and man’s place in it.

Karamzin's narrator in most of his works appears as an independent person: a sensitive person who is personally acquainted with the characters or who learned the story from friends, random fellow travelers, and acquaintances. He responds vividly to people's joys and sorrows; nothing leaves him indifferent. The liveliness of the narrative, the illusion of reality of the events described, contributed to the awakening of sympathy in the souls of readers. Karamzin’s narrator seems to be conducting a constant dialogue with his readers, and this free communication is devoted not only to the sad or touching, it can also contain light irony, a joke, and a literary game, the purpose of which is to remind readers of familiar literary cliches and laugh at them together.

In Karamzin, the motif of love takes on special significance in constructing the plots of stories. In the artistic world of the writer, love appears as a turning point in a person’s life. By discovering the capacity for love, Karamzin’s heroes finally find themselves; In this way, their moral formation is completed and at the same time, their characteristic perception of the world around them is completed in a unique way. After all, illuminated by the light of love, the beloved’s soul mate also embodies a peculiar ideal of a view of the world - a look that seeks and is ready to perceive all that is good and beautiful, emotionally open to everything “other” and thereby transforming this “other” into an integral part of one’s own “I” . Karamzin outlined a synthetic understanding of love not only as a completely special psychological state, but also as a philosophical value that reveals to a person his highest purpose and the deep laws of existence in a short essay included in “Letters of a Russian Traveler” under the title: “Thoughts about Love.” The way of interpreting the feeling of love proposed here can be considered as a kind of key to understanding almost all the plots of Karamzin’s stories: “Love is a crisis, a decisive moment in life, awaited with trepidation by the heart. The curtain rises... He! she! the heart exclaims, and loses the personality of its being.<…>Charms are never the basis of passion; it is born suddenly from the contact of two gentle souls in one look, in one word; it is nothing more than sympathy, the union of two halves that languished in separation. Only once do things burn; The heart only loves once.<…>I don't know if there are atheists; but I know that lovers cannot be atheists. The gaze from the cute object involuntarily turns to the sky. Those who have loved understand me.”

The psychologism of Karamzin the narrator takes on its most characteristic forms in the story “Poor Liza” (1792). The very first phrases of the work here became a kind of tuning fork, setting the reader in a certain emotional and psychological mood. “Perhaps no one living in Moscow knows the outskirts of this city as well as I do, because no one is in the field more often than me, no one more than me wanders on foot, without a plan, without a goal - wherever the eyes look - through the meadows and groves, over hills and plains..." This is how “Poor Liza” begins by N.M. Karamzin - at first glance, surprisingly clear (and thanks to the conciseness, as if predictability of the plot itself, and thanks to the special emotional coloring and “transparency” of the moral content) - but still, paradoxically, one of the most “strange” stories in Russian literature. The structure of the sentence is too rhythmic, like a finely written ornament; It is based on commensurate syntactic segments that correlate with each other thanks to verbal repetitions, structural parallels in the construction of a complex sentence, and alternation of rows of homogeneous members. There is almost symmetry in the phrase - but the symmetry is not deathly, but leaves room for the unexpected, the source of which will be the psychological depths of the human personality. “Given” in the first sentence and a special mental attitude of internal concentration and at the same time - openness to the impressions of existence that do not need to be sought - they themselves find a person traveling “without a plan, without a goal”, “wherever the eyes look” “through the meadows and groves, over hills and plains." This motive of movement as a discovery - both of the world and the depths of one’s own soul - is understood in the story not only as a spatial movement in which life’s impressions pour into the soul, awakening sympathy in it. In a literary text, movement is also a “spiritual journey” in search of truth. The expression of this dynamics of the human spirit becomes the entire artistic structure of the work, those complex and often multi-valued relationships that arise between the author himself - and the narrator, or the “author” standing outside the text - and the heroes, and finally, the reader’s relationship - both with the heroes and with the narrator, and with the “author”. There can be a lot of these lines, and each of them gives that scope to the movement of the narrative, which makes it truly alive and organic - like a living whole.

The composition of “Poor Lisa” itself creates special conditions for the most lively and dynamic interaction of the narrator with his characters and readers. The use of the form of a compositional “frame” (in which the author’s introduction and conclusion are not directly related to the event plot, but act primarily as an emotional “setting”) allowed Karamzin to “throw a bridge” from the heroes to the reader. The interaction of these figures is determined by the structure of the story itself, and most of all by the peculiar “coordinate system” of time and space in which the narrator exists. He is separated from his characters by a time frame (the action of the story took place “thirty years before this ...”), but, remembering and talking about those events, from his “present” he looks into the past and feels a living, inextricable connection with it ( “...I love those objects that touch my heart and make me shed tears of tender sorrow!”). This means that such communication is possible - the reader involuntarily joins in it and, from his own “present” (as if “reading time”, by analogy with the narrator’s “telling time”), rushes as if into another sphere - the world of the narrator, and through it - and the world of the story's heroes. The compositional frame allows us to understand the direction and dynamics of this movement, which, according to Karamzin the sentimentalist, contains the ideal program for the perception of a literary text, reading-empathy, which ultimately transfers the literary plot into reality itself.

Openness to the impressions of the outside world allows Karamzin’s narrator to penetrate into another sphere - into the inner world of the heroes. At the same time, the narrator skillfully balances between objective analysis and subjective empathy, or more precisely, turns empathy, “getting into touch” with the spiritual depths of the character, sympathy in the original sense of the word (simultaneous feeling) into a means of revealing the personality of objectively presented “other selves” - the heroes of the story .

Psychologism becomes Karamzin’s main artistic discovery in “Poor Liza.” The writer here, perhaps for the first time in Russian literature, refuses to present his heroes as unambiguously positive or negative (and such a division was characteristic of classicism). Erast is not a villain at all, he sincerely loves Lisa, believes in the power of his love, but he is weak in soul and therefore destroys the one who is so dear to him. Even at the most tragic moment of the story, the author is ready, but cannot judge him: “My heart is bleeding at this moment. I forget the man in Erast - I’m ready to curse him, but my tongue does not move, I look at the sky - and a tear rolls down my face...” You cannot “forget the person” in a person; one must always maintain compassion for the unfortunate, and especially when they need it most - at the time of mistakes, even tragically irreparable ones. That is why in the story there is no condemnation of the terrible sin - the suicide of Lisa, who in despair forgot even her duty to her own mother. And in this tragic weakness she remains for the author “a beautiful soul and body.” Likewise, Erast, who “was unhappy until the end of his life<...>, could not console himself and considered himself a murderer.” At the end of the story, we learn about the death of Erast, and the last phrase: “Now, maybe they have already made peace!” - that moral and emotional outcome that is most important for Karamzin the psychologist. Man is inexhaustible. His character is formed thanks to his upbringing and external circumstances (remember the life stories of Lisa and Erast, which the narrator told before introducing the reader directly to the history of the heroes’ souls). The essence of personality is determined by the properties of innate temperament, which affect both the pattern of behavior and the appearance of a person, especially the face. “He has such a kind face, such a voice...” Lisa admires after her first meeting with the stranger. And in Karamzin’s world, her exclamation is not evidence of helpless naivety; with the eyes of her soul, with the gaze of love, she sees here the true essence of Erast, not even the present, but the future, as he will become after the catastrophe, having repented of the crime he unwittingly committed.

The spiritual world of the characters is contradictory - and that is why the system of artistic means is so complex to help reveal it. Karamzin avoids directly naming the characters’ feelings or putting overly “sensitive” flowery phrases into their mouths. Their speech is emotional due to the feeling of the inner, hidden power of feeling, which seems to gradually break through in the words. Here is the scene of Erast meeting Lisa’s mother: “What should we call you, kind, gentle gentleman?”<...>"My name is Erast"<...>. “Erast,” Lisa said quietly. “Erast!” “She repeated this name five times, as if trying to solidify it.” This repetition contains the heroine’s admiration, the nascent feeling of love, tenderness for the young man, and Lisa’s kindness towards all living things.

Internal agitation is also inherent in the narrator himself, whose emotional word is also a window into the spiritual world of both the heroes and the narrator; Moreover, the speech often breaks off, and this break is already a window into the world of the reader’s experiences, a definite opportunity for him to remain alone with himself and listen to his heart. In the most emotional scene of the characters’ explanation, the reader sees how the usual metaphor “love burns the heart” turns into an almost real picture of seemingly visible light, fire: “Liza stood with downcast eyes, with fiery cheeks, with a trembling heart - she could not take her hand away from him , could not turn away when he approached her with his pink lips... ah! He kissed her, kissed her with such fervor that the whole universe seemed to her to be on fire!<...>But I throw down the brush...”

Karamzin often reveals the inner world of heroes through the external: a portrait, description details, a drawing of their behavior. Thus, Lisa’s lilies of the valley become a symbol of the girl’s purity, timidity, and shy beauty. It is no coincidence that when love for an unfamiliar gentleman had already arisen in her heart, who promised to always buy flowers from her, without meeting him the next day, Lisa throws flowers into the river with the words: “No one can own you!” This establishes an unconditional symbolic analogy between the flower and the heroine’s spiritual world. Gestures are also expressive: rejoicing that Erast would come to their house every day, Lisa “... looked at her left sleeve and pinched it with her right hand” - both joy, and fear, and the expectation of a new unknown happiness are hidden in this gesture of the heroine.

The inner world of the characters is revealed so completely in the author’s narration that it is often impossible to distinguish whose “voice” we hear. Here Lisa remembers her deceased father: “Often tender Lisa could not hold back her own tears - ah!..” - and this and other emotional exclamations in the story apply equally to both the character and the narrator. The points of view of the author and the seemingly objectively described characters intersect and overlap one another; It is no coincidence that sometimes a chain of life impressions, pictures unfolding in a particular episode, appears clearly through the prism of the hero’s (or more often than not, the heroine’s, Lisa herself) view. “Suddenly Lisa heard the sound of oars - she looked at the river and saw a boat, and in the boat - Erast...” - the sequence of impressions here is such that it clearly reveals a look from the shore, from the very edge of the water, a downcast look - the only one possible for the confused heroine.

Characterization of the complex system of interaction between the narrator and his characters and especially with the reader is impossible without analysis of the semantic, philosophical and aesthetic content that is present in the story and allows its world to open up outside - to the fate of ideas and “big” genres of literature and art.

The problematics of the story are also enriched by the peculiar “dialogue” that Karamzin the narrator conducts in it with the literary tradition. Sentimentalist writers often resorted to similar “references” to other works - this enlivened the reader’s imagination, made perception more dynamic and emotional, and included the audience in a kind of game - recognizing hints scattered in the text (the English novelist Laurence Stern often resorted to a similar technique; in Karamzin “Letters of a Russian Traveler” and almost all the stories are permeated with similar “memories”). In “Poor Liza” the author creatively plays with the pastoral tradition - one of the most ancient in world literature and extremely popular in the 18th century.

Pastoral in antiquity is, first of all, “a picture of the simplicity and peaceful flow of rural life, as it is seen by a city dweller<...>, a landscape inhabited by man, on which herds graze next to cultivated fields, where the shepherd, having completed his easy labors, freely indulges in creativity<...>, the world of a simple and harmonious rural culture, opposed to a civilization that has become too complicated and mired in the vices.” At first glance, in the art of modern times, the theme of “shepherds and shepherdesses,” which penetrates not only literature, but also painting, sculpture, porcelain sculpture, theater, music, even ladies’ fashions of the Rococo era, may seem too conventional and frivolous, but it is associated with a number of philosophical motives that largely determine a person’s idea of ​​the world and his sense of self.

At the heart of the various genre varieties of the pastoral tradition is the myth of the “golden age” (the original age of humanity, the era of natural simplicity and goodness, which is forever past for people who have known greed and enmity). In a pastoral, the thought involuntarily arises about the connection between everyday life and the laws of all existence, the kinship of the most unpretentious with the most important spiritual values ​​- it is thanks to the highest spirituality (and not an empty desire for “decoration” or inattention to the real problems of a real village) that it becomes so elegant, harmonious and The life of the shepherds is beautiful, conventionally aestheticized in pastoral images. Pastoral also carries a certain anthropology and ethics - ideas about the natural essence of man and the conventions of social relations, about the interconnections and opposition of the natural and artificial, natural and social, emotional and rational, etc. A similar worldview echoed the philosophical ideas of J.-J. Rousseau, who had a huge influence on Russian and, more broadly, European thought in the second half of the 18th century. The natural, natural beginning in man is beautiful, and the utopian hope for happiness can only be associated with the dream of a return to the eternal harmony between people - sons of nature, equal in their natural state.

Sentimentalism is close in the pastoral, first of all, to the fragile grace of the figurative system, which is so helpful in depicting the ideal of spiritual love. The sentimentalist desire to change and transform the world according to the laws of sensitivity is answered by the very structure of pastoral plots, which are often based on the motive of changing conventional human “roles” (the king or queen appears as a shepherdess or shepherdess; a noble man falls in love with a virtuous village woman, her noble origin is suddenly revealed, etc. .d.) - in a word, everything is possible; the pastoral world reveals the true essence of a person, usually hidden under the shell of the external, superficial. The pastoral motifs of educational literature also carried the idea of ​​deep moral dignity, virtue, and nobility of the common man, who is nevertheless endowed with all the riches of spiritual life. This is the heroine of the unusually popular novel both in Europe and in Russia by S. Richardson “Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded” (1740): a poor humble girl, a servant, awakens love in the heart of her master, Lord B., fearlessly resists his offensive attacks, demanding self-respect, and with this firmness, true nobility, forces his tormentor to change. “Even though I’m just a servant, my soul is immortal just like the soul of the princess,” Pamela exclaims, as if anticipating the educational thought of Karamzin, the author of “Poor Liza,” about the unconditional value of the feelings of a common person.

The pastoral substratum of the plot of “Poor Lisa” is already set in the author’s introduction: the panorama of Moscow includes a corner of undisturbed shepherd’s happiness (“On the other side of the river one can see an oak grove, near which numerous herds graze; there young shepherds, sitting under the shade of trees, sing simple, sad songs..."). Pastorality defines Erast’s literary ideas (“He read novels and idylls; he had a fairly vivid imagination and often moved mentally to those times<...>in which<...>all the people walked carelessly through the meadows, bathed in clean springs, kissed like turtle doves, rested under roses and myrtles, and spent all their days in happy idleness. It seemed to him that he had found in Lisa what his heart had been looking for for a long time. “Nature calls me into its arms, to its pure joys,” he thought and decided - at least for a while - to leave the big world"); Thus, even before the events unfold, thanks to an extensive network of literary and cultural associations, the possible direction of the reader's expectations is set: the story can develop either as an idyllic, conflict-free reunion of heroes in the bosom of a simple rural world, or as a story about a vile seducer whose soul must ultimately be transformed through an encounter with true virtue.

But neither one nor the other expectations are true (as Karamzin almost always does not justify exactly what seems inevitable to the reader). For an idyllic world, Erast is too often associated with the motive of money. Researchers noted that his communication with Lisa begins and ends with them, and in the intervals, even if the hero’s materially expressed philanthropy comes from the bottom of his heart, it turns out to be in conflict with his own dream of returning to Arcadia; there, in the ideal times of primordial unity, in this world of absolute completeness and abundance, there should be no money.

However, there is no Richardsonian motif of the clash of fate and virtue here. Erast is only weak, flighty and fickle; but it is precisely these qualities that make him a stranger in that “golden age” that the hero dreams of: after all, as soon as inconstancy arises, the seemingly eternal Love and Harmony perish, and Time and Death come to happy Arcadia. Erast Karamzin involuntarily becomes the personification of these principles; That is why the motif of suddenness, a sharp turn of events, expressed, as a rule, almost symbolically “suddenly,” is associated with it, which is so important in the story. According to the researcher of the story V.N. Toporov, this word, “dynamizing a situation that was previously homogeneous and balanced,” precisely in Karamzin becomes an expression of surprise, “switching one situation to another.” But the “joyful” “suddenly” at the meetings of Liza and Erast, in essence, prepare that tragic “suddenly”, which will open up for the heroine the possibility of a terrible denouement (“...Suddenly I saw myself on the shore of a deep pond...”); It is not so much opposition as a foreboding of the inevitable that is hidden in this verbal coincidence.

The pastoral background is also important immediately before the characters’ love explanation, when Lisa strives to understand the revolution taking place in her soul. The internal emotionality of this scene is especially enhanced by the fact that the reader, familiar with pastoral motifs, involuntarily feels how displaced they are here. Pastoral is, albeit for a brief moment, but still a return to the original harmony with nature. In this episode, Lisa for the first time feels that she is unable to rejoice along with the awakening world: “But soon the rising luminary of the day awakened all creation: the groves and bushes came to life; the birds fluttered and sang; the flowers raised their heads to drink in the life-giving rays of light. But Lisa still sat there, sad.” Of course, landscape is an important means of psychological characterization in Karamzin’s story; the author creates a variety of pictures of nature near Moscow, each of which is both a vivid, memorable description and at the same time a means of in-depth analysis of the emotional experiences of the characters. Usually in sentimentalism, nature is in tune with a person’s mood, it seems to respond to him (“the gloomy Gothic towers of the Simonov Monastery” at the beginning of the story predict the tragic development of events; in moments of happiness of the heroes, nature is permeated with happiness and light; the fall of Lisa and Erast occurs when all of nature seemed to be plunged into chaos of the elements: “The storm roared menacingly; rain poured from black clouds...”; the picture of the heroine’s death is surrounded by an atmosphere of despondency and gloom). Nature corresponds to the human world, but a harmonious merger with it is only a utopia.

The soul, seized by a rush of feelings, anticipates misfortune; a person immersed in thought at the most unexpected moment feels his loneliness in a beautiful, joyful world living a natural life: “Ah, Lisa! What happened to you? Until now, waking up with the birds, you had fun with them in the morning, and a pure, joyful soul shone in your eyes, like the sun shines in drops of heavenly dew; but now you are thoughtful and the general joy of nature is alien to your heart.” The suddenly realized discord between human existence and nature seems to be a harbinger of the romantic feeling of man’s loneliness in the world. In Karamzin’s story, this motif almost immediately loses its sharpness - having learned that she is loved by Erast, Liza will again feel even more vividly merging with the harmony of the surrounding existence (“Never have larks sung so well, never has the sun shone so brightly, never have flowers so They didn’t smell nice!”). But still, the return of the bright mood occurs only until the moment when, abandoned by Erast, the heroine again falls into a feeling of loneliness - this time absolute (“The sky does not fall, the earth does not shake!..”); The ending of this discord is the suicide of the heroine.

The path to Arcadia is closed, and the shepherd boy passing in the distance, whom Lisa looks at before her explanation with Erast, and the heroine’s thoughts about the desired happiness are another symbol of its unattainability and instability: “Meanwhile, a young shepherd on the river bank was driving his flock, playing the pipe. Lisa fixed her gaze on him and thought: “If the one who now occupies my thoughts was born a simple peasant, a shepherd, and if he were now driving his flock past me<...>. He would look at me with an affectionate look - maybe he would take my hand... A dream! looked at her with an affectionate look, took her hand") only confirms that harmony is illusory in a world where cruel inevitability reigns. The “Golden Age” has disappeared from earthly life, universal reconciliation of contradictions is possible only in heaven - this idea sounds in the last lines of the story.

In general, the very poetics of the ingenuously sensitive story in “Poor Liza” becomes the best expression of the unique artistic philosophy of sentimentalism, which stood at the turn between the age of rationality and the elements of feeling, the age of normativity and the dominance of absolute individuality. Sentimentalism turns out to be a brief moment of balance of these principles, when reason has not yet been replaced by irrational spontaneity, when manifestations of feeling are harmonious and outwardly restrained, when the tragic contradictions of life are already realized - but the sympathetic openness and sociability of a person does not yet allow the connections of being to be destroyed. The artistic expression of this is the inextricable sympathetic connection of the narrator, heroes and reader, which determines the structure of the narrative in the prose of sentimentalism and becomes the basis of the poetics of the most striking sentimentalist work in Russian literature - Karamzin's story.

“Natalia, the Boyar’s Daughter” (1792) occupies a special place among Karamzin’s sentimental stories. . This is not just the first experience of addressing a historical theme (the action of the story takes place during the time of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, in pre-Petrine Rus', although here Karamzin does not strive to create historical flavor as such). The past for him is a world of ideally pure, unartificial relationships, a time “when Russians were Russians, when they dressed up in their own clothes, walked with their own gait, lived according to their own custom, spoke in their own language, that is, they spoke as they thought.”

The naivety of the touching and not always believable plot does not frighten Karamzin: he admires the young beautiful heroes, rejoices at the purity and nobility of their relationships, admires the loyalty of their love - anyone who does not believe in such feelings is not worthy of the title of a sensitive person. At the same time, there is room for a joke in the story. Karamzin is ironic about the techniques of adventure novels, well known to readers of that time. Such works require secrets and riddles - and so boyar Matvey, not understanding why his daughter suddenly became sad in her parents’ house, goes to the dense forests to visit “his hundred-year-old aunt,” who was reputed to be a witch and could explain the reason for Natalya’s melancholy. Let's imagine how much mysterious and fabulous there could be in such an episode of the story! But Karamzin writes only one phrase: “The success of this embassy remained unknown: however, there is no great need to know it” - making fun of either the gullible reader or the authors who use such techniques in order to interest at any cost. Further, when it is told how Natalya, her nanny and her mysterious groom come to the place where he is hiding, the atmosphere of mystery is also heightened: a deep forest, a hut, fires, gloomy bearded men around... The frightened nanny begins to shout that these are robbers - and Karamzin’s narrator reacts with lightning speed: “Now I could present a terrible picture to the eyes of the readers - seduced innocence, deceived love, an unfortunate beauty in the power of barbarians, murderers, the wife of an ataman of robbers, a witness to atrocities and, finally, after a painful life, dying on the scaffold under the ax of justice, in the eyes of the unfortunate parent” - he listed all the possible horrors that could arise in the plot from this situation and... immediately “reassured” us: “No, dear reader, no! This time, save your tears - calm down - the old nanny was mistaken - Natalya is not with the robbers!

The joke here does not destroy the sentimental intonation, it only makes it richer - after all, you can sympathize not only in trouble, but also in joy. This artistic style also corresponded to the content of the story - cheerful, imbued with the spirit of youth and hope - after all, what seemed like a fatal step becomes here the only opportunity to achieve happiness. It is no coincidence that this story by Karamzin influenced Pushkin’s works (“The Snowstorm” and “The Young Lady-Peasant”), in which the heroes also find their happiness, even when it seems to be lost forever.

All the writer's biographers unanimously recognize 1793 as a milestone in Karamzin's creative and philosophical development - a period of sharp aggravation of the political situation in France (in the summer of 1793, the Jacobin dictatorship was established in Paris, which became the signal for the deployment of bloody revolutionary terror that horrified Europe). He saw the beginning of the revolution during his trip abroad. Karamzin learned with extreme excitement and bitterness about the terrible consequences of what had once arisen right before his eyes. At the end of the short story “The Life of Athens” (1793), the writer made an autobiographical digression that perfectly depicted his state at that time: “I am sitting alone in my rural office, in a thin dressing gown, and I see nothing in front of me except a burning candle, a soiled sheet of paper. papers and Hamburg newspapers, which... will inform me of the terrible madness of our enlightened contemporaries.”

The shock seems to split the writer’s soul, and the embodiment of the completed internal breakdown are his two heroes – Philalethes and Melodorus, whose “voices” are “the voices of the soul of Karamzin himself,” who with tragic clarity felt the collapse of past hopes, the utopian faith in the good nature of man and the possibility of rationality. reorganization of society on the principles of goodness and justice: “The eighth century is ending; What do you see on the stage of the world? - The eighth or tenth century ends, and the unfortunate philanthropist takes two steps to his grave in order to lie down in it with his deceived, torn heart and close his eyes forever.<…>Where are the people we loved? Where is the fruit of science and wisdom?<…>Age of Enlightenment! I don’t recognize you - in blood and flame I don’t recognize you - among murders and destruction I don’t recognize you!..” (“Melodorus to Philalethes”). A person tries to maintain hope (“Let us, my friend, let us even now be consoled by the thought that the lot of the human race is not an eternal delusion and that people will someday stop torturing themselves and each other” - “Philaletos to Melodore”). But on what to base such faith - this is the question that will henceforth painfully worry Karamzin, which will become the source of the mysterious mystery of the world around him, and indeed the fate itself for his heroes.

Karamzin’s most striking innovative work of this period was the story “The Island of Bornholm.” According to the author’s plan, it was adjacent to “Letters of a Russian Traveler,” reminding the reader of the already familiar hero, who so vividly empathized with everything that came his way. He returns from England to Russia; Along the way, the ship lands on the shore, where the narrator meets a mysterious stranger. He was a pale and despondent young man, “more a ghost than a man.” “He looked at the blue sea with his motionless black eyes, in which the last ray of fading life shone,” played the guitar and sang a mysterious song about beautiful but criminal love, about terrible punishment and loss, about the island of Bornholm, where his soul strives in vain, about the parental curse...

Laws condemn

The object of my love

But who, oh heart! Maybe

Resist you?<...>

Sacred nature!

Your gentle friend and son

Innocent before you.

You gave me your heart...

The narrator was unable to find out who he was and where he came from - the ship sailed away and the mystery remained unsolved. Only a few days later, when the ship was off the coast of Denmark, the traveler sees the island of Bornholm and decides to go ashore in the hope of unraveling the mystery of the stranger. He finds himself in a dilapidated castle, the owner of which is a silent gray-haired old man, dejected by mysterious grief, and everything around is permeated with an atmosphere of destruction and imminent death: “Everywhere was gloomy and empty. In the first hall, surrounded inside by a Gothic colonnade, a lamp hung and barely shed pale light on the rows of gilded pillars, which had begun to crumble from antiquity; in one place there were parts of a cornice, in another there were fragments of pilasters, in a third there were whole fallen columns...”

The traveler finds a cave-dungeon in the garden in which a beautiful woman is imprisoned. She makes incoherent speeches: I kiss the hand that executes me - I still love the one for whom I was punished so terribly - let him know about this in his exile - my end is near... And the old man tells the traveler the secret of his family - “the secret terrible!”, “the most terrible story<...>which you will not hear now, my friends,” adds the Karamzin narrator. So the story ends almost mid-sentence.

The actual “plot” of the story told by the narrator-traveler is omitted, and so exhaustively that, in essence, the very event line of the story is destroyed here. Karamzin’s narrator consistently preserves introductory, emotionally tuning the reader descriptions - and takes beyond the text what, in fact, should have been preceded by these descriptions - the very content of the story being narrated, which could be familiar to a literary educated reader from numerous examples of “Gothic” novels, former extremely popular in Europe at the end of the 18th – beginning of the 19th centuries. The mystery that intrigued the reader remains unsolved, because the main thing here is not just the plot, but a special mood.

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Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin

Teacher's lecture plan 1 Biography 2 On duty. New meetings 3 Trip to Europe 4 Return to homeland 5 Works of Karamzin 6 Language reform 7 Karamzin - historian 8 Karamzin - translator 9 Works of N. M. Karamzin 10 “...and we will perpetuate the past”

Slide 3

(December 1 (12), 1766, the village of Mikhailovka (Preobrazhenskoye) of the Buzuluk district of the Kazan province (according to other sources - the village of Znamenskoye of the Simbirsk district of the Kazan province) - May 22 (June 3) 1826, St. Petersburg) - Russian historian and historiographer, writer, poet, honorary member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences (1818). Creator of the “History of the Russian State” (volumes 1-12, 1803-1826) - one of the first generalizing works on the history of Russia. Editor of the Moscow Journal (1791-1792) and Vestnik Evropy (1802-1803).

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THE BEGINNING OF THE WAY

Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin was born on December 1 (12), 1766 near Simbirsk. He grew up on the estate of his father - retired captain Mikhail Yegorovich Karamzin (1724-1783), a middle-class Simbirsk nobleman, a descendant of the Crimean Tatar Murza Kara-Murza. He was educated at home, and from the age of fourteen he studied in Moscow at the boarding school of Moscow University professor Schaden, while simultaneously attending lectures at the university.

Slide 5

In 1783, at the insistence of his father, he entered service in the St. Petersburg Guards Regiment, but soon retired. The first literary experiments date back to his military service. After retirement, he lived for some time in Simbirsk, and then in Moscow. During his stay in Simbirsk he joined the Masonic lodge “Golden Crown”, and upon arrival in Moscow for four years (1785-1789) he was a member of the Masonic lodge “Friendly Scientific Society”. In Moscow, Karamzin met writers and writers: N.I. Novikov, A.M. Kutuzov, A.A. Petrov, and participated in the publication of the first Russian magazine for children - “Children's Reading”. In 1778, Karamzin was sent to Moscow to the boarding school of Moscow University professor I.M. Schaden.

Slide 6

Trip to Europe

In 1789-1790 he made a trip to Europe, during which he visited Immanuel Kant in Königsberg, and was in Paris during the great French Revolution. As a result of this trip, the famous “Letters of a Russian Traveler” were written, the publication of which immediately made Karamzin a famous writer. Some philologists believe that it is from this book that modern Russian literature begins. The phrase “They are stealing..”, uttered by Karamzin during this trip in response to a question from a compatriot about his homeland, became famous. As presented by Sergei Dovlatov, this historical anecdote goes like this: Two hundred years ago, the historian Karamzin visited France. Russian emigrants asked him: “What, in a nutshell, is happening in their homeland?” Karamzin didn’t need two words. “They’re stealing,” Karamzin answered...

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Homecoming

Upon returning from the trip, Karamzin settled in Moscow and began working as a professional writer and journalist, starting to publish the Moscow Journal 1791-1792 (the first Russian literary magazine, in which, among other works of Karamzin, the story “Poor Liza” that strengthened his fame appeared) , then published a number of collections and almanacs: “Aglaya”, “Aonids”, “My Trinkets”, which made sentimentalism the main literary movement in Russia, and Karamzin its recognized leader. Emperor Alexander I, by personal decree of October 31, 1803, granted the title of historiographer to Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin and 2 thousand rubles. annual salary. The title of historiographer in Russia was not renewed after Karamzin’s death. In 1804, having received the title of historiographer, he stopped all literary work, “taking monastic vows as a historian.” In 1811, he wrote “A Note on Ancient and New Russia,” in which dissatisfaction with the progress of liberal reforms was clearly visible. Exactly until the middle, the text was an excursion into the history of Rus', while the second part examined the contemporary historian’s reign of Alexander I. In 1816, Karamzin published the first eight volumes of “The History of the Russian State,” the three-thousandth edition of which sold out within a month. In subsequent years, three more volumes of “History” were published, and a number of translations of it into the main European languages ​​appeared. Coverage of the Russian historical process brought Karamzin closer to the court and the tsar, who settled him near him in Tsarskoe Selo. Towards the end of his life he was a staunch supporter of absolute monarchy. The unfinished XII volume was published after his death. Karamzin died on May 22 (June 3), 1826 in St. Petersburg. His death was the result of a cold contracted on December 14, 1825. On this day Karamzin was on Senate Square...

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Works by Karamzin

“Eugene and Yulia”, story (1789) “Letters of a Russian Traveler” (1791-1792) “Poor Liza”, story (1792) “Natalia, the Boyar’s Daughter”, story (1792) “The Beautiful Princess and the Happy Karla” (1792) “Sierra Morena,” story (1793) “Bornholm Island” (1793) “Julia” (1796) “Martha the Posadnitsa, or the Conquest of Novagorod,” story (1802) “My Confession,” letter to the publisher of the magazine (1802) “ Sensitive and cold" (1803) "A Knight of Our Time" (1803) "Autumn" ()

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LANGUAGE REFORM

Karamzin's prose and poetry had a huge influence on the development of the Russian literary language. Karamzin purposefully refused to use Church Slavonic vocabulary and grammar, bringing the language of his works to the everyday language of his era and using the grammar and syntax of the French language as a model. Karamzin introduced many new words into the Russian language - neologisms (“charity”, “love”, “freethinking”, “attraction”, “responsibility”, “suspiciousness”, “industry”, “refinement”, “first-class”, “humane” ), barbarisms (“sidewalk”, “coachman”). He was also one of the first to use the letter E. Karamzin's changes to the language caused heated controversy in the 1810s. The writer A. S. Shishkov, with the assistance of Derzhavin, founded in 1811 the society “Conversation of Lovers of the Russian Word”, the purpose of which was to promote the “old” language, as well as criticize Karamzin, Zhukovsky and their followers. In response, in 1815, the literary society “Arzamas” was formed, which ironized the authors of “Conversation” and parodied their works. Many poets of the new generation became members of the society, including Batyushkov, Vyazemsky, Davydov, Zhukovsky, Pushkin. The literary victory of "Arzamas" over "Beseda" strengthened the victory of the linguistic changes that Karamzin introduced. In 1818 Karamzin was elected a member of the Russian Academy.

Slide 10

Karamzin - historian

Karamzin developed an interest in history in the mid-1790s. He wrote a story on a historical theme - “Martha the Posadnitsa, or the Conquest of Novgorod” (published in 1803). In the same year, by decree of Alexander I, he was appointed to the position of historiographer, and until the end of his life he was engaged in writing “The History of the Russian State.” Karamzin opened the history of Russia to a wide educated public. According to Pushkin, “everyone, even secular women, rushed to read the history of their fatherland, hitherto unknown to them. She was a new discovery for them. Ancient Russia seemed to be found by Karamzin, like America by Columbus.” In his work, Karamzin acted more as a writer than a historian - when describing historical facts, he cared about the beauty of the language, least of all trying to draw any conclusions from the events he described. Nevertheless, his commentaries, which contain many extracts from manuscripts, mostly first published by Karamzin, are of high scientific value. A. S. Pushkin assessed Karamzin’s works on the history of Russia in this way: “In his “History” elegance and simplicity prove to us, without any bias, the need for autocracy and the charms of the whip.”

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Karamzin - translator

In 1792, N. M. Karamzin translated a wonderful monument of Indian literature - the drama “Sakuntala” (“Shakuntala”), authored by Kalidasa. In the preface to the translation, he wrote: “The creative spirit does not live in Europe alone; he is a citizen of the universe. A person is a person everywhere; He has a sensitive heart everywhere, and in the mirror of his imagination he contains heaven and earth. Everywhere Nature is his mentor and the main source of his pleasures. I felt this very vividly when reading “Sakuntala,” a drama composed in the Indian language, 1900 years before this one, by the Asian poet Kalidas ... "

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Works of N. M. Karamzin

History of the Russian State (12 volumes, until 1612, Maxim Moshkov’s library) Poems by Karamzin, Nikolai Mikhailovich in Maxim Moshkov’s library Nikolai Karamzin in the Anthology of Russian Poetry Karamzin, Nikolai Mikhailovich “Letters to Ivan Ivanovich Dmitriev” 1866 - facsimile reprint of the book “Bulletin of Europe”, published by Karamzin, facsimile pdf reproduction of magazines. Nikolai Karamzin. Letters of a Russian traveler, M. “Zakharov”, 2005, information about the publication ISBN 5-8159-0480-5 N. M. Karamzin. A note on ancient and new Russia in its political and civil relations Letters from N. M. Karamzin. 1806-1825

Slide 13

“...and we will perpetuate the past.”

"Karamzin's Passage" in Moscow. Monument to N.K. Karamzin in Simbirsk (Ulyanovsk).

Slide 14

Postage stamp depicting Karamzin, issued in the Soviet Union.