“Svetlana” (“Once on the Epiphany Evening // Girls were guessing ...”) - ballad by Vasily Andreevich Zhukovsky
| Svetlana | |
|---|---|
 Karl Bryullov . " Fortune Svetlana " | |
| Genre | ballad |
| Author | |
| Original language | |
| Date of writing | 1808-1812 |
| Date of first publication | 1813, Herald of Europe |
History of creation and publication
First published in the journal “ Vestnik Evropy ”, 1813, No. 1 and 2, with the subtitle: “Al. An. Pr ... howl. Dedicated to A. A. Protasova's niece and student of Zhukovsky (who was the sister of the muse of the poet M. A. Protasova-Moyer ), as a wedding gift to her (for the wedding with A. F. Voeikov ).
The beginning of work on “Svetlana” dates back to 1808, the text was completed in 1812 . In the well-known two-volume book, as well as in the collection of selected works (all edited by A. D. Alferov) published by the Association of I. D. Sytin (Moscow, 1902), the ballad is attributed to the works of 1811.
The plot is based on Gottfried Burger's “ Lenore ” ballad. Zhukovsky addressed this story three times: he transferred “Lenore” to the ballad “Lyudmila” to “Svetlana”, and later, in 1831, translated more precisely under the author’s name - but here the dead man's snitch is represented as a bad dream of the girl and the ballad a happy ending!
Artistic originality
It was written by trochee with alternation of 4-3 foot, and in long lines to compensate for the end of men, and in short lines - for women (X4m + X3zh). There are 14 lines in the stanza with rhyming ABBAHGGGGDEZHE (thus, it closely resembles a sonnet , albeit in an unusual size for a sonnet).
One of the most popular works of Russian romanticism, repeatedly (usually in passages) was included in the anthology, became one of the sources of the conditional “Slavic” name Svetlana (before Zhukovsky it was found in Vostokov ).
“Svetlana” mentions and quotes Pushkin several times (“ Eugene Onegin ”, chapter 3, stanza V; chapter 5, stanza X, epigraph to chapter 5; epigraph to the story “The Snowstorm ”). In the commentary to “Eugene Onegin” (Ch. III, V, 2-4), Nabokov assesses the ballad as a “masterpiece” and suggests that Pushkin’s “ Onegin's stanza ” was inspired by this unusual sonnet stanza from Zhukovsky.