“Slander of Russia” is a patriotic poem by A. S. Pushkin , published in 1831 and written in connection with the Polish uprising of 1830–1831 . The immediate reason for its creation was the appeals of some deputies of the to intervene in military actions against the Russian army on the side of the Polish insurgents.
"To slanderers of Russia" | |
---|---|
Genre | Oh yeah |
Author | Pushkin, Alexander Sergeyevich |
Original language | Russian |
Date of writing | August 2 or 16, 1831 |
Date of first publication | On the capture of Warsaw. Three poems by V. Zhukovsky and A. Pushkin. - SPb., 1831 |
Creation History
The poem "Slanderers of Russia" was written by Pushkin in Tsarskoe Selo on the eve or during the siege of Warsaw (the date of writing was August 2, according to the litter on the autograph, but the publication indicated August 16). The manuscript precedes the epigraph in Latin - Vox et praeterea nihil , which means “empty words” (the literal translation is “voice and nothing else”). The poem was a reaction of Pushkin to the mass campaign in France for military intervention in support of Poland. This campaign was led by Gilbert Lafayette , who became the chairman of the Polish Committee; he, Francois Mogen , General Maximilian Lamarck and other deputies spoke in the Chamber of Deputies with ardent speeches, calling for action against Russia. The war with Europe seemed very likely to many; Pushkin's assessment of the political situation during the writing of the poem is visible from his letter to P. A. Vyazemsky on August 14: “Warsaw is surrounded, Krzhnetsky is replaced by impatient patriots. Dembinsky , who happened to come to Warsaw from Lithuania, was selected to be commander in chief. Krzhnetsky was accused by the rebels of inaction. Consequently, they want battle; consequently, they will be defeated; consequently, France’s intervention will be late; consequently, Count Paskevich is surprisingly happy. (...) If a common, European war is brewed, then, right, I will regret my marriage, if I take a wife in Torok ” [1] .
Three weeks later, responding to the news of the capture of Warsaw, Pushkin wrote a poem “The Borodino Anniversary”, immediately after which these two poems, as well as the patriotic poem of Zhukovsky, “The Old Song in a New Way, ” were published by a pamphlet entitled “The Taking of Warsaw”. Before publication, both Pushkin poems were reviewed and approved personally by Nicholas I [2] . According to Polish experts J. Savitskaya and M. Toporovsky, both poems were written by order of the emperor, “who sought to make the poet the ideologue of the dogmas of his time - Orthodoxy, autocracy and Great Russian nationalism ” [3] . However, it should be noted that the poem was in line with Pushkin’s general views on the Polish question : Pushkin believed that Poland’s independent statehood contradicted the interests of Russia. In addition, by this time he largely withdrew from the revolutionary romance of his youth and began to negatively relate to revolutions and revolts in general [4] . This did not prevent him from admiring the heroism of the Poles: retelling in a letter to Vyazemsky on June 1, 1831, the corresponding episode of the battle of Ostrolenka , he writes: But still they must be strangled, and our slowness is painful. ” And then he expounds his thoughts, which soon became the basis of the ode: “For us, the insurrection of Poland is a family matter, an old, hereditary division, we cannot judge it by European impressions, whatever our thinking, however. But for Europe, we need general subjects of attention in attachments, we need both for the peoples and for governments. Of course, the benefit of almost all governments is to follow the rules of non-intervention, that is, to avoid hangovers in someone else’s feast; but the nations are torn and barking. That and look, Europe will be imposed on us. Happiness is also that last year we did not intervene in the last French scrape ! And that would be a red tape ” [5] . Moreover, in July of the same year, Pushkin unsuccessfully proposed to A. H. Benkendorf to allow him to create a political magazine, citing this as follows: “Now, when fair indignation and old popular enmity, long ravaged by envy, united us all against the Polish rebels, embittered For the time being, Europe is attacking Russia not with weapons, but with daily mad slander ... Let the Russian writers be allowed to reflect the shameless and ignorant attacks of foreign newspapers. ” [6]
Gilbert Lafayette
Francois Mogen
Jean Maximilian Lamarck
Contents
In the poem, written in the form of a direct appeal to the deputies ("folk vitations"), Pushkin points out their lack of understanding of the essence of the centuries-old Russian-Polish conflict :
What angered you? Lithuanian unrest?
Leave: this is a dispute between the Slavs ,
Home, old dispute, so weighed by fate.
And:
You do not understand, you are alien
This is a family feud.
Blaming the French for their hatred of Russia , Pushkin wonders what the roots of this phenomenon are and gives an answer to him: the collapse of Napoleon after his defeat in the Patriotic War of 1812 :
For what? answer: for whether
What is on the ruins of flaming Moscow
We did not recognize the brazen will
Who were you trembling under?
For the fact that they plunged into the abyss
We are idol over kingdoms
And redeemed with our blood
Europe, freedom, honor and peace?
In the final part of the poem, Pushkin points to the readiness of the Russian people who are keeping the former strength to fight against the new aggression, and also writes about another deplorable end awaiting the interventionists:
Or do we argue with Europe again?
Ile Russian from victories lost the habit?
Is little us? Or from Perm to Taurida ,
From Finnish cold rocks to the fiery Colchis ,
From the shocked Kremlin
To the walls of the immovable China ,
Steel bristles glinting ,
Will not the Russian land arise? ..
So send us to us, vitii,
His embittered sons:
There is a place for them in the fields of Russia,
Among the coffins alien to them.
The final part of the work was inspired by Konstantin Batyushkov’s “Crossing the Rhine” poem, which describes the power of Russia and the national character of the war in retaliation:
We are here, sons of snow.
Under the banner of Moscow with freedom and with thunder! ..
Flowed out of ice-covered seas
From the midday jets, from the Caspian shafts,
From the waves of the Hive and Baikal ,
From the Volga , the Don and the Dnieper ,
From the hail of our Peter ,
From the peaks of the Caucasus and the Urals ! ..
In the manuscript the epigraph was prefaced with the poem: “Vox et praeterea nihil” - “Empty sound and nothing more” [7] .
Social reaction
The poem was published in the pamphlet To the Capture of Warsaw , which also included the Borodino Anniversary and the patriotic poem by Vasily Zhukovsky, The Old Song in a New Way . The brochure was printed around September 10, 1831 (censorship resolution of September 7). This publication stirred up Russian society, which was divided into enthusiastic admirers and sharp critics of Pushkin’s new poems. If the loyal and nationalist-minded part of society welcomed the poem, then many liberally-minded contemporaries rebelled, seeing in it an expression of enmity towards freedom-loving aspirations and manifestation of official loyalty in favor of “poetry”, according to Peter’s expression (Vzezeme). the expression "a great ode", comparing Zhukovsky - and indirectly Pushkin - with vrsheplety officials who went on holidays with his superiors itelnymi verses) [8] [9] . At the same time, even persons who, in principle, agreed with the political necessity of suppressing the Polish uprising, as Vyazemsky, condemned the ode as opportunistic and obscenely servile [8] [10] [11] [12] .
Colonel Alexei Filosofov admired the poem: “What a wealth of thoughts of the most abstract, expressed in a pythic way. What sublime, straight Russian feelings " [13] . Peter Chaadaev wrote to Pushkin: “Here you are, finally, the national poet; you finally guessed your vocation. <...> The poem to the enemies of Russia is especially remarkable; I tell you this. <...> Not everyone here is of the same opinion with me, you, of course, do not doubt it, but let them say what they want - and we will go forward. ” Stepan Shevyryov also admired the ode, to which Nikolai Melgunov wrote to him: “I am annoyed that you praise Pushkin for his last verses. He pushed me so much as a man, that I lost respect for him even as a poet. ” A former member of the Union of Welfare, Grigory Rimsky-Korsakov, wrote that after the publication of the ode to Pushkin, he refused to “acquire works of Russian Parnas” [12] . The position of Pushkin and the Turgenev brothers took a negative view. Alexander wrote to brother Nikolay : “Your conclusion about Pushkin is fair: there is definitely more barbarism in it,” however, explaining: “He’s just a barbarian in relation to P. [Polshe]. As a poet, thinking that without patriotism, as he understands him, one cannot be a poet, and for poetry he does not want to leave his barbarism ” [4] [12] .
Only on September 14, Vyazemsky got acquainted with the poem. That day he wrote in his diary: “If we had the publicity of the press, Zhukovsky would never have thought, Pushkin would not dare to sing Paskevich’s victories ... Kuram was ridiculed to see himself laughing, seeing that the lion finally managed to put a paw on the mouse ... And what a blasphemy to bring Borodino closer to Warsaw. Russia is crying out against this lawlessness ... ” [14] . In "Notebooks," Vyazemsky extensively criticized the poem: "Pushkin in his poems to" Slanderers of Russia "seems to them a shish from his pocket. He knows that they will not read his poems, therefore, they will not answer questions that would be very easy to answer, even to Pushkin himself. Why does a resurgent Europe love us? Do we at least give a penny to the treasury of general education? We are a brake on the movements of nations towards gradual improvement, moral and political. We are outside of a resurgent Europe, and meanwhile we are suffering from it. Folk vitiuses (...) could answer him shortly and clearly: we hate, or better to say, despise you, because in Russia a poet is not ashamed to write and print poems like yours in Russia ”. Vyazemsky scoffed at Pushkin's “geographical fanfare”: “What is so good about it, what to rejoice about and what to boast about that we are lying on a stretch, that we have from thought to thought five thousand miles away ...”. He considers the “absurdities” of his threat to Europe, since Pushkin himself must know that “we would fight death with Europe”. At the same time, he does not doubt the need to suppress the Polish uprising, but considers it to be just as little an inspirational subject for the poet as the legal punishment of a runaway serf. “Why shift to poems what is most appropriate in a political newspaper?” He wrote and ironically suggested that Pushkin glorify Chancellor Carl Nesselrode for making peace with Turkey , Adjutant General Alexei Orlov for suppressing a riot in military settlements , etc. [ 10] [11] In a letter to Elizabeth Khitrovo, Vyazemsky wrote: “Let us become Europeans again in order to redeem poems that are not at all of a European nature ... How sad these poems have afflicted me! Power, state order often must fulfill sad, bloody duties, but the Poet, thank God, does not have the duty to chant them. ” [12] The daughter of Elizabeth Khitrovo, Daria Fikelmon in a letter to Vyazemsky, expresses complete solidarity with these thoughts [13] ; after the release of the poem, she ceased to greet Pushkin [12] . Vissarion Belinsky categorically stated in his “Letter to Gogol” that it cost him Pushkin “to write only two or three loyal poems (...) in order to suddenly lose the people's love” [15] .
Immediately after the release of the ode to the world, her translations and transcriptions into French and German began to appear in the lists. At the beginning of October 1831, Elizaveta Khitrovo sent a French translation (perhaps made by herself or by some of the staff of the Austrian embassy in St. Petersburg) to Pushkin. Pushkin corrected it, and in this form the text was communicated to Austrian Chancellor Metternich by son-in-law Khitrovo, Austrian envoy Karl Fikelmon , as an illustration of the rise of patriotic sentiment in Russian society: “The same idea was reflected in the poems of Pushkin, the correct translation of which I add here. They were written by the poet in Tsarskoye Selo and were approved by the emperor. Due to this, they attract even more attention ” [16] .
One of the French translations of “Slanderers of Russia” belongs to the Minister of Education and President of the Academy of Sciences Sergey Uvarov , who later, in the last years of the poet’s life, became one of his enemies. Uvarov's translation is free (in particular, he introduces an idea that Pushkin lacks: “For the triumph of one of the nations, it is necessary for the other to perish”). In 1839, musician and critic Nikolai Golitsyn published his translation of the ode into French [17] , which was made during Pushkin’s lifetime and caused a positive assessment in the author’s letter to the translator in 1836 (Pushkin ironically comments on the translation of Uvarov).
In response to Pushkin’s “patriotic” poems, Adam Mickiewicz published a poem “To Russian Friends” ( Polish. “Do przyjaciół Moskali” , in a different translation - “Friends of the Moskals”), in which he accused (not named by name) Pushkin of betraying the former, common to them, freedom-loving ideals:
<...>
And who mocked angry? Which of you is the poorest
From lots to comprehend, karaya steadily
And with the shame of orders, and with the caress of the highest,
And with the power of the king's porch to beat bows?
Or maybe someone triumph of cruelty monarch
In servile zeal praise now strives?
Il tramples on the Polish land, having washed our blood,
And, as if praise, curses boasts?
<...> [18](Translation by A. Jacobson )
Pushkin was hurt for life and began to write a response to Mitskevich, who, however, was never published during his lifetime (excerpt “ He lived between us ... ”) [19] . The poem "Russian friends" was included in the third part of the poem Mitskevich "Dzyady" .
Notes
- ↑ A. S. Pushkin. Letter to P. A. Vyazemsky, August 14, 1831 . According to the note to the letter, the butt is a strap by the saddle. "Take in torok" means attach to the saddle, that is, take with you.
- ↑ Gillelson M.I. Pushkin in the Italian edition of the diary DF Fikelmon .
- ↑ Luferchik E. Russian poetry of the early 1830s as a source for studying public opinion about the uprising of 1830-1831. // Topical issues of the year Dzyarzh. un-t; redkal .: AM. M. Dulak (ad. red.) [і інш.]. - Vitsebsk: UA "VDU іmya P.M. Masherava", 2011. - p. 61-63.
- ↑ 1 2 Muravyova Oh . "The enmity of meaningless shame." Ode to “Slanderers of Russia” in the assessments of contemporaries // New World: Journal. - 1994. - № 6.
- А. Pushkin A.S. Letter to P. Vyazemsky, June 1, 1831. From Tsarskoye Selo to Moscow // Pushkin A.S. Complete Works: 10 tons. - L .: Science, Leningrad. separation, 1977-1979. - T. 10. Letters. - 1979. - p. 273-274.
- ↑ Pushkin A. S. Letter to A. H. Benkedorf, around (no later than) July 21, 1831 Tsarskoye Selo .
- ↑ Translation by V. Ya. Bryusov // Pushkin A. S. Complete Works / Ed., With entry. Art. and explained. approx. V. Ya. Bryusov. - M., 1920. - V. 1. - Part 1. - P. 348.
- ↑ 1 2 Chuprinin S. I. The Shineln Ode. Archive dated June 12, 2015 on Wayback Machine
- ↑ Vyazemsky P. A. An old notebook , record 70. - Vyazemsky, retelling this unsent letter to Pushkin, admits that he also wanted to “scratch Pushkin” by criticizing Zhukovsky, whom he knew about his verses only by hearsay.
- ↑ 1 2 Vyazemsky P. A. Old notebook , entry 70.
- ↑ 1 2 PA Vyazemsky. From notebooks. Record for September 22, 1831
- ↑ 1 2 3 4 5 Druzhnikov Yu. Prisoner of Russia .
- ↑ 1 2 D. F. Fikelmon - P. A. Vyazemsky. <Petersburg>. October 13, 1831
- М. Lemke M. Nicholas gendarmes and literature. 1826-1855: In the real affairs of the third division of His Own Imperial Majesty the Chancellery. SPb., 1908. P. 507.
- ↑ Belinsky V. G. Letter to N. V. Gogol from July 5/13, 1847.
- ↑ Gillelson M.I. Pushkin in the Italian edition of the diary DF Fikelmon.
- ↑ Trykov V.P. French Pushkin // Knowledge. Understanding. Skill : magazine. - 2008. - Vol. 1 . — С. 183—190 . - ISSN 1998-9873 .
- ↑ Якобсон А. Поэтические переводы
- ↑ Благой Д. Д. Мицкевич и Пушкин. // Изв. Academy of Sciences of the USSR. Separate литературы и языка. — 1956, июль-август. — Т. XV. — Вып. 4. — С. 314.
Links
- «На взятие Варшавы» в формате PDF