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The theme of the pastorale and the Russian Silver Age

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The theme of the pastorale and the Russian Silver Age

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THE THEME OF THE PASTORALE AND THE RUSSIAN SILVER AGE

by

Jamilya Nazyrova

_______________________________________________________________________

A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirement for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(SLAVIC LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES)

August 2010

Copyright 2010 Jamilya Nazyrova

ii

Table of Contents

List of Figures iv

Abstract v

Introduction 1

Chapter 1. Designing Locus Amoenus: Pastoral Environments in
Greek and Roman Art and Life
1.1 Introduction 5
1.2 Art and Nature in Longus‘s Pastoral Myths 12
1.3 The Singing Mountains in Virgil‘s Eclogues 17
1.4 Catalogs, Lists and the Reproduction of Space 29
1.5 The Physicality of Pastoral Mimesis and the Interchangeability
of Verbal and Visual Images 32
1.6 Pastoral Space as a Thing 36

Chapter 2. Care of the Flocks: The Symbolism of Bloodless Sacrifice
in the Ancient Pastoral 38

Chapter 3. The Pastoral in Late Eighteenth and Nineteenth
Century Russia
3.1 Introduction 43
3.2 Eighteenth Century Arcadia: Parks, Gardens, Orangeries 44
3.3 Strolling through a Pastoral: Derzhavin, Sumarokov, Karamzin 63
3.4 The Russian Arcadia on Canvas: Shchedrin, Soroka,
Venetsianov 70
3.5 The Russian Arcadia in Verse: Trediakovskii and Derzhavin as
Russian Horaces 75
3.6 The Russian Arcadia in Prose: ―Fathers and Sons‖ 82
3.7 The Fauna in the Russian Pastoral 88

Chapter 4. The Theme of the Pastoral and the Russian Silver Age
4.1 Introduction: the Concept of Unity with Nature and the Theme
of the Pastoral in the Fin de Siècle 92
4.2 Schiller's essays and the Aesthetic Struggle with Rustic
Environment 99
4.3. The Pastoral Theme as a Myth and Life-Creationist Utopia in
the Russian Silver Age 129

iii

4.4 The Theme of Brotherhood with Animals in the Fin de Siecle 173
4.5 The Pastoral and Life-Creationist Myths 185

Conclusion 220

Bibliography 224

iv

List of Figures

Figure 1: A Fresco from the House of Livia in Rome 7
Figure 2: Women's Summer Costume from Empress Elizabeth's Times. 48
Figure 3: Artist unknown. Empress Catherine II on a Stroll 50
Figure 4: John Ruskin. Moss and Wild Strawberry. 114
Figure 5: Konstantin Somov. Vignette. 165
Figure 6: Konstntin Somov. Illustration for ―Daphnis and Chloe.‖ 166
Figure 7: Konstantin Somov. The Stroller's Rest. 170
Figure 8: Konstantin Somov. Illustration for ―Daphnis and Chloe.‖ 172
Figure 9: Konstantin Somov. Illustration for ―Daphnis and Chloe.‖ 173
Figure 10: Raphael Collin. Illustration for ―Daphnis and Chloe.‖ 196
Figure 11: Raphael Collin. Illustration for ―Daphnis and Chloe.‖ 197
Figure 12: Konstantin Somov. Illustration for ―Daphnis and Chloe.‖ 198
Figure 13: Konstantin Somov. Illustration for ―Daphnis and Chloe.‖ 213
Figure 14: Konstantin Somov. Illustration for ―Daphnis and Chloe.‖ 218
Figure 15: The waterfall in Sillamäe. 218

v
Abstract
This dissertation discusses the intuitions of the ancient forms of mimesis
connected to the revival of the pastoral theme in the art and literature of the Russian
Silver age. The context of this study is Walter Benjamin's ideas about the non-semiotic
nature of ancient mimesis and about the possibility of non-semiotic languages. In
particular, as Benjamin suggests, in contrast to the semiotic sign, the mimetic sign
involves material objects - the human body and the objects of nature - as signifiers.
Using Benjamin's notion of the mimetic this study analyzes key episodes in the history of
pastoral leading up to Silver Age Russia. Specifically, it examines the mimetic aspects of
the representation of pastoral theme in the Silver age artistic and literary legacy and
compare them to the Greek and Roman classical pastoral: Virgil's "Bucolics," Longus's
"Daphnis and Chloe ," and Pompeian wall painting; and in the fin de siecle images of the
pastoral nature and pastoral music and song in the modernist art and literature.
The first half of the dissertation examines the origin of the pastoral tradition in the
Greek and Roman classics. The first chapter focuses on the settings of the classical idyll,
namely its idealized landscape locus amoenus. It discusses the urban and rural aesthetics
of the pastoral space in Greek and Roman classics and examines the relationship between
the individual and nature that underlie the genre. The second chapter proposes an
interpretation of the relationship of people and animals in the pastoral as a reminiscence
of the traumatic experience of ritual sacrifice. This chapter's argument is that the main
pastoral theme of reconciliation of species and the unity of people and animals in the

vi
Golden age myth is a response to the experiences of ritual killing, the archaic rituals that
preceded the appearance of the pastoral.
The second half of the dissertation deals with the revival of the pastoral as a genre
and as a mindset in Russian and Western modernity. The subject of the third chapter
represents an overview of the history of the pastoral theme in late eighteenth to nineteenth
century Russia and compares it with European pastoral tradition. It shows that the
national image of pastoral space is based on the image of the aristocratic park, a space
especially intended for socially prescribed bodily (and aesthetic) practices such as
strolling and sight seeing. As a result of this specifically Russian development, the
national adaptation of the pastoral theme became associated with estate life rather than
with wild nature. The fourth chapter discusses various aspects of the pastoral‘s revival in
the turn of the century Russia and compares it with the theme of the pastorale in the
Western fin de siecle. It analyzes the modernist development of the pastoral theme in the
light of what may be called the integrative symbolism of the pastoral, or, in other words,
the genre's ability to convey the symbols of integration through a harmonious relationship
with the environment. This chapter demonstrates that while western Style Moderne
pastoral expresses the controlling authority over nature, Russian pastorals establish
harmony and equality between the subject and the setting of the pastoral. This chapter
also contains a survey of the philosophic background of the Russian Silver Age stemming
from the western romanticist aesthetics, in the works of Schiller and Ruskin; and an
analysis of complicated relationships between the pastoral mind-set and the ideologies of
the Russian symbolism including the so called life-creationism (zhinetvorchestvo).

1
Introduction
In the history of Russian culture, the end of the 19
th
and beginning of the
twentieth century is the period usually associated with the avant-garde . The
technological and scientific revolutions and radical changes in life style and world
perception brought about the insatiable appetite for novelty and will to experiment. Based
on this – admittedly overtly simplistic -- view of the period, the fin de siècle Russia was a
place where one would least expect a revival of the pastoral. After all, what could be
further away from the industrious chaos of the turn of the century cities, with the roar of
motors and the flickering of the cinemascope, than this genre, which we associate with
pristine innocence, stillness, and immutability? Still, the fact remains that
notwithstanding the prevailing urbanist and futurist zeitgeist, the passeism, and in
particular, the pastoral and idyll, experienced a late and unlikely flowering during the
Russian Silver Age.
The explanation of this seeming paradox is the main goal of this study. Its
ultimate subject is the uses of the pastoral themes and imagery in the Russian fin de siècle
art and literature. However, an adequate understanding of this phenomenon requires a
thorough examination of its pre-history. That is why my study is structured according to a
simple chronological scheme: from the birth of the pastoral in antiquity through its
reappearance in the 18
th
and 19
th
century art and poetry and finally to its spectacular fin
de siècle revival.

2
My dissertation is divided into four chapters. In the first three chapters I trace the
history of the classical and Russian pastoral themes, and the fourth chapter moves to the
turn of the century pastoral and, in particular, focuses on the use of the genre as a symbol
of unity with nature in the Western and Russian fin de siècle.
In the first half of my dissertation I look at the origin of the pastoral tradition in Greek-
Roman antiquity. I first focus on the settings of the classical idyll, namely its idealized
landscape, and then turn to the typical plot and participants of the pastoral. In the first
chapter, I discuss the urban and rural aesthetics of the pastoral space in Greek and Roman
classics and examine the relationship between individual and nature that underlie the
genre. In the second chapter I propose an interpretation of the pastoral relationship with
animals as a reminiscence of the traumatic experience of the ritual sacrifice. I aim to
show that the main pastoral theme of reconciliation of species and the unity of people and
animals in the Golden age myth is a response to the experiences of ritual killing, the
archaic rituals that preceded the appearance of the pastoral.
The second half of my dissertation deals with the rebirth of the pastoral as a genre
and as a mindset in Russian and Western modernity. The third chapter represents an
overview of the history of the pastoral theme in late eighteenth to nineteenth century
Russia. I show that the national image of pastoral space is based on the image of the
aristocratic park, a space especially intended for socially prescribed bodily (and aesthetic)
practices such as strolling and sight seeing. As a result of this specifically Russian
development, the national adaptation of the pastoral theme became associated with estate
life rather than with wild nature. I will also focus on another important difference

3
between European and Russian pastoral traditions, namely the fact that for the Russian
pastoralists the principal influence was Horace and his praise of living on the country
estate, rather than Virgil‘s ―Bucolics.‖
Finally, in the fourth chapter I discuss various aspects of the pastoral‘s revival in
the turn of the century Russia. As it is the case throughout the dissertation, I pay special
attention to what may be termed the integrative function of the pastoral, or, in other
words, the genres ability to integrate the individual and the environment and to harmonize
their relationship. This in fact, is another key difference between Russian and Western
modern pastoral traditions that I will discuss: while western Style Moderne pastoral
expresses the controlling authority over nature, Russian pastorals establish harmony and
equality between the subject and the setting of the pastoral. This chapter also contains a
survey of the philosophic background of the Russian Silver Age stemming from the
western romanticist aesthetics, in the works of Schiller and Ruskin; and an analysis of
complicated relationships between the pastoralist mind-set and the ideologies of the
Russian symbolism including the so called life-creationism (zhinetvorchestvo).
This study follows the history of a literary genre, and as such, may be expected to
belong to the domain of literary history. However, the pastoral has a broader scope than
an ordinary literary form and encompass various media (literature, visual art, music,
ballet, even architecture), a philosophical and ideological position, and a psychological
mind-set. This diversity of the subject matter necessitates a variety of research
methodologies and approaches. Thus this study is difficult to characterize in term of a
single method or framework: I use elements of traditional literary analysis and genre

4
history, cultural studies, art history, history of social and bodily practices, and
psychoanalysis.
Throughout the history of Western civilization the pastoral has always served as a
space of peace and contemplation, timeless and immutable, seemingly defended from the
pressures of history and politics. A shepherd with a flute, a shepherdess, their sheep, the
meadow, are imprinted in our collective cultural memory as immediately recognizable
symbols of peace and harmony. However, this constancy is only an appearance, a
culturally constructed illusion. Both this image itself, and all the innumerable recreations
of the pastoral undertaken throughout our history –oftentimes in the periods least
conductive to pastoralist worldview – bear the imprints of their own times. Arcadia is
always the same, and ever different.

5
Chapter 1. Designing Locus Amoenus: Pastoral Environments in Greek
and Roman Art and Life

1.1 Introduction
The subject of this chapter is the construction of pastoral space in the classical
urban environment, and the use of creative practices embodied in the rituals of the
pastoral. In particular, I focus on the analysis of mimesis in the classical pastoral.
There are two types of pastoral locations to be considered separately. The first
type (1) is locus amoenus which often appears in the properly pastoral context but is not
restricted to pastoralism. Rather, it represents a specific environmental and cultural unit
that made an impact on the art of pastoral. The second type (2) is ―Arcadia‖ as a territory
of pastoral action; it is an ideal place that appears only within the framework of the genre.
In contrast to the utopian ―nowhere‖ suggested by Romantic escapist pastoral, both
pastoral locations are mapped against the urban space and prove to be physically and/or
symbolically incorporated in it.
(1) Locus amoenus is located ―somewhere‖ – in the accessible vicinity of the city, or
other habitation, or a cultural landmark. These places are referred to in their physicality,
by sensual experiences they provide. Originally, this kind of a territory is not treated as a
calm retreat from urban calamities, but rather as a compensation for the imperfections of
climate and vegetation. Environmental features make these places potentially perfect
designs for nature to be introduced into the urban space as practically useful areas of rest.

6
These aspect of locus amoenus are apparently manifested, for example, in the ―pastoral‖
passage from Plato's Phaedrus (134 a-d):
Socrates: By Hera, a fair resting-place, full of summer sounds and scents. Here is
this lofty and spreading plane-tree, and the agnus castus high and clustering, in the
fullest blossom and the greatest fragrance; and the stream which flows beneath the
plane-tree is deliciously cold to the feet. Judging from the ornaments and images,
this must be a spot sacred to Achelous and the Nymphs. How delightful is the
breeze: so very sweet; and there is a sound in the air shrill and summerlike which
makes answer to the chorus of the cicadas. But the greatest charm of all is the
grass, like a pillow gently sloping to the head.

Socrates is a typical city dweller with no experience of countryside: he has no economical
interest beyond the city wall, nor is he longing for a retreat from the city. He explicitly
expresses his indifference to countryside nature, and agrees to go beyond the city wall
only because Phaedrus entices him with a declamation he is eager to hear.
Phaedrus: What an incomprehensible being you are, Socrates: when you are in
the country, as you say, you really are like some stranger who is led about by a
guide. Do you ever cross the border? I rather think that you never venture even
outside the gates.
Socrates: Very true, my good friend; and I hope that you will excuse me when
you hear the reason, which is, that I am a lover of knowledge, and the men who
dwell in the city are my teachers, and not the trees or the country. Though I do
indeed believe that you have found a spell with which to draw me out of the city
into the country, like a hungry cow before whom a bough or a bunch of fruit is
waved. For only hold up before me in like manner a book, and you may lead me
all round Attica, and over the wide world. (ibid)

Although Socrates eventually falls for the comforts (cold spring, delightful breeze, gentle
grass) and sensual resourcefulness (―full of summer sounds and scents‖) of this place, and
compliments Phaedrus for being ―an admirable guide‖, he keeps on with his usual
activities there: he composes two speeches and discusses philosophical issues. In
particular, one of the discussion topics is a genuinely urban art of rhetoric. Although the

7
erotic topic of the both speeches can be easily associated with pastoralism, it does not
show any particular incompatibility with urban environment, as such dialogs as
Symposium suggest. Moreover, as the examples of the Academy and Lyceum prove, this
kind of places located in the city can be associated with such a specifically urban
phenomenon as philosophical school.

Figure 1: House of Livia

In the late 2
nd
to 1
st
century BC building villa urbana, urban villas, became
popular in Rome whereas before that the concept of villa was associated with the
countryside environment. In contrast to rustic farms, villae rusticae used for agriculture,

8
villae urbanae were designed for luxury and comfort and were provided with enclosed
gardens whose main function was pleasure. Simultaneously, similar but much larger
properties called villae suburbanae, suburban villas, were established beyond the city
wall, which entails that the city margin was viewed as a part of the city. Some of these
outstandingly large estates were built within a city as well. The name of hortus by which
villae suburbanae were often referred (Farrar 1998, p. 22) suggests that the landscape
constituent is perceived as a meaningful center of the entire villa's architecture, and the
villa, thus, implicates the incorporation of a countryside element in the urban space. The
Roman garden can be viewed as a symbolic representation of the benign environment of
locus amoenus enclosed both within the house and the city. The connection is made
explicit in the wall images of garden sceneries. Although wall paintings might not render
the design of Roman gardens accurately, they articulate ideal expectations. Such frescoes
as the garden scene from the House of Livia (fig.1) and the one from the House of
Alexander clearly represent typical locus amoenus environments with rich vegetation,
trees, flowers, and birds.
(2) The Arcadian world of shepherds is identified as countryside and opposed to the city
by definition: pastoral space and the city are mapped against each other, and the pastoral
countryside functions as the ―other‖ of the city. Thus, the majority of plot twists in
Daphnis and Chloe is triggered by the characters from the city who intrude upon the
pastoral space and engender crucial changes in it. However, the city and the country are
not irreversibly separated: there is a continuous exchange and communication between
the two worlds.

9
The city plays an important part in classical pastoral texts. In contrast to later
pastorals, the characters of Roman pastoral are slaves involved in economic activities
(although they are mostly shown at the leisure moments), and the ongoing economic
exchange between the city and pastoral space is both implicated and put explicitly, as in
Virgil's Eclogue 1 («The city they call Rome, Meliboeus, I, foolish one! thought was like
this of ours, whither we shepherds are wont to drive the tender younglings of our flocks»;
«...while Galatea ruled me, I had neither hope of freedom nor though of savings. Though
many a victim left my stalls, and many a rich cheese was pressed for the thankless town,
never would my hand come home money-laden»). In Longus's novel the protagonists
leave the pastoral world when their freeborn origin is disclosed, and join the urban life of
their aristocratic families. Nevertheless, they often come back to the village where they
continue as shepherds enjoying ―a lot of pastoral time‖ (Longus, IV.39).
In Virgil's Eclogue 8, a young witch performs magic rites to bring back her presumably
unfaithful lover. Each description of a ritual she performs ends with the refrain ―Bring
Daphnis home from town, bring him, my songs!‖ In the last stanza the refrain changes to
―Cease, Daphnis came back from the town, cease now, my songs‖ (my translation), when
he returns to the pastoral world.
The tendency to incorporate Arcadian world into city context manifests itself in
Roman wall painting. The extensive wall spaces in Roman houses were filled, according
to Vitruvius, with the images of various places, among which there were some distinctly
pastoral ones: ―[the ancients]...adorned their walkways, because of their extensive length,
with varieties of landscape, creating images from the known characteristics of various

10
places. For ports, promontories, seashores, rivers, springs, straits, shrines, sacred groves,
mountains, herds, and shepherds are depicted...‖ (7.5.2). Made in the technique of
illusionist imitation of trompe d'oeil as was typical in Roman houses, these images
literary introduced natural environments in the house space. Reversely, the countryside
space presented in Roman art was endowed with features of urban culture. In considering
this passage, Eleanor Leach points out that ―like the ten Eclogues this catalogue includes
both wild and civilized aspects of nature‖ (Leach 1974, p.84). She also refers to a
specific combination of nature and civilization in the wall images of sacral-idyllic
landscapes. These landscapes showed shepherds with their herds against the background
of religious buildings and other architectural forms, as, for instance, the fresco from the
Villa Suburbana dei Quintilli and three frescoes from the Villa of Agrippa Postumus at
Boscotrecase. The idealized landscape thus created, as she puts it, established ―a link
between bucolic leisure and the civilized world.‖ The compositional and symbolic center
of these and similar landscapes is set by architectural constructions emphasized by an
almost total lack of vegetation (not like in the garden scenes).
The emphasis on artistry and the creative role of art are important statements in
symbolist poetics; however, the approach to art as a technical means of creation seems to
be an inherent feature of the pastoral genre. Traditional pastoral poetics consistently
evokes the theme of artistic craftsmanship.
The product of pastoral art embraced within the space of urban culture
compensates for the lack of a natural environment. The art functions as a mediator in the
delivery of the ―pastoral oasis‖ (as a poem, an image or a garden) and simultaneously

11
symbolizes the technical potential of urban culture, its ability to provide for the creation
of such a place. The process of mediation and the game of re-encoding between various
artistic media was an important pastoral theme even at the very inception of the genre.
Thus, for instance, in Longus‘s Daphnis and Chloe the story itself is inspired by the
painting on the wall of Eros‘s sanctuary in Lesbos. It is framed as an ekphrasis, that is, a
rhetorical declamation based upon an image. A brief list of all the contents of the mural is
provided in the prologue, and the rest of the text is referred to as a commentary or
explanation of this list:
After gazing admiringly at many other scenes, all of romantic nature [and in
particular, those related to love], I was seized by a longing to write a verbal
equivalent [a response] to the painting. So, I found someone to explain the picture
to me, and [and upon completing research], I composed a work [created an
explanation of the image] in four volumes. (Prologue 1.1)
The use of ekphrasis as a device in a literary work is not unique. It can also be found in
Catullus‘s poem 64. The Theseus and Ariadne narrative, central to the poem, draws on
the images on the bedspread that the Moirae wove as a wedding gift for Peleus and
Thetis. However, in Longus‘s novella, in contrast to Catullus‘s poem, the reference to the
painting is more than a motivation for the rest of the story to be introduced. The image is
presented as an inherent element of the story and engenders the creation of the entire
pastoral narrative insofar as the pastoral is explicitly presented as an imitation of the
image.
Contemplation of the mural on the wall of a temple, located in a locus amoenus
transforms the narrator from a gentleman on a hunting trip into a pastoral author. The
juxtaposition of the painting with nature brings out the narrator‘s awareness of the

12
landscape's aesthetic potential of the landscape and thus prompts a description of the
―pastoral oasis‖ in the Prologue, as well as triggering the creation of the entire pastoral
world of the rest of the text:
When I was hunting in Lesbos, I saw in a wood sacred to the Nymphs, the most
beautiful thing that I have ever seen – a painting that told a love-story. The wood
itself was beautiful enough, full of trees and flowers, and watered by a single
spring which nourished both the flowers and the trees, but the picture was even
more delightful, combining excellent technique with a romantic subject.
(Prologue, 1.1)

However, in Longus‘s Prologue the impulse to actualize pastoral sensibility and
render the locus amoenus in a literary text does not originate from the environment, but
from art. The narrator is prompted to address the enjoyable sacred landscape in the cliché
terms of a ―pastoral oasis‖ after contemplating the artifact. The ―locus amoenus‖ in the
Prologue is, therefore, perceived through the process of comparing nature with the
painting, and as a result, it is viewed in a new artistic medium, language. On one hand,
the presence of the painting displaces the supposed ―natural‖ basis for attraction of the
locus. However, by the same token, the act of contemplation focuses the narrator's gaze
on the ―artistic‖ aspect of the landscape, causing it to perceive the locus as an artifact. As
a result, in the process of rendering the landscape in the language, the art provides a
mediating frame for the locus.

1.2 Art and Nature in Longus’s Pastoral Myths
The presentation of the locus amoenus in pastoral literature lacks descriptive
depth and detail: it emphasizes the sensual (especially tactile and auditory) experiences of

13
the place at the expense of its visual aspects. The pastoral locus amoenus is an image
invested with a specific physicality based on the direct evocation of natural objects. The
landscape descriptions in pastoral, to use Susan Stewart‘s expression, ―point to and
designate‖ natural objects and ―give frame‖ to them rather than depicting and
constructing them.
The mediation of nature through art is at stake in the myths that explicitly address
the identity of the pastoral genre in Daphnis and Chloe – the myth of Syrinx (II, 34),
regarding the origin of that pastoral instrument, and the myth of Echo (III, 23), about the
origin of the pastoral voice. In both myths the protagonists sacrifice their bodies but
acquire power, art and immortality insofar as they become absorbed into nature.
In both myths the protagonist is disembodied while her voice remains and hovers
over the pastoral location. In the Syrinx myth, the pretty shepherdess, gifted with a
beautiful voice, made a sarcastic comment about Pan's overtures to her (―She said she
does not want to take as a lover [someone who was] neither a goat nor a complete man‖
II, 34). Trying to escape him as he attempted to rape her, she hid in the reeds and
―disappeared into a marsh.‖ Pan cut down the reeds and tied reeds of unequal length
together in correspondence with their unequal love, and thus invented the musical
instrument that bears the girl‘s name.
In the Echo myth, the beautiful girl, who was the half-mortal, half-divine daughter
of one of the pastoral Nymphs, lives on as a voice after her violent death. Like Syrinx, she
aroused Pan‘s anger by rejecting him, and also because he envied her musical art (she was
taught by the Muses to play the pipe, flute, lute and lyre, and also to sing). Pan drove the

14
other shepherds insane, so that they tore Echo to pieces and cast them over the entire
Earth, while Echo continued her song. To please the Nymphs, Earth concealed her
remains, but preserved her musical ability (tēn mousikēn, "the music art"). Echo retained
her voice and could imitate every sound, including Pan himself playing the pipes. When
Pan hears her voice, he thinks it is one of his students and he pursues her through the
mountains trying ―to find out who this elusive pupil could be.‖ (III, 23)
In these myths both physical violence and control (in the Syrinx myth, Pan is
playing the pipes; in the Echo myth, Pan is singing the songs which Echo imitates) are
concomitant with the creation of pastoral song. The source of the violence is the very
subject of the pastoral world, represented by Pan and shepherds. There is a contrast
between these myths and the absence of violence in the Prologue where Longus‘s
storyteller sets about creating the pastoral. The storyteller‘s performance is spontaneous
in that he willingly sets out to compete with the mural, although there is a small degree of
coercion in that it emits irresistible charm. The contrast is underscored by means of the
opposition between the female characters and the male storyteller. Violence and its
opposite are conventionally assigned. The passive element in the female protagonists of
the myth is reinforced by the fact both myths are narrated to Chloe by male characters
whose sexual desire for her is frustrated. The two girls in the myths symbolically
substitute for Chloe. As a result, the tension between the passivity of the pastoral author
and the aggressive force of the pastoral environment is particularly highlighted. The
juxtaposition of the myths and the Prologue clarifies the nature of both the pastoral sign
and pastoral imitation. The storyteller produces an interpretation of the painting – and in

15
this case the subject of his narration is already mediated through an art form. His work is
intellectual in that he decodes and interprets the painting. The terms Longus uses to
describe his activity are ―research‖ and ―explanation‖: ―and after having conducted a
search (anadzētēsamenos – search out, discover), I worked out an explanation (exēgētēn –
guide, explanation) of the image in four books‖ [Prologue, 2.2-3 my translation].
The girls, on the contrary, create songs in a more physical way. The absence of a
body in this case does not imply that song is an intellectual activity. The theme of the
body in general is highlighted by the fact that the protagonists lose their real bodies: after
all, the story concerns survival in a substitute body. On the other hand, the physicality of
the voice is reinforced since it is the only remaining element of their real bodies.
The female protagonists produce their songs in a particular state of symbiosis with
the environment. In the myth, it is both a physical fusion and an imitation of the actors
since in her capacity as a musical instrument, Echo imitates Pan‘s song and Syrinx also
imitates Pan‘s singing. The presence and absence of violence thus delineates the
opposition between two types of artistic activity: mimetic activity, which physically
renders the object of imitation, and semiotic activity, which encodes it by means of the
language of signs.
However, the elements of submission and control in both myths are not restricted
to either party – whether the girls or Pan‘s realm. On the contrary, both types of agents in
the myths can be either in the position of submissive passivity or power. In the Syrinx
myth, although Pan controls the girl‘s performance as a musical instrument, it is she who
is one with the power of song that Pan is eager to gain. In the Echo myth, the relationship

16
of control and passivity between the girl‘s voice (all that physically remains of her) and
Pan is characterized by an ambivalent reciprocity. On the one hand, as a bare voice, Echo
submits to Pan‘s authority and is called Pan‘s student, even though, as we are initially
informed, she was originally trained by the Muses. On the other hand, after being
disembodied, Echo becomes more powerful than before, since she is now able to deceive
Pan.
The mimetic song in the myths sets in relief a particularly ambivalent and
somehow tautological relationship between the pastoral author and the subject of pastoral
song. The pastoral author in the myths is exposed to the impact of her own song‘s subject,
that is to nature as Pan's realm, and there is ongoing interaction between the author and
the subject. In this interaction both the author and the subject display control and
passivity. The paradox of the author‘s standing in the myth is that her position within the
pastoral world (as in Virgil, for instance, where the songs are produced by agents of the
pastoral world) is taken to the extreme: she becomes a part of pastoral nature. This is
symbolized by the girls‘ ―fusion‖ with the pastoral environment. The particular area of
tension in the myths is thus a creative process in which the subject of the songs remain
independent of the author‘s intent, and the author‘s role cannot be described as a semiotic
manipulation with the subject. The image of disembodiment in the myth of Echo
especially articulates her submission to nature's power. Deprived of her body, Echo
cannot change anything in the environment around her; only render this environment
through her song. In other words, although these female singers sing about nature, it is
nature itself which represents an active agency in the relationship with the singer. The

17
singer is passive and dependent upon the environment's agency by imitating it in her
song. That is, the myths introduced by Longus as a representation of pastoral song refer
to its mimetic aspect. In mimesis, nature is not controlled by the author who creates a sign
for it but retains its status as ―raw material‖ in the process of imitation. It is not
transformed through the process of creating signification but rather ―delivered‖ through
the mediation of art. The examples of poetic pastoral below illustrate this mimetic aspect
of pastoral art.

1.3 The Singing Mountains in Virgil’s Eclogues
Self-representations of pastoral art in the Eclogues draw on the forms of mediation
of nature through ritual art – both imitative dance and song. As Thomas Habinek
demonstrates in The World of Roman Song, Virgil‘s Eclogues both mark and thematize
the moment of the voice‘s abstraction from bodily practices in the context of the Roman
ritual. According to Habinek, Roman song occurred as a separation of the autonomous
voice within combined ritual practices. Abstracting the voice from the context of bodily
imitation provides for its symbolic domination over the body, and thus the relationship
between voice and body becomes a counterpart of the relationship of power and control
beyond ―the immediate ritual context‖: ―Roman singers‘ ritual mastery is a prototype of
the large-scale relations of power (aristocrat and peasant, emperor and senate, male and
female, master and slave) more commonly studied by ancient historians.‖ (Habinek 2005,
p. 3)

18
The idea of control is thus embodied in the poetic voice, which Habinek
(following Susan Stewart) calls a ―willed aspect of the body.‖ (ibid, p. 138) There are
two forms of control associated with voice: the first is manifested in the opposition of
voice to bodily ritual, and the second is voice‘s control over the pastoral world. The
presentation of this latter relationship in the Eclogues is, however, not free of ambiguity.
On the one hand, the pastoral world is created by song. Habinek expounds on this
theme when considering Silenus‘s song of wisdom in Eclogue 6: ―the poem thematizes
the emergence of voice from play, the development of voice as a ‗willed aspect of the
body.‘ Virgil modestly refrains from ascribing such a transformation to himself, yet his
evocation of Apollo in effect grants divine sanction to song. No wonder then that Silenus,
who is represented as singing, sings of nothing less than the coming into being of the
cosmos. He, like Gallus later in the poem, is granted what Whitman will call 'the divine
power to speak words,' the ability, in effect, to bring the word into being though naming.‖
(ibid, p. 138)
On the other hand, the song of a divine origin is conveyed by mountains and by
other large-scale natural pastoral environmental phenomena. The ambiguity of the
relationship between the voice and the pastoral world is similar to the one in Longus‘s
myths. In considering the logic of this ambiguity, I aim to demonstrate the specifics of the
mimetic sign used in pastoral art. The inner logic of the cliché image of singing
mountains entails a mimetic reciprocity of the pastoral world as a signified and the song
as a signifier.

19
Eclogue 5 describes the establishing of the pastoral cult of Daphnis after he
acquires divine status. The first song of the poem narrates Daphnis‘s death and depicts
how he is mourned by nature and by its gods, whereas the subject of the second song is
Daphnis‘s apotheosis. Both songs incorporate poetic texts produced by divine and natural
forces. In the first song, trees, rivers and mountains witness nature‘s grief at Daphnis‘s
death (20–44): ―For Daphnis, cut off by a cruel death, the Nymphs wept – you hazels and
rivers bear witness to the Nymphs .... On those days, Daphnis, none drove the pastured
kine to the cool streams; no four-footed beast tasted the brook or touched a blade of
grass‖; ―the wild mountains and woods tell us that even African lions moaned over‖
Daphnis‘s death. The song ends with Daphnis‘s own instructions for his funeral
arrangements, and introduces a verse composed by himself:
Strew the turf with leaves, shepherds, curtain the springs with shade – such
honours Daphnis charges you to pay him. And build a tomb, and on the tomb
place, too, this verse: ‗Daphnis was I amid the woods, known from here even to
the stars. Fair was my flock, but fairer I, their shepherd.‘

In the second song, after Daphnis becomes a god, the wilderness is transformed by divine
agency, in this case in the form of light (56–80): ―Daphnis, in radiant beauty, marvels at
Heaven‘s unfamiliar threshold, and beneath his feet beholds the clouds and stars.
Therefore frolic glee seizes the woods and all the countryside, and Pan, and the
shepherds, and the Dryad maids.‖ The agency of light engenders the wilderness‘s
transformation into an ideal pastoral world by imposing a pastoral ethics of love and
peace: ―The wolf plans no ambush for the flock, and nets no snare for the stag; kindly
Daphnis loves peace.‖

20
Simultaneously, the mountains and other natural objects in that topography join
voices in celebrating Daphnis‘s apotheosis. The addressee of their song is Menalcas, the
shepherd who composes and performs the second song (62–65): ―The very mountains,
with woods unshorn, joyously fling their voices starward; the very rocks, the very groves
ring out the song: ‗A god is he, a god, Menalcas!‘‖
The mountains in this song are the counterpart of a divine agency: they are
endowed with the power of naming, and their song is the guarantor of the order of things
in which Daphnis is a god, and Menalcas is a subject of his divine power.
The singing mountains in the eclogue clearly substitute for Apollo singing a song.
Whereas the ―pastoral transformation‖ of the environment is explicitly attributed to
Daphnis (―kindly Daphnis loves peace‖ [61]), Apollo is supposed to be responsible for
the origin of the song. This possibility follows from the correspondence of two events
referred to in the poem (the establishing of peace and the creation of the song) and the
two pairs of altars that Menalcas erects in the woods (65): ―Lo here are four altars – two,
see, for you, Daphnis; two for Phoebus!‖ However, introducing a subject of pastoral
nature, such as mountains as a substitute for Apollo and his role, pastoral nature
constitutes a shift in the paradigm of creating world by song. The singing mountains are
implicitly subordinated to divine agency, and the naming in their case is a response to the
fact that the world is already established. They provide a territory where the divine action
is performed, and the function of their song is to reassure the outcome of this action, and
to replicate it. Moreover, the introduction of the analogy between the poetic voice and the
voice of the mountains in the context of Virgil's pastoral is controversial.

21
The variety of images of singing nature in the Eclogues show that this
prosopopoetic figure is associated with a certain logical tension: there are passages that
tend to clarify such cases of ambiguity and use a more self-evident symbolism. The more
logical solutions are connected with a more realistic and less prosopopoetic presentation
of the environment. Thus, in Eclogue 6, the song of Apollo is memorized by heart by
pastoral nature in the line 82. In the next line, the singing is even more realistically
presented as re-echoing – now of Silenus‘s song:
All the songs that of old Phoebus rehearsed, while happy Eurotas listened and
bade his laurels learn by heart – these Silenus sings. The re-echoing valleys fling
them again to the stars, till Vesper gave the word to fold the flocks and tell their
tale, as he set forth over an unwilling sky.

However, even this realistic picture exposes some tensions and confusions of
meaning that violate the linear opposition of a controlling voice and subordinate nature in
the pastoral. On the one hand, the world in the poem is controlled by Silenus‘s
cosmological song. On the other hand, as this passage evidences, the voice of nature is
incorporated into the pastoral as a mediator of the song created by Apollo, the divine
poet-creator, and therefore controls it from the inside. The organization of Silenus‘s song
is not linear: in order to sing about nature the poet is bound to use the song provided by
nature itself.
Simultaneously, there are other patterns that break the linearity of the relationship
between the pastoral voice and its subject. Therefore, Virgil's eclogues show two major
tendencies: the tendency to identify the poem with its landscape, and the tendency to
present poetic control in terms of physical agency.

22
In Silenus‘s song, wilderness is opposed to organized nature. The song begins as
a cosmological account of the origins of the universe, then moves to the origin of men,
the Golden Age of harmony with nature and men‘s fall from nature (41–42): ―Then he
tells of the stones that Pyrrha threw, of Saturn‘s reign, of Caucasian eagles, and the theft
of Prometheus.‖
Prometheus's theft causes a rift between organized civilization and wilderness. As
Prometheus's theft causes the beginning of civilized life, it simultaneously marks the
stage of man's alienation from the wilderness. After the invention of crafts, man's
involvement with the civilizing of nature simultaneously defines wilderness as such: an
uncontrolled and potentially dangerous environment. Man's attempts to superimpose the
order of civilization on nature simultaneously evokes the counter-activity of the
wilderness. As a result, within the order of the inner song, Prometheus's theft precedes
and marks a stage of development in which wild and civilized orders clash. In the
following lines, Silenus lists men‘s unhappy or tragic encounters with nature, which now
appears as a dangerous and elemental force. The only exception is Cornelius Gallus's
unquestionably positive encounter with nature (64–73):
Then he sings of Gallus, wandering by the streams of Permessus – how one of the
sisterhood [the Muses] led him to the Aonian hills, and how all the choir of
Phoebus rose to do him honour; how Linus, a shepherd of immortal song, his
locks crowned with flowers and bitter parsley, cried to him thus: ―These reeds –
see, take them – the Muses give you – even those they once gave the old Ascraean
[Hesiod], wherewith, as he sang, he would draw the unyielding ash trees down the
mountain sides. With these do you tell of the birth of the Grynean wood, that there
may be no grove wherein Apollo glories more.

23
In contrast to all the previous and subsequent examples, Gallus enters Arcadia, a
benevolent space suggestive of the original harmony of the Golden Age. The place is
referred to as the ―Aonian hills,‖ which brings out its connection with Hesiod‘s poems.
The power of Hesiod‘s song is physical agency: he is able to move trees with his music.
Another place mentioned in this passage, the Grynean wood, or Grynean grove, is
explicitly referred to as a subject of the song to be composed by Gallus. These two spaces
are thus organized by poetic power and simultaneously presented as geographic territories
that exist independently from the poetic authors. In a similar way, in the opening of
Eclogue 6, the groves that the poet sings become simultaneously the poem itself inscribed
on a page (9–12):
Unbidden strains I sing not; still if any there be to read even these my lays – any
whom love of the theme has won – ‗tis of you, Varus, our tamarisks shall sing, of
you all our groves. To Phoebus no page is more welcome than that which bears on
its front the name of Varus.

The beginning of Eclogue 10 introduces a twist to this theme: both the poet and the
pastoral environment, impersonated by the nymph Arethusa, create a song together
(1–6):
My last task this – vouchsafe me it, Arethusa! A few verses I must sing for my
Gallus, yet such as Lycoris herself may read! Who would refuse verses to Gallus!
If, when you glide beneath Sicilian waves, you would not have briny Doris blend
her stream with yours, begin! Let us tell of Gallus‘ anxious loves, while the blunt-
nosed goats crop the tender shrubs.
Arethusa, who patronizes the poet‘s song, has a particular connection with organized
pastoral landscape. According to the myth, she was turned into a subterranean stream and
emerged as a fountain on the island of Ortygia in Sicily.

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The violations of the linear relationship between the voice and its subject matter in
these texts raise the question of how meaning is generated in pastoral art, as well as what
type of signs the pastoral uses. The importance of the theme of singing nature in pastoral
implies a particular anxiety about the forces in nature that allow her to communicate
herself. The persistent controversial presentation of natural objects‘ singing in the
language suggests that the language used here may be an emblematic symbol rather than a
reference to what these objects do (in the poem). One might surmise that the image of
singing mountains refers to a special type of communicating nature that draws on a
relationship between the speaking subject and the subject matter which is different from a
linear opposition between creator and created.
The use of semiotic signs entails the active role of the subject in controlling the
relationship between the signifier and the signified. The subject encodes the signified
through a signifier using a knowledge of the code. This activity is intellectual and
abstracted from the physical reality of both signifier and signified. In contrast, a mimetic
relationship draws upon a different notion of the sign. This sign does not entail the use of
encoding nor does it require the subject to know a code. The subject in ritual imitation
uses the body to imitate another body or thing (as in a dance). The subject can also create
a thing to imitate another body or thing (for example, a wax figure). In both cases, the
subject does it without knowing the code of exact correspondences between the object
used as a signifier and the signified.
These two types of signs – the semiotic and the mimetic – overlap in pastoral song
insofar as the latter combines a verbal text with mimetic play. The mimetic manifests

25
itself not only through the ritual dance that accompanies the performance of a ritual song
(as for instance in Eclogue 5 [73], where the performer imitates ―the dance of Satyrs,‖
and in Eclogue 6, where ―Fauns and fierce beasts [are] sporting in measured dance‖ [27–
28]). The ritual song is also a mimetic activity since it is an activity of the voice. As
Habinek points out:
The double aspect of imitation, as replication and reanimation, is relevant to the
interrelated activities of play and song. Playful song is both a replication and a
reanimation of a pattern or prototype set by someone else. To the extent that it is
play, the emphasis is on replication and on the squandering of energy. To the
extent that it is song, the emphasis is on reanimation, either of the song itself
(cantare) or of the role of autonomous singer (canere). (Habinek 2005, p. 130)

Thus, the song combines semiosis and mimesis. As an organ of sound, the voice produces
abstract symbols and, as an element of the body, it is responsible for imitation.
Simultaneously, a mimetic analogy between the voice and the subject matter of the song
is established; the voice not only dominates it but also becomes it and is impacted by it.
Accordingly, this asymmetrical tripartite relationship between the voice and the
subject of the song is supposed to be manifest in any song. However, one might suggest
that only in the pastoral is it thematized by the use of the ―language of the mountains,
woods, etc.‖ Insofar as the subject matter of pastoral song is the natural environment, this
theme exemplifies an inquiry into the capacity of nature to be expressed and into the
possibility of a mutual interaction between the mental and the material.
These aspects of the theme of the ―language of the mountains‖ can be viewed in
the light of Benjamin‘s concept of the ―language of things,‖ presented in his essay ―On
Language as Such and on the Language of Man.‖ In this work, Benjamin opposes the

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understanding of language as a unidirectional phenomenon of signification in which
human subjects project their mental organization onto nature. He delves into the
phenomenology of language as that part of man‘s mental being which communicates with
nature. Benjamin uses the phrase ―the language of things‖ as the key notion in his design
for the origin of language: he considers this origin as a transition from material language
to mental language. As Howard Caygill observes, reading is Benjamin's universal model
for perception. Caygill introduces his interpretation by quoting Benjamin‘s fragment ―On
Perception in Itself”: ―Perception is reading. Only that appearing in the surface is
readable... Surface that is configuration – absolute continuity.‖ (Caygill 1998, p. 3-4)
According to Caygill‘s argument, the condition for legibility in Benjamin is the
presence of a configuration of objects. In agreement with this claim, Benjamin‘s
understanding of language is broader than that of a system of abstract and intentional
signs and extends to material signs as well, which are assigned a meaning when taken as a
display of a certain unity:
We are concerned here with nameless, nonacoustic languages, languages issuing
from matter; here we should recall the material community of things in their
communication.
Moreover, the communication of things is certainly communal in a way that
grasps the world as such as an undivided whole. (Benjamin 2007, p. 330)

In the case of material languages, both reading and the assigning of meaning are
separated, insofar as the latter is a mental process and is possible only in the transition to
verbal language. It is possible to read the material language of things: ―to read what was
never written.‖ (ibid, p. 336) ―Such a reading is the most ancient: reading before all
languages, from the entrails, the stars, or dances.‖ (ibid) However, understanding occurs

27
only when the ―message‖ is ―transcribed‖ in a sounding language: only sound, according
to Benjamin, makes language formal (i.e., symbolic?) and mental, and the language of
things is an imperfect and secondary one insofar as it lacks sound:
Language itself is not perfectly expressed in things themselves. This proposition
has a double meaning in its metaphorical and literal senses: the languages of
things are imperfect, and they are dumb. Things are denied the pure formal
principle of language – sound. They can only communicate to one another through
a more or less material community. This community is immediate and infinite,
like every linguistic communication; it is magical (for there is also a magic of
matter). The incomparable feature of human language is that its magical
community with things is immaterial and purely mental, and the symbol of this is
sound. (ibid, p. 321)

According to Benjamin's dialectics, there are many ―languages other than that of
man,‖ but the language of man is the only ―naming‖ language. In giving things names,
man evokes the things‘ mental existence and communicates that element of it which is
capable of being communicated. Benjamin declares: ―the linguistic being of all things is
their language‖ (ibid, p. 316) and remarks that ―this proposition is untautological, for it
means: that which in a mental entity is communicable is its language.‖ (ibid)
Although the mental existence of things is a fact of objective reality, man is
responsible for establishing it. This perhaps can be illustrated as follows: a table is
recognizable and reproducible in accordance with its rational form, but it is man‘s task to
think to conceive its form conceptually:
To whom does the lamp communicate itself? The mountain? The fox? But here
the answer is: to man. This is not anthropomorphism. The truth of this answer is
shown in human knowledge [a possible reference to the mimetic cognitive
ability?] and perhaps also in art. Furthermore, if the lamp and the mountain and
the fox did not communicate themselves to man, how should he be able to name
them? And he names them; he communicates himself by naming them. (ibid, p.
317)

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Benjamin declares: ―the language of man speaks in words. Man therefore communicates
his own mental being (insofar as it is communicable) by naming all other things.‖ (ibid)
At the same time, Benjamin does not deny the existence of other non-verbal
languages which, however, lack the capacity to constitute man‘s mental, or linguistic,
being: ―It should not be accepted that we know of no languages other than that of man,
for this is untrue. We only know of no naming language other than that of man; to
identify naming language with language as such is to rob linguistic theory of its deepest
insights. It is therefore the linguistic being of man to name things.‖ (ibid)
Benjamin introduces a hierarchy of languages whose upper level is occupied by
the naming language. The intermediate level is represented by the languages of the arts,
including the language of poetry, which is at the same time a sub-level of the naming
language; whereas the languages of visual art and sculpture constitute sub-levels of the
language of things:
There is a language of sculpture, of painting, of poetry. Just as the language of
poetry is partly, if not solely, founded on the name language of man, it is very
conceivable that the language of sculpture or painting is founded on certain kinds
of thing languages, that in them we find a translation of the language of things into
an infinitely higher language, which may still be of the same sphere. (ibid, p. 330)

In the perspective opened by Benjamin‘s concepts of verbal and non-verbal
languages, the paradox and ambiguity of the pastoral ―language of the mountains‖ can be
resolved. Indeed, since man develops a linguistic identity as an addressee of the language
of things, he perceives his natural environment as a display of (uncreated) signs and he re-
enforces these signs as artistic and linguistic signs. Accordingly, landscape in pastoral has

29
a double role as both a subject of the song and as an agency that created it. The
relationship between subject and object, expression and content, and signifier and
signified in pastoral entails iconicity, in the sense of a certain fusion, or homology of
signifier and signified. This iconicity characterizes the presentation of pastoral space in
poetry, painting, and architecture.

1.4 Catalogs, Lists and the Reproduction of Space
A tendency to import places is common in the literary and visual representations
of classical pastoral, as well as in Roman garden design. The examples of wall
decorations cited in the earlier section on the locus amoenus demonstrate how the Roman
house incorporated imaginary natural environments: garden scenes and grottoes, for
example, within architectural constructions. Whereas sacral-idyllic landscapes are
presented separately from their surrounding space and in imitation of a perspective view,
the garden scenes and grottoes are an intrinsic part of the house and replicate natural
environments within the house. A good example is the grotto in the garden scene from the
Villa of P. Fannius Sinistor at Boscoreale. The painting is a clear-cut presentation of a
topographically interesting landscape. It is placed in between painted columns, which
leads one to believe it is a part of the house's architecture.
A peristyle enclosure in the Roman garden itself conveys the idea of the
incorporation of one space into another: thus, nature is imported into urban space. On the
other hand, some of the species, both wild and domesticated, arranged within the garden

30
space are imported – in the symbolic sense of the impact of wild nature and also in the
concrete sense of importing domesticated species from foreign countries.
The export of geographic places is a common practice in Mediterranean cults.
Thus, Xenophon provides an example of an ―imported landscape‖ in his Anabasis (5.13).
The land sacred to Artemis that he establishes on his Greek estate is organized as a
miniature copy of the precinct of the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus:
Upon receiving it [the money] Xenophon bought a plot of ground for the goddess
in a place which Apollo's oracle appointed. As it chanced, there flowed through
the plot a river named Selinus; and at Ephesus likewise a Selinus river flows past
the temple of Artemis….The temple itself is like the one at Ephesus, although
small as compared with great, and the image of the goddess, although cypress
wood as compared with gold, is like the Ephesian image.
This passage suggests that the objects of the environment are treated as imitative, or
iconic, signs, and the design of the place sets off the ―reading‖ of natural objects as such
signs.
In literature, the use of lists of natural objects is endowed with a particular ability
to convey the physical presence of the objects. The use of catalog-like narratives of
description is a characteristic feature of Homer‘s epics. This kind of description can be
exemplified by the famous Cave of the Nymphs in Odyssey (V.55–70):
But when he had reached the island which lay afar, then forth from the violet sea
he came to land, and went his way until he came to a great cave, wherein dwelt
the fair-tressed nymph; and he found her within. A great fire was burning on the
hearth, and from afar over the isle there was a fragrance of cleft cedar and juniper,
as they burned; but she within was singing with a sweet voice as she went to and
fro before the loom, weaving with a golden shuttle. Round about the cave grew a

31
luxuriant wood, alder and poplar and sweet-smelling cypress, wherein birds long
of wing were wont to nest, owls and falcons and sea-crows with chattering
tongues, who ply their business on the sea. And right there about the hollow cave
ran trailing a garden vine, in pride of its prime, richly laden with clusters. And
fountains four in a row were flowing with bright water hard by one another,
turned one this way, one that. And round about soft meadows of violets and
parsley were blooming. There even an immortal, who chanced to come, might
gaze and marvel, and delight his soul.

Homer‘s description emphasizes sensual beauty and the enjoyment of the beautiful
setting. Although the tendency to list objects in this passage is obvious, it differs from a
pure catalog in that it shows a distinct descriptive purpose: the reader is invited to marvel
at the place that Hermes sees. This garden image is invested with the ―plasticity‖ that
Erich Auerbach identifies as a crucial quality of Homer‘s descriptive art. According to
Auerbach‘s interpretation of Homer‘s mimesis, the descriptive excesses in the epic poems
create an object that is a detailed and tangible imitation of reality. Although the narration
does not render the place‘s topography, and actually visualizing it would take some effort,
the narrator is concerned with the order in which the details appear in the narrative. In
contrast to this epic narrative pattern, the pastoral shows a tendency to use pure catalogs
with no details that would help in visualizing what they describe. But at the same time,
catalog narratives are not concerned with the order of narration either. These descriptions
entail a different kind of visualizing and a different narrative purpose. What prompts the
reader to visualize in his imagination the elements listed in the catalog is the sheer fact of
naming them. Here is an example of a catalog-type description of a garden landscape in
Daphnis and Chloe:
It [the garden] contained all sorts of trees, apple trees, myrtles, pear-trees,
pomegranate-trees, fig trees and olives. On the one side there was a tall vine that
grew over the apple trees and pear -trees; its grapes were turning dark, as if

32
ripening in competition with the apples and the pears. So much for the cultivated
trees. There were also cypresses and laurels and plane-trees and pines. All these
were overgrown, not by a vine, but by ivy; and the clusters of ivy-berries, which
were big and beginning to turn black, looked exactly like bunches of grapes.
The fruit trees were in the middle...and the other trees stood round them….There
were also flowerbeds, in which some of the flowers were wild and some were
cultivated. The cultivated ones were roses, hyacinths and lilies; the wild ones were
violets, narcissi and pimpernels (IV.2).

A similar garden description is presented in II.3 where Philetas, a wise old shepherd,
describes the garden he grows:
In spring there are roses, lilies, hyacinths and both kinds of violet, in summer
there are poppies and pears and all sort of apples, and now there are grapes and
figs and pomegranates and the fruit of the green myrtle….it‘s overhung by trees
and full of shade and watered by three springs. In fact, if you took away the fence,
my garden would look exactly as a small wood.
The lack of a complex narrative organization in these lists underscores the free-standing
iconic character of the referents whose evocation is the main function of the description.
At the same time, the mimetic character of the bare evocation of natural objects
guarantees the reproducibility of catalog-like descriptions in other media where iconic
signs are also available – in painting or gardening, for instance.

1.5 The Physicality of Pastoral Mimesis
and the Interchangeability of Verbal and Visual Images
The affinity between mimetic descriptions (that is, descriptions based upon iconic
images) and real life arrangements of natural objects can be observed in a passage from
Eclogue 2 which follows the catalog pattern. Corydon‘s song in the eclogue presents a list
of the gifts he offers the beautiful Alexis in exchange for his love. The arrangements

33
described, in lines 45–50 in particular, resemble the creation of a gift parcel, perhaps a
decorated basket or vase:
Come hither, lovely boy! See, for you the Nymphs bring lilies in heaped-up
baskets; for you the fair Naiad, plucking pale violets and poppy heads, blends
narcissus and sweet-scented fennel flower; then, twining them with cassia and
other sweet herbs, sets off the delicate hyacinth with the golden marigold. My
own hands will gather quinces, pale with tender down, and chestnuts, which my
Amaryllis loved. Waxen plums I will add – this fruit, too, shall have its honour.
You too, O laurels, I will pluck, and you, their neighbour myrtle, for so placed you
blend sweet fragrance.

The descriptions of the gifts focus on the objects‘ physicality: they draw on sensual
perceptions, not only those of sight, but also of smell, taste and touch (e.g., the ―quinces,
pale with tender down,‖ the ―waxen plums,‖ referring to the fruits‘ textures). The
iconicity of the images thus created is illustrated in the episode of picking a large red
apple in Book 3 of Daphnis and Chloe.
The final scene of this book introduces a landscape description of an apple garden with a
―close-up‖ of the most beautiful apple, which Daphnis then picks for Chloe. The aesthetic
appeal of the apples of the garden is based on their physical qualities, especially smell:
Some of the apples had fallen down, but the rest were still on the trees. Those on
the ground smelled sweeter, those on the branches looked fresher: the former
smelt like wine, the latter shone like gold.
One apple-tree had been stripped of all its fruit and leaves. Every branch was bare,
expect that right at top of the very topmost branches dangled a single apple. It was
a fine big apple and had more scent by itself than all the rest put together.

The focus of the description on the fruit‘s physicality is a calculated effect, achieved by
the use of parallelism, an economical vocabulary and the avoidance of verbs, thus
reinforcing the adjectives. It can be seen more clearly in a word-by-word translation:
[there were] many apples…those on the ground more sweet-smelling, and those on the

34
trees more in bloom; those [the former] smelt like wine, and these [the latter] shone like
gold. One apple tree had been harvested, and had neither a fruit, nor a leaf: all the
branches were bare. But one apple was attached high up at the top – big, and beautiful,
and of the many [apples], unique in its sweet odor. (My translation)
Later in the scene, Daphnis picks the apple against Chloe‘s s admonitions, and
gives it to her with a playful apologetic speech. The apple becomes the subject of a
mocking declamation in which it is presented as a symbolic object sacred to Venus and
calling to mind the judgment of Paris. Although an appreciation of Chloe‘s beauty is the
theme of the scene, the big, beautiful apple is its compositional center, and its superb
physical qualities are the reason for its description. The effect of this description turns on
its readers‘ ability to conjure up the apple‘s qualities – its color, size, form and smell – in
their imagination. Similar principles governing the representation of natural objects can
be observed both in Roman frescoes displaying picked fruit and in those of garden
landscapes. Thus, the mimetic qualities of the fruit are emphasized in the vase with figs in
the fresco from the Villa of Oplontis, and in the fruit in the frescoes from the House of M.
Lucretius Frontus, Pompeii: the one representing a rooster and a pomegranate, and the
other representing various fruits. The painting is not illusionist, in that the fruits cannot be
confused with real ones, but the style of imitation emphasizes their texture and tangibility.
The mimetic effect, however, manifests itself not only in the form, but also in the
approach to the subject matter. This difference is particularly obvious, when compared
with European realist still lifes. In modern still lifes, fruits are combined with man-made
things as elements in a composition. It is the entire composition that is the subject of

35
illusionist effects: the representation of objects depends on how the entire composition is
seen in reality. In Roman still life paintings, on the other hand, the purpose of
representation is the individual object in itself: if there are many fruits the focus tends to
be on each one of them, and as a result, the composition is ―spread out.‖ The composition
is often linear, unless the pieces of fruit are placed in an enclosed receptacle. An
interesting example of how linear composition is privileged over the use of a receptacle is
provided by a Pompeian still life representing figs next to a basket turned on its side. The
display of the basket‘s contents is more important to the artist than a well-arranged
composition.
The fruit images in Roman frescoes show a tendency to provide the viewer with as
much knowledge as possible of the physical aspects of the objects. The fruits are shown
as if they had just been picked and their presence in the painting is a continuation of their
natural state. Small branches and leaves are often left uncut, and the fruit is shown not
only from the outside but also from the inside: some of them are cut on the side so that we
can see all three layers: the skin, the pulp and the stone.
Roman images of flowers and plants, with or without fruit, also exemplify these
specifically mimetic representations through their complex physical characteristics as
opposed to their simple appearance. This technique can be observed in the shapes of
leaves, flowers, etc.,– for example, in the frescoes from the House of the Wedding of
Alexander, Pompeii, and the House of the Fruit Orchard. The paintings provide realistic
representations, in that they render the shapes of objects faithfully but these images are
not illusionist. Although three-dimensional, the space in the paintings is very shallow, and

36
the effect of volume is achieved not through perspective but through juxtaposing darker
and lighter shades. The flowers, leaves and fruit are shown in a frontal view and their
shapes are not adjusted to show how they would appear to the eye. The images do not
create a unified landscape but rather present it as an assemblage of distinctly delineated
objects – leaves, flowers, etc.

1.6 Pastoral Space as a Thing
The thing-like quality of the pastoral style is emphasized in Longus‘s Prologue.
The narrator describes his work as a ―votive offering‖ ( anathēma ) and a thing (ktēma –
that is, a tangible thing that can be possessed): ―I...composed a work...as an offering to
Love, Nymphs and Pan, and a source of pleasure [a delightful thing] for the human race –
something to heal the sick and comfort the afflicted, to refresh the memory of those who
have been in love and educate those who have not‖ (Prologue 1.2). The thing-ness of his
book suggests the technical function of the book in the reproduction and transportability
of the painting, facilitating the painting‘s broader availability. People have to come to
Eros‘s sanctuary to see the painting (Prologue 1.1 quoted above), but once re-encoded as
a narrative by Longus, it could be made available to them in other locations.
In the Eclogues, the association between the reproduction of a text and of a space
is even more obvious since the world is created by Silenus‘s ―demiurgic‖ song.
Moreover, the pastoral nature, evoked in the poem‘s opening as tamarisks and groves
(6.10–11) which sing of Varus, represents not only a landscape but also a song in both its
vocal and its material written form – that is, as a scroll bearing Varus‘s name on it:

37
Unbidden strains I sing not; still if any there be to read even these my lays – any
whom love of the theme has won – ‘tis of you, Varus, our tamarisks shall sing, of
you all our groves. To Phoebus no page is more welcome than that which bears on
its front the name of Varus.

Along the same lines, Virgil refers to the Grynean Grove as both a book by Gallus and a
pastoral space in the passage of Eclogue 6 considered above (64–73). One of the Muses
takes Gallus to Arcadia (―to the Aonian hills‖) where ―all the choir of Phoebus rose to do
him honour‖ and Linus handed him the reeds that previously were in Hesiod‘s possession.
Linus ordered Gallus to use the reeds to ―tell of the birth of the Grynean wood.‖
According to Servius‘s commentary on Virgil, Euphorion of Chalkis, a Greek poet and
grammarian of the third century BC, wrote a poem about the Grynean Grove, a sacred
place dedicated to Apollo, which Gallus translated into Latin. The fact that it was
translated re-enforces the grove‘s status as a text and as an imported artifact. On the other
hand, the grove located in Asia Minor – one of the major sites of Apollo‘s cult – is also
treated as a geographic place: ―With these do you tell of the birth of the Grynean wood,
that there may be no grove wherein Apollo glories more‖ (72–73).
* * *
To conclude, the specifics of pastoral mimesis discussed in this chapter make it a
medium for the relationship of communication and translation between the mental and
material. By the same token, the pastoral becomes a venue for the exploration of such
problems. The pastoral's special relationship to both the mimetic and the semiotic can be
used as the framework for considering various cliches of pastoral literature and art in
various eras.

38
Chapter 2. Care of the Flocks: The Symbolism of Bloodless Sacrifice in
the Ancient Pastoral
Whereas in the first chapter the specifics of pastoral art are linked to the
representation of ritual mimesis in it, in this chapter I discuss the possible ritual ground of
the animal presence in the pastoral. Specifically, I focus on the motifs of brotherhood
with animals and pastoral peace, which are embodied both in the images of pastoral life
and in the Golden Age myth about the peace among species.
The emotional bond and sense of kinship between people and animals is
considered by critics a permanent characteristic of pastoral Weltanschauung. Kinship
with animals is viewed as a source of an egalitarian and anti-hierarchic attitude that is
different from the general anthropocentric world outlook in the classics
1
. This
―democratic‖ relationship of shepherds with their flocks is derived from the conditions of
shepherds‘ lives.
However, this relationship can be also considered in diachronic perspective as
originating in the same ritual practices that yield the myth about the Golden Age. The
Golden Age peace between species places an emphasis on the end of spilling blood. The
Golden Age earth produces enough food for all and makes possible to live without
killing. Whereas killing animals is a necessity inherent in the economy of hunters, it
ceases to play the crucial role in the farmer‘s economy. I suggest that the peaceful
relationship with animals in the pastoral encodes a transition from the economy of hunters
to that of farmers.

1
See, for example, Alpers 1996; Steven Lonsdale 1979; Rosenmeyer 1969.

39
However, the bond with the animals in the pastoral suggests a peaceful symbol of
freedom from murder; the psychological origin of this bond per se, as I will show, can be
derived from the experiences of killing in the particular settings of the hunters‘ sacrifice.
The psychological and social meaning of the archaic hunters' practices is the
subject of Walter Burkert‘s seminal book, upon which I rely in the current argument.
According to Burkert, as the success of hunt is crucial for survival, the sacrifice of an
animal is a climactic event in the life of ancient communities of hunters. It not only
makes a magical impact on the success of hunt but also prepares the members of the
community for killing. Animal sacrifice resolves the psychological entanglement
connected with the guilt of killing an animal and proposes a certain remedy that
reconciles the community with that guilt. As Burkert argues,
[i]n the shock caused by the sight of flowing blood we clearly experience the
remnant of a biological, life-preserving inhibition. But that is precisely what must
be overcome, for men at least, could not afford ―to see no blood,‖ and they were
educated accordingly. Feelings of fear and guilt are necessary consequences of
overstepping one‘s inhibitions; yet human tradition, in the form of religion,
clearly does not aim at removing or settling these tensions. On the contrary, they
are purposefully heightened. (...) The irreversible event becomes a formative
experience for all participants, provoking feelings of fear and guilt and increasing
desire to make reparation, the grouping attempt at restoration. (...) As an order
embracing its opposite, always endangered yet capable of adaptation and
development, this fluctuating balance entered the tradition of human culture. The
power to kill and respect for life illuminate each other. (Burkert 1983, p.21)

Since the sacrifice involves the community in purifying members from the
psychological aspects of the murder, it entails the presence of the sentiment of kinship
with the sacrificial animal. It simultaneously emphasizes the similarity and common

40
nature of people and animals and lays bare the connection between animal and human
slaughter. Burkert writes:
Because the hunter's activity was reinforced by behavior aimed originally at a
human partner – that is, through intraspecific aggression – in place of a
biologically fixed relationship of beast and quarry, something curious occurred:
the quarry became a quasi-human adversary and treated accordingly. Hunting
concentrated on great mammals, which conspicuously resembled men in their
body structure and movements, their eyes and their ―faces‖, their breath and
voices, in feeling and in fear, in attacking and in rage. Most of all, this similarity
with man was to be recognized in killing and slaughtering: the flesh was like
flesh, bones like bones, phallus like phallus, and heart like heart, and most
important of all, the warm running blood was the same. One could perhaps, most
clearly grasp the animal‘s resemblance to man when it died. Thus, the quarry
turned into a sacrificial victim. Many observers have told of the almost brotherly
bond that hunters felt for their game, and the exchangeability of man and animal
in sacrifice recurs as a mythological theme in many cultures besides the Greek.
(ibid, p. 21)
2
.

In the pastoral, where the animals are subjects of a brotherly bonds with people and their
―humanization‖ is often articulate, ritual violence toward animals is mainly absent and
many pastoral rituals are based on the bloodless sacrifice. Sacrificial activity reads
through various pastoral texts. Although animal sacrifice is present among the numerous
sacrifices described in Theocritus, Virgil and Longus, it is connected to traditional

2
Burkert‘s approach to violence in ancient rituals can be compared to the otherwise different theory
by René Girard. In his book Violence and the Sacred, Girard presents a theory of ritual as a reenactment of
the violence which is present in all human communities and threatens their integrity. He argues that ―the
objective of ritual is the proper reenactment of the surrogate-victim mechanism; its function is (...) to keep
violence outside the community‖ (Girard 1977, p. 92). He believes that rituals are designed to pacify this
violence by channeling it through a substitute victim, presented by a sacrificial animal. According to Girard,
―[r]itual sacrifice is founded on a double substitution. The first (...) is the substitution of a member of the
community for all, brought about through the operation of the surrogate victim. The second, the only truly
―ritualistic‖ substitution (...) is the substitution of a victim belonging to a predetermined sacrificial category
for the original victim‖ (ibid, p. 102). The sacrifice, according to Girard, possesses an ―essentially mimetic
character,‖ which is responsible for violence turning against the substitute victims—the animals or outsiders
of the community. Girard‘s theory, therefore, like that of Burkert, draws on the possibility of the ritual
substitution of an animal for a human. Although Girard believes the cure for violence to be the eventual
target of the ritual murder, whereas Burkert considers stirring that violence to be the goal, both theories
conceive the similarity between humans and animals upon which the ritual victimization of the animal is
based.

41
occasions which are not specifically pastoral as such
3
*. For example, the shepherds in
―Daphnis and Chloe‖ make traditional animal sacrifices to thank Pan and the Nymphs for
Chloe's salvation from the Methymnaians.
On the other hand, there are many examples of bloodless sacrifices which are
specifically related to pastoral cults. For example, in Virgil‘s eclogue 5, the ritual
offerings to the altars of the resurrected Daphnis and Apollo are milk, olive oil and wine.
These offerings reinforce the bloodless nature of the cult of Daphnis, whose resurrection
is connected to the Golden Age myth through the image of peace between predators and
their prey.
The offerings to the Nymphs in ―Daphnis and Chloe‖, besides milk and
agriculture products, contain the products of gathering,
...when the vines had been picked bare...they drove their flocks down on to the
plain, and knelt joyfully before the Nymphs, bringing them bunches of grapes on
the stem as first fruits of the vintage. Even before that time they had never passed
by without a thought: every day at the beginning of grazing, they would stop at
the shrine, and on their way home from grazing, they would kneel in worship, and
they never failed to make some offering, a flower or a fruit or fresh foliage or a
libation of milk. (2.2.4-5)

Gathering is emphasized in the pastoral as part of lifestyles as a peaceful and
harmful activity. Thus, shepherds pick fruit and flowers and give them to each other as
gifts of love. Given that gathering also supplies the central image of the Golden Age
myth—the earth spontaneously generating means of living as described, for example, in
Virgil's eclogue 4—pastoral sacrifice can be viewed as a reference to the gathering stage.

3
Similarly, Rosenmeyer points out that there is a certain ―tactfulness‖ in how Theocritus treats
animal sacrifice, which he considers a part of the ―principle of disposability,‖ in accordance with which the
animals are treated as ―disposable, as a piece of property‖ (Rosenmeyer 1969, p.139). Rosenmeyer points
out: ―[a]s a general rule we may say that the more contentious and abusive a poem is, the more
straightforward is the acceptance of the principle of disposability.‖ (ibid)

42
Gathering in opposition to hunting provides a bloodless and peaceful symbolism. The
memories of gathering refer to the economy in which animal sacrifice is not a condition
of survival, which inspires the symbolism of the Golden Age with its beneficent and
spontaneously generating nature.
It is possible to suggest that the crystallizing of memories of gathering in the
myth of the Golden Age is connected with a change in sacrificial practices entailed by the
transition from hunting to farming. Through the bloodless gathering images, the
brotherhood with animals is reinforced as a symbol of the agricultural economy, where
animal sacrifice is no longer needed as a means of inciting violence and the relationship
with animals is based on use, preservation and care of the herds.

43
Chapter 3. The Pastoral in Late Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century
Russia

3.1 Introduction
The first two chapters of this study focused on the beginning of the pastoral genre
in Antiquity. This present chapter turns to the reception of the classical pastoral in 18
th

and 19
th
century Russia. I will try to elucidate the most distinct and idiosyncratic elements
of the Russian pastoral tradition, as revealed by a range of various genres and media
spanning from park and garden architecture to the novel and finally encompassing the
visual arts. The main goal of this survey is to determine how the preceding history of
Russian pastoralism prepared the soil for the late flowering of the idyll during Russian
fin-de-siècle, to be analyzed in the last chapter of this study.
Apart from its ideological meaning and aesthetic emphasis, the pastoral elicits an
image of space, and it is, to a great extent, a description of a territory. As a result, it is not
only a phenomenon of literature and art, but also a phenomenon of the real world. Both
the vision and design of the place which is adopted as a pastoral locus amoenus, as well
as pattern of behavior which takes place (that is, what human activities are tied to this
space, which perceptions of nature are involved, and which emotions experienced) find
their way into the depictions of nature in the pastoral. In the case of the Russian pastoral,
which did not have a firm or reliable literary tradition, it might be the very survival of

44

these territories in the real world which guarantees the continuity of the genre of the
pastoral in Russian culture.

3.2 Eighteenth Century Arcadia: Parks, Gardens, Orangeries
In discussing Sergei Aksakov's autobiographical novels about a childhood spent
on a Russian country estate Semeinaia khronika and Detskie gody Bagrova vnuka,
Andrew Durkin in his book Sergei Aksakov and Russian Pastoral, understands the terms
―idyll‖ and ―pastoral‖ to include a nostalgic idealization of life on a patriarchal estate.
Durkin almost reduces the concept of pastoral emotion to this nostalgia, bringing it close
to the use of metaphor. However, it may not simply be a question of metaphor.
The connection between Russian estate life and the pastoral image has a long
history, and it is easy to see that the figurative application of the pastoral in both Russian
art and literature has a tangible historical basis. For example, Christopher Ely connects
the origin of the specific emotional state bound to depictions of the country-estate in
Russian nobility, with Arcadian symbolism of the garden originating from the eighteenth
century palace park culture. Ely focuses on a perception of nature by realist authors who
depict estate life in the second half of the nineteenth century, specifically Sergei Aksakov,
Ivan Turgenev, Ivan Goncharov and Leo Tolstoy. In particular, Ely speaks of their special
sensitivity to nature, which they display by subtle and nuanced descriptions of country-
side landscapes. At the same time, Ely does not specify how this pastoral identity of

45
Russian nature was created and what specific role the park designs played in it. In what
follows, I will examine how the specific geometry of space, aesthetics of nature and its
design, as well as the visual and kinesthetic experiences in the park define the image of
nature associated in Russia with the pastoral. This image survived within country-estate
culture even in an era when the pastoral as a genre was extinguished and could not viably
provide a valid frame of reference.
The forms of embellished nature created as a setting to be associated with Greek
and Roman pastoral myth, do not appear in Russian culture before the eighteenth century,
when they are introduced from the west and become a part of imperial aesthetics
4
. Before
Peter the Great's era, garden design did not exist in Russia as an independent concept. As
Ely emphasizes ―the novelty of pastoral images in eighteenth century Russia,‖ he points
out that ―Muscovite Russia did not aestheticize nature in any way similar to the isolated
images of pure landscape that had begun appearing in Europe as early as the sixteenth
century.‖ (Ely 2002, p. 28) Although estate gardens were used for leisure activities, for
which they had swings, painted gazebos, benches and tables, the main purpose of the
garden was economic. As Elena Pervushina (Pervushina 2008, p. 46) points out, ―the
gardens were rather a subsidiary economy‖ than a leisure place. The majority of plants in
the gardens were fruits, vegetables and herbs, and some landlords also had hothouses
where they grew melons. These gardens were situated in the vicinity of farms
5
. This
does not imply, however, that decorating gardens were completely unfamiliar to Russian
villages or among the third estate, or even that the natural beauty of flowers and trees

4
See about: Ely 2002; Schoenle 2007; Zorin. 2001 chapter IV: Edem v Tavricheskom sadu.
5
based on Pervushina 2008, p. 46

46
was a completely foreign concept in Russia. Some of the trees and bushes in fruit and
vegetable gardens could have a decorative role apart from its economic role. Thus,
according to Pervushina, the most popular garden species were apples and pears.
Cherries occurred more rarely and mostly in the southern regions. Among popular
decorative bushes were lilacs, hawthorns, and dog roses (ibid).
In an era when the garden is assigned the role of amusement, its design and
attractions serves the role of creating a sui generis fictionalized extension of reality, and
thus the pastoral becomes a common source of motifs and attractions of the park.
According to Schoenle, who emphasizes the role of attractions in the philosophy of the
imperial park, the garden provides a brief moment in a fictional world, where the
formalities and constraints of court life are abandoned. As he concludes his analysis of
the Russian garden culture in the course of the three centuries, Schoenle points out:
―Indeed, emerging in the 18
th
century as a distinct social arena, the garden was
associated with emphatically naive and seemingly innocuous games, from the draughts
tournament and the forced drinking during compulsory weekly garden parties instituted
by Peter the Great, to Elizabeth's enjoyment of slides, to Catherine's pastoral enactments
and other games. Countess Varvara Golovina reports in her memoir that Catherine used
her gardens at Tsarskoe Selo to stage games, which contributed to an atmosphere in which
'it seemed that everybody fell into the illusions that are so destructive to young people.
This majestic court, this palace, these gardens, and these terraces fragrant with flowers,
instilled chivalrous ideas and quickened the imagination. Unlike Peter, Catherine
preferred not to participate in these games, but instead to watch over them indulgently.

47
Casting herself as the spectator of amicable court life, Catherine seemed at once to enjoy
the fruits of her 'enlightened' reign and to conceal the power relations inherent in it. In
part, these games were designed to turn the court into a simulacrum of idyllic country life,
something Princess Ekaterina Dashkova called 'obnoxious sham' [gnusnoe pritvorstvo].
… (Schoenle 2007, 322-323)
The pastoral is one of the identities of this fictionalized reality. At the beginning
of the garden design era and throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the
pastoral interpretation of the park space is suggested by elements of French rococo
present in the garden design, interior decorations and life styles. Indeed, garden fashion as
such–English style apart–was largely indebted to the legacy of the French rococo culture
for which the pastoral is a powerful and permanent frame of reference. The use of
pastoral themes and imagery in rococo theater and art is accompanied as a continuous
reenactment of the pastoral in the life of the court. In the Russian eighteenth-century
estate, French pastoralism of both baroque and rococo traditions is a continuous presence
through imported art, pastoral ballet and costume. In addition, the pastoral is present as
―white noise‖ in the culture of the aristocratic palaces. Numerous Dutch and Italian
landscape paintings with herds and shepherds can be found in the palaces' picture
galleries. Pastoral themes are also present in the decorations of aristocratic palaces–
tapestries, sculptures and wall paintings, porcelains and costumes. Pastoral costumes
were also used in the ballet and as a popular masquerade costume; pastoral motifs are
recognizable in aristocratic costume of the time–such motifs as flowers and fruit on
women's hats, and flower-like decorations on women's dresses. Take, for example, the

48
illustration from Benois‘ book: Letnii damskii kostium vremeni Imperatritsy Elisavety
Petrovny (fig.2).

Figure 2: Women's Summer Costume from Empress Elizabeth's Times.

Distraction is the main function of the early garden before the culture of jardin
anglais implanted the modus of a thoughtful stroll, contemplation, and of the enjoyment
of the features of nature that are considered natural and easily associated with the
classical pastoral. The early garden culture resembles the culture of Italian baroque in that
it features various means of amusement. For example, in the eighteenth century,
attractions were very popular in royal residences, as for instance, ruins, and various follies
such as trick playing fountains (shutikhi) in Peterhoff, and the famous roller coaster

49
pavilion (Katal'naia gora) built for Elizabeth's reign in Tsarskoe selo. Alexander Benois
dedicated a chapter of his exhaustive volume (1910) about the history and architecture of
Tsarskoe selo in Elizabeth's time to this attraction. Extraordinary efforts were put into
harmonizing this impressive technical achievement with the park's aesthetics, and in
making the construction not only entertaining but also safe and easily accessible. The
building was re-built several times and Catherine's senior court architect Francesco
Bartolomeo Rastrelli took part in designing the model for the gora completed by 1754
(Benois 1910, p. 191)
The Katal'naia gora was a two-story pavilion in baroque style decorated with
marble columns, sculpture, statues, and topped with a dome (fig.3). There were two round
landings on both sides of the pavilion–one for summer and one for winter–with two
wooden slopes. Special carriages took people down the slopes, and wheel machines were
used for raising the carriages back up the slopes. The length of each slope was
approximately 288 meters (135 sazhen), and the width was about 13 meters (6 sazhen).
The gora was supposed to go through a yearly maintenance program when, and in
particular, the wooden boards of the slopes were relaid. Catherine made the attraction
even more breathtaking when in the summer of 1763 she added a third arched slope
leading towards the bank of the pond. In a half a year she had two more slopes built on
each side of the original one, which was extended across the pond to the island for
summer rides. This slope had two hills when it was finished in 1864 (all in ibid, 194-
195). The space surrounding the new slopes was decorated with parterres, planted trees,
and flowerbeds. Benois writes that ―in the same place, there were arranged various

50
entertaining games,‖ such as for example, different kinds of swings and a carousel. The
Katal'naia gora lasted until 1791 when Catherine had it removed, as Benois believes,
because she considered the architecture old-fashioned. Cameron built a gallery in its
place. Despite its mechanical character, the roller coaster nonetheless did not detract
from the classical aesthetics of the park architecture and from Catherine's taste for the
English style park. Indeed, the empress also had a grandiose roller coaster built in
Oranienbaum, another royal residence near the city of St. Petersburg, which included a
palace and a huge English park.

Figure 3: Artist unknown. Empress Catherine II on a Stroll (the domed building is
Katalnaia gora)

The information that Benois draws from court journals (kamer-fur'erskii zhurnal)
regarding Elizabeth's and Catherine's respective visits of the Katal'naia gora (ibid, pp.

51
196-197), underlines the importance of playful entertainment at Catherine's court. It is
quite possible that Benois quotes the journal about the empress's visits to the Katal'naia
gora because he is aware of the role attractions played in the imperial park, and of the
differences between this culture and the park culture of his own times. Indeed, the
frequent visits to the roller coaster seem to reflect the amusement of children rather than
that of adults.
According to Benois' sources, Elizabeth visited the roller coaster probably once on
July 1
st
of 1759. In contrast, the Katal'naia gora was the main attraction of the court in
the beginning of Catherine's reign. According to Benois's account:
On one of the very first days of her stay in 1763, on June 21, after the evening
meal Catherine was already 'on the slope,' from whence she returned only after
midnight. On July 21
st
of the same year a reception was held in Tsarskoe selo for
the (…) 'ministers' - a Dane and a Spaniard. After her audience, Catherine along
with these ambassadors, and accompanied by her cavaliers and maids of honor,
went to the gora (roller coaster). On November 26
th
and November 28
th
she 'took
a promenade on the gory in Tsarskoe Selo.' On March 7
th
, 1864 the empress
'deigned (izvolila) to go through the chambers to the roller - coaster.' On Nicholas
of Myra day, May 9
th
of the same year, she was on the gory with others. This
recurred on August 22
nd
of the same year and on August 24
th
of 1865. The court
was especially fond of the gory in 1766. They visited them on May 3, 8, 9, 10,
and 14; June 28 and 30; and August 10, 11, and 18. It is interesting that on June 2
8, Catherine visited the gory after a tiring day. She came to Tsarskoe Selo from
Peterhoff only at 6 PM, and she had stopped at Sergiev Hermitage [Troitse]-
Sergievskaia pustyn'] and at Ligovo on the way. Nevertheless, at 8 [PM] she went
on the gory. On August 10 she amused herself on the gory playing a game of
chance [zabavlialas' v fortunnuiu igru], and 'watched the cavaliers roller coasting
and riding the carousel.' On August 18 she watched the 'continuing falcon hunt'
from the gora. Catherine visited the gory even more frequently in the course of
the summer of 1770. The following visits are listed in the chamber journal: May
23, 27, 29; June 1; July 8, 22, 23, 28, 29, and 30; and August 7,8,9,11,12,13,16,19,
and 21; On May 30, after 5 PM a round dance of village girls singing songs by
the gora was arranged (ibid., p.p. 196-197).

52
Garden attractions were widespread in eighteenth-century Russian garden estates.
For example, they are to be seen in the well-documented design and lifestyle of Kuskovo,
an estate on the outskirts of Moscow. Kuskovo park is described in detail in a mid-
nineteenth-century book about Kuskovo and other adjacent estates of the Sheremet‘ev
family, titled Kuskovo i ego okrestnosti. The author of the guide dedicated his work to
Count Sergei Sheremet‘ev, the owner of the estates and the grandson of the founder of
Kuskovo. It contains a description of a walking tour through the eighteenth-century
aristocratic estates of Perovo, Kuskovo, Veshniaki and Kosino, located in the vicinity of
Moscow. The author points out the enormous investments of money, the imperial
grandeur and the culture of distractions on these summer estates.
As a typical park of Catherine‘s times, Kuskovo included a regular garden with
parterres and statues. But the major part of Kuskovo is occupied by the jardin anglais.
The estate and the park were famous both for the grandeur of their costly design and for
garden attractions. According to the guide, at the time of its builder, Petr Sheremet‘ev,
Kuskovo ―could be called a gathering place of almost all the aristocracy of that time‖ and
was visited at various times, by Empress Elizabeth and Catherine the Great, Pavel I and
Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II, who ―marveled at its magnificent grotto, its gardens and
orange groves
6
‖ (Kuskovo 1850, p.13). In the middle of the park were busts and statues,
many of which were given to the estate‘s founder by Catherine. She also gave him two

6
The mention of orange groves exposes the author‘s desire to impose the pastoral myth with its
Mediterranean nature on the estate, whereas, in actuality, it boasted a spacious hothouse where oranges,
lemons and laurels grew, but not orange groves. In the summer, trees in tubs could be on display in front of
the hothouse, and even if this was described as a grove, its relative nature is obvious.

53
columns located in the most prominent positions; these columns commemorated both the
Count‘s services to the crown and the Empress‘s visits to Kuskovo.
As described by the author of the guide, Kuskovo‘s English garden was a
showcase of expensive land amelioration and redesign:
The count did not spare expenses, and everyone was amazed at how inexhaustible
his riches were. It is true, a simple glance at the the perfectly horizontal surface
of Kuskovo garden and meadows, at the theater and other remaining buildings, is
sufficient to gauge what capital, knowledge, and labor it cost to lay out more than
300 dessiatinas [= 810 acres] of rugged land, to irrigate marshes, to collect water
in the beautiful pools, to plant the whole fields with forest, and to build it over and
to provide it with everything necessary, so that 50,000 people could truly enjoy
walking in Kuskovo, and 2,000 invited guests and 800 house servants could be
housed in it!

[Граф не щадил издержек и все удивлялись неистощимости его богатства. -
И подлинно, стоит только взглянуть на совершенно-горизонтальную
поверхность Кусковского сада и лугов, на театр и другие оставшиеся здания,
чтобы судить, каких капиталов, знания и труда стоило спланировать
слишком 300 десятин неровной земли, осушить болота, скопить воду в
прекрасные бассейны, засадить целые поля лесом - и все это обстроить и
снабдить всем необходимым так, чтобы в Кусково и с истинным
удовольствием могло гулять до 50,000 народа и поместиться до 2,000
званых гостей и 800 человек дворовой прислуги! (ibid, p. 15-16)]

The pastoral meaning is obvious in the outdoor design of Kuskovo. There is a
sequence of landmarks—many of them with allegorical meaning—to visit on a walking
tour through the estate. One of the groves in Kuskovo where the owner had a house for
informal gatherings was called ―the house of solitude.‖ One of the bridges across the
artificial river led to another grove where the so-called ―retreat of philosophers‖ was built.
There was also the ―gazebo of quietude‖ located in the far corner of the park in a grove
surrounded by a labyrinth. These names reveal a potential of space creation and playing
with constructing a space, which is very much in accordance with the tradition of pastoral

54
literature (see for example, Honoré D‘Este‘s Astrea). The place was full of classical
allusions: there was a mound with a statue of Venus on it; near the mound was a lion
cave, with a lion statue with an inscription in Latin; a stone slab naturally covered with
shells, which found in the vicinity, was on display in the cave. There also were other
caves and grottoes decorated with Mediterranean shells. The English garden also
included a small farm where, according to the guide, the count inspected his best and
most expensive cows and bulls.
Distraction was the principal philosophy of spending time in Kuskovo. The sign
on the road that marked the beginning of the alley leading to Kuskovo urged the visitor
―to make merry as they preferred both in the house and in the garden‖ (ibid, p.6)
[веселиться кому как угодно в доме и в саду]. As the guide specifies, the park
embraced Tenterov Village [Tenterova derevnia], ―an extremely nice and charming little
house with mirror walls, floors and plafonds‖ in which a collection of curiosities was on
display. Another distraction was a secret fountain which the landlord used to play jokes
on the guests. The fountain located by the road was hidden, but ―as soon as one turned on
the faucet, a terrible rain sprayed the passerby‖ (ibid, p.2) [стоило отвернуть кран и на
проходящего лился ужасный дождь] As the guide points out, ―this joke was allowed
only in the summertime.‖ (ibid) Another attraction for which the park was famous,
according to the guide, was a group of wax figures called ―a drunk company‖ (la societé
énivrée). With a sense of naïve amazement, the guide describes its unexpected
juxtaposition with aristocratic English garden environments:
Imagine, amongst the most gorgeous English garden, on a clean velvet meadow,
in the vicinity of both the marvelous works of the Italian chisel and southern

55
luxurious flora, a simple Russian haystack. Probably it did not make a pleasant
impression at first sight, but what a surprise it was for the viewer when in
approaching closer, in this haystack, he noticed an extremely original pavilion in
the shape of a Russian izba where about twenty Russian male peasants (chelovek
dvadtsat' russkikh muzhichkov) in rich national costumes were sitting at the oak
table on the hewed benches, and what do you think they were occupied with?—
they were simply drinking vodka! (ibid, pp.20-21)
[Представьте, среди великолепнейшего английского сада, на чистой
бархатной луговине, в соседстве чудных произведений итальянского резца и
южной роскошной флоры, - простой русский стог сена. Вероятно, с первого
взгляду он не производил приятного впечатления, но каково же было
изумление зрителя, когда, подойдя ближе, в этом стоге сена он замечал
чрезвычайно оригинальную беседку в виде русской избы, где за дубовым
столом на тесаных скамьях сидело двадцать человек русских мужичков, в
богатых национальных костюмах и в самых интересных национальных
позах, - и чем бы вы думали они занимались? - просто пили водку!]

The passage clearly opposes the features of the jardin anglais garden (a green
lawn) and luxurious southern flora, probably as a reference to the Mediterranean
prototype of the pastoral landscape, and Russian national countryside features (a simple
Russian haystack). On the other hand, the attraction is an example of how the context of
a playful festivity gets adapted to the national theme and national agents are integrated
into the paradigmatic pastoral environment through it: the muzhichki are acceptable for
the noble taste under the condition that they are entertaining and exquisite decorations
(rich national costumes, interesting poses, festive atmosphere). And, since their activity
(drinking vodka) is shocking for high taste, it is of course funny. The group is a part of
the atmosphere of the silly festivity cultivated at the court as in the Katal'naia gora, the
roller coaster.
Kuskovo had many other attractions integrated in the landscape and creating a
special world in the garden on the model of the royal palaces. For example, as Iurii

56
Shamurin, the author of the turn-of-the-twentieth-century book series on the history of
Russian country estates, describes Kuskovo, there was a ―carousel with various games‖, a
cave with a ―fire-spitting dragon‖: ―inside it there were, made of unbleached linen, a big
dragon, twined around a tree, and two small ‗creeping serpents.‘‖ (ibid, p. 29) There was
a pavilion with ―6 wax figures feasting at the table
7
‖ (ibid, p. 29), and a hole with a statue
of Diogenes the Cynic in it. There were two shelters of branches with wax figures
inside—a Capuchin and a peasant girl. The figures, as Shamurin points out, frightened
―the public with their likeness to living people.‖ (ibid) There were ―a few dozen
‗amusing buildings,‘ [neskol'ko desiatkov ―poteshnykh khorom‖] and various attractions
[vsiakikh prichud] —such as, gazebos, pavilions, bridges, ponds, canals, views
[perspektiv], etc‖ (ibid, p. 24). There were also a lot of animals: swans which lived in
special big stone buildings and wild animals in the hunting park, surrounded by a stone
wall. The example of Kuskovo estate shows how the garden space is conceived as a space
for entertaining walks through follies.
The culture of orangeries, hothouses, and winter gardens is an example of how
nature's environments are constructed within the park space. Orangeries were built in the
most expensive and pompous parks and served there as famous attractions. The
hothouses and other means of plant conservation are indispensable in Russian gardening
since many plants cannot survive winter if left outdoors, and for this purpose they were
moved to the hothouse over the winter or placed into a gruntovyi sarai, i.e. a trench in
which the plants grew in the ground but were supported at a certain temperature. But in

7
Might be a reference to the same ―drunken company.

57
addition, the hothouse culture is a vehicle to allow southern environments to be
reconstructed in the Russian aristocratic house. For example, it was Mme de Staël's
understanding of their role:
―The great lords in their own way also share tastes of southern peoples. One must
go into various country houses they have built for themselves in the middle of an island
formed by the Neva, almost within the confines of Petersburg. The plants of the South,
the perfumes of the Orient, the sofas of Asia embellish these dwellings. The fruits of
every country ripen in immense greenhouses that create an artificial climate.‖ (Staël 2000,
p. 158)
Placed in an appropriate park myth, the orangery and a hothouse can be viewed
not only as a supply of fruit and decorative plants but as a core of the garden that inspires
imagination and imbues the space with an aura of the exotic ―foreignness‖. In particular,
the image of Mediterranean nature is inherently connected with the culture of the
hothouses.
Benois provides information about the species held in the orangeries in Tsarskoe
selo. According to the inventory for 1748, there were 221 trees in tubs and 159 trees in
pots:
―figs, laurels, pomegranates, arbutus?, chestnuts, olives, prunes, pears, hazels,
‗myrtus?, genestra?,‘ vine, rosemary, ‗jasmin, aloe,‘ coffee, cloves, a hundred pineapples
in pots, ‗beech, lilies.‘‖
Remarkably, the culture of citrus trees had not been introduced by that time but
later they became the main pride of orangeries:

58
The list for 1767 contains: in tubs: four big mandarin trees
8
, 185 medium and
small size, and 50 oranges; in pots: 93 mandarin trees, and also 178 wild
mandarin trees. American aloe in a big tub (hopeless), four aloes in mid-size tubs
and five in small-size tubs. Also ―annual hibiscus?
9
, apricot trees, pineapple trees
which are hopeless—152,‖ wild hazel, olive trees, arbutus?, 28 ―beeches?‖ in
tubs, Spanish cherries, cloves, ―genestra? Hispanica,‖ pomegranate trees,
―geranium Africanum,‖ ―gemantus Africana,‖ tarragon (dragon‘s-wort), coffee,
strawberries, gooseberries, ―chestnut,‖ 81 laurels, ―lemon, bergamot, lavender,‖
100 pots of gyllyflowers, ―night violet, palm tree or … or dates,‖ peaches, …,
rosemary, prunes, taxus shrubs?, lemon balm, sage, Italian figs, Indian figs, tulips.
(Benois 1910, p. 162)

These lists of plants show the numbers of trees from citrus species appropriate for
landscaping and not just for a collection. Besides citruses, pineapple trees are also
popular but clearly, as follows from this account, they are poorly accommodated in these
climate conditions. The popularity of citrus trees and pineapple palms can no doubt be
explained by the needs of the royal table. Besides them, several other species of plants on
these lists are grown for their fruit, such as, for example, peaches, prunes, strawberries
etc. There are also plants which are usually found in kitchen gardens, as for example,
spices. However, besides the fruit, the citrus trees are a very impressive part of nature
and they affect human perceptions probably to a greater extent than many other plants.
The view of citrus trees as such is aesthetically appealing with their dark green leaves,
brightly colored fruit and elegant flowers. The fruit and leaf textures provide tactile
effects whereas the flowers emit exquisite and strong fragrance. This makes citrus trees a
superb and exotic decorative tool and when displayed as a group, they are most likely to
turn the imagination toward Mediterranean nature. It is logical to suggest that the display

8
Benois calls them оранжевые деревья but since the list mentions oranges as a separate species, most
likely, it refers to mandarins
9
Question marks are used when there is a problem identifying the plant by its 18th-century name

59
of these species reinforces the association of the orangeries and hothouses in Russian
country estates with the oases of Mediterranean environments.
Whereas hothouses and orangeries in the estates can be viewed as instances of
―imported‖ Mediterranean space, the re-creation of the space of the classical myth is also
entailed in the philosophy of jardin anglais. The jardin anglais style becomes a dominant
fashion in Russian gardening during Catherine II's reign, when she became enamored
with the English landscape park. Examples of such parks designed under Catherine's
supervision are the imperial parks in Tsarskoe Selo and Oranienbaum near St. Petersburg.
Although the design of the park in Tsarskoe Selo was initiated before Catherine's time, I
will show that it is her addition of jardin anglais elements to these parks that is
indispensable to the identity of Russian pastoral space.
Catherine's fascination with the jardin anglais is on display in Tsarskoe Selo, the
gigantic landscape park containing two palaces, each surrounded by several thousand
acres. The Ekaterininskii (Catherine‘s) palace, built in baroque style, had 225 acres of
adjacent French formal gardens which Catherine transformed into an English park. As
William A. Mann points out, Catherine hired two English-trained landscape architects,
the German-born John Busch (1730-1790) and the Russian Vassily Neelov ( 1722-1782),
to supervise the remodeling of the park ―into a semblance of the English landscape
garden‖ between 1771 and 1780 (Mann 1993, p.319). The Alexandrovskii (Alexander‘s)
palace was built later in neoclassical style and included 440 acres of English park.
The influence of this park ensemble on Russian contemporary landscape
architecture was enormous not only for aesthetic purposes but also for practical ones.

60
Christina Roosevelt points out that Tsarskoe Selo was conceived by Catherine as ―a
model for her courtiers‖ (Roosevelt 2003, p.68). Roosevelt writes, ―all the examples at
Tsarskoe Selo found imitation on grand private estates,‖ while ―[t]he models the elite
created on their estates in turn influenced provincial neighbors of lesser status‖ (ibid).
The effects of the aesthetics of the English garden are clear from the often-quoted
passage from Catherine‘s letter to Voltaire:
I now love to distraction gardens in the English style, the curving lines, the gentle
slopes, the ponds in the forms of lakes … and I scorn straight lines and twin
allėes. I hate fountains which torture water in order to make it follow a course
contrary to nature … anglomania rules my plantomania (Mann 1993, p. 319).

But the importance of English garden design lies in being perceived as an embodiment of
the myth of the Golden Age and of a pastoral Arcadia. The English garden is not only
designed nature which looks natural, but it is also a space which is couched in a classical
reference both through its objects and through the myths and allegories embraced. It is
deliberately modeled on the image of the Golden Age created in the classical images of
such French seventeenth-century painters as Claude Lorrain (1600-1682) and Nicholas
Poussin (1594-1665). Nevertheless, the Golden Age and Arcadia in the philosophy of
English design had an allegorical and, so to speak, proverbial rather than mythic meaning.
In the the beginnings of English design, the Golden Age was a favored image of
aristocratic self-representation. Historically, the Golden Age ideal was associated with
the Augustan period ―when the Roman republic was turning toward imperial greatness‖
(Barlow-Rogers 2001, p.229 ). Thus, the application of Golden Age and pastoral Arcadia
to the jardin anglais needs to be understood as stemming from Augustan Age culture and
politics, rather than as reflecting the symbolism of ancient agricultural myth. As a result,

61
as it was understood in early eighteenth-century England, the Golden Age and pastoral
Arcadia convey what nature is supposed to look like in the ideal state, with the provision
that its citizens had attained a perfection of culture and taste.
In this situation, the classical authors who celebrated the life of countryside
villas—Virgil, Horace, and Pliny the Younger—were especially relevant, and the Golden
Age image has a distinct Arcadian flavor. Alexander Pope's influence on the philosophy
of the jardin anglais and especially on its pastoral connection was crucial, both through
his poetry and directly through the creation of the scenic environments in his garden at
Twickenham. In the neoclassical aesthetics of the pastoral canonized by Pope, the beauty
of nature must produce an emotional impact on the human soul. The structural elements
of the classical pastoral are reformatted and re-written in accordance with this new
emotional task. In particular, the beauty of nature and impressive, scenic environments
are emphasized. Thus, Pope advises in his essay ―A Discourse on Pastoral Poetry‖:
[f]or what is inviting in this sort of poetry [i.e. in bucolic poetry] proceeds not so
much from the Idea of that business [pastoral labor], as of the tranquility of a
country life. We must therefore use some illusion to render a Pastoral delightful;
and this consists in exposing the best side only of a shepherd's life, and in
concealing its miseries. Nor is it enough to introduce shepherds discoursing
together in a natural way; but a regard must be had to the subject; that it contain
some particular beauty in itself, and that it be different in every Eclogue. Besides,
in each of them a design‘d scene or prospect is to be represented to our view,
which should likewise have its variety. This varieties obtained in a great degree
by frequent comparisons, drawn from the most agreeable objects of the country;
by interrogations to things inanimate; by beautiful digressions, but those short;
sometimes by insisting a little on circumstances; and lastly, by elegant turns on
the words, which render the numbers extremely sweet and pleasing.‖ (Pope 1751,
p.51)

62
Pope‘s poetry shows a strong connection between the pastoral and jardin anglais garden
space. The renditions of nature in his eclogues are in fact images of garden design, and
vice versa; the design of Twickenham has distinct pastoral coloring.
English garden design in England is based on the introduction of classical art and
architecture into the picturesque of nature‘s landscape that seems natural and untouched
by art. As Barlow Rogers comments:
[t]he sober grandeur of Palladianism, the elevated moral tone of classical
ornament, the fascination with real and fabricated ruins, the thematic itineraries of
allegorical heroism: it was by these symbolic means that many eighteenth-century
upper-class Englishmen invested their country estates with the ideal of their
nation as a new Rome. These landscapes became through acts of imagination and
arrangement emblematic of the Arcadian scenery associated with an ancient
Golden Age or, more specifically, with the period when the Roman republic was
turning toward imperial greatness. Their owners intended them to evoke the
paintings by Claude and Poussin that hung in the galleries of their great houses.
Thus was national ambition wedded to the serenely smiling, architecturally
ornamented native landscape in a vision of nature as blessed, beautiful, and
peculiarly English yet also Roman, an idyll with a political subtext (Barlow
Rogers 2001, p.229).

The art of enjoying the English garden, suggested by its design, is a walk that
leads on an allegorical path where the viewer observes statues, grottoes, ruins and
monuments set ―amidst dense forest greenery and spacious grassy forest spaces,‖ (Mann
1993, p.319) and also experiences the tranquil nature designed in such a subtle way that it
seems untouched by art.
Besides its aesthetic function, a walk in an English garden also entailed a didactic
purpose; the classical allegories and beautiful settings were meant to instruct and elevate
the spirit through the senses. As a result, the space of the park was not only the field for
thoughtful contemplation but also the setting for the playing out of roles, intended as a

63
component of living through classical allegories. The strollers in the garden were,
simultaneously, the inhabitants of the fantasy world of classical Arcadia, as well as
assuming the identities associated with the characters and spaces of classical myth, as
evoked in the garden.
As will be shown below through examples drawn from Russian poetry, Russian
picturesque landscapes are based on Russian landscape parks and can be read as images
of pastoral space. In what follows I will show three things: first, that it is the park settings
that define the Russian image of the pastoral space; second, that the emotions that are
bound to the aesthetics of this space are the consequence of the dominance of visual
perceptions and those kinesthetic experiences which accompany walking; and third, that
such landscapes can be viewed as a stylization of the classical pastoral, especially because
the classical identity of the park space is emphasized but it cannot be viewed as an
accurate restoration of the classical genre. The latter, as will be shown in the last chapter,
is brought in by the change of the concept of the body at the fin de siècle, and this
change's specific adherence to the changes in the system of classical education.

3.3. Strolling through a Pastoral: Derzhavin, Sumarokov, Karamzin
As will be seen in the analysis below, a distinct series of themes, images,
emotions and practices based on the culture of Russian landscape parks are channeled
into the Russian pastoral. Although the pastoral connection of these images, emotions
and practices is not necessarily explicit, they provide ground for the presentation of nature
in the Russian literary pastoral.

64
The jardin anglais is a regular source of the image of nature in the literary pastoral.
Specifically, the poems describing park scenes provide the Russian pastoral with the
pattern of behavior and enjoyments of nature in the garden. Although the pastoral
connection of these works might not be articulate, usually they are clearly connected to
the pastoral myth of the garden
For example, the boat trip in Tsarskoe selo in Gavriil Derzhavin's poem Progulka
v Sarskom (sic) Sele [A Stroll in Tsarskoe Selo] is a conventional way to stage a
romantic meeting in the park. Derzhavin emphasizes the park settings and the concrete
location, but although the pastoral attribution of the poem is not made explicit, such
features as the season and weather and the theme of a romantic encounter, as well as such
details of style as diminutive forms, point to the fact that the scene is thought of as
pastoral:
В прекрасный майский день,
В час ясныя погоды,
Как всюду длинна тень,
Ложась в стеклянны воды,
В их зеркале брегов
Изображала виды
И как между столпов
И зданием Фемиды,
Сооруженных ей
Героев росских в славу,
При гласе лебедей,
В прохладу и забаву,
Вечернею порой
От всех уединяясь,
С Пленирою младой
Мы, в лодочке катаясь,
Гуляли в озерке...

65
Moreover, the landscape at the beginning of the poem echoes the motif of evening
shadows well-known in Virgil's Bucolics, and the descriptions of nature incorporate a
number of the landscapes commonly associated with the pastoral:
Весна во всех местах
Нам взор свой осклабляет,
В зеленых муравах
Ковры нам подстилает;
Послушай рога рев,
Там эха хохотанье;
Тут шепоты ручьев,
Здесь розы воздыханье!
Се ветер помавал
Крылами тихо слуху.

The couple's enjoyment of nature and their physical experience in the garden
differ, however, from those depicted the classical pastoral. The classical mode of
pastoral experience is canonized by perhaps the most famous pastoral text, Virgil's
Eclogue 1. In the opening line of the poem, Tityrus is presented lying under the
spreading tree and playing music—that is, in a position where he can freely enjoy the
pastoral life: ―You, Tityrus, lie under the canopy of a spreading beech, wooing the
woodland Muse on slender reed ...‖ [Tityrus, ty patulae recubans sub tegmine
fagi/silvestrem tenui Musam meditaris avena. Trans. H.R. Fairclough, lines1-2] Further
on, after the famous contrast between Tityrus‘s life and Meliboeus‘s fate is introduced as
the latter has to leave the country, these two constituents of Tityrus‘s pastoral happiness
are reiterated even more articulately: ―you, Tityrus, at ease [literally - slow, inactive]
beneath the shade, teach the woods to re-echo ―fair Amaryllis.‖ [tu, Tityre, lentus in
umbra/formosam resonare doces Amarillyda silvas. Llines 4-5]

66
As a result, the agents of the classical pastoral interact with nature while relaxing
in a locus amoenus, and their most important bodily experience is the sensations of the
relaxed immobile body. In contrast, Derzhavin‘s characters share the conventional way to
enjoy an English garden—they stroll through it and perceive nature through
contemplation:
Взгляни, взгляни вокруг
И виждь, красы природы
Как бы стеклись к нам вдруг:
Сребром сверкают воды,
Рубином облака,
Багряным златом кровы,
Как огненна река;
Свет ясный, пурпуровый
Объял все воды вкруг;
Смотри в них рыб плесканье,
Плывущих птиц на луг
И крыл их трепетанье.

The bodily state during a stroll in the garden is quite different from that in the
classical pastoral. In contrast to the pastoral leisure and meditative state of the senses, the
garden behavior emphasizes the active visual connection with the environment whereas
the kinesthetic experiences occur from movement and effort. Indeed, the stroller
perceives nature as a picturesque view, and the purpose of the stroll to a great extent
consists in hunting for such views and finding good viewing perspectives.
Simultaneously, as the stroller walks, the body is put into a specific rhythm of breathing
and movement, but this experience directly depends on physical effort and results in a
much more energetic interaction with the environment than the body can obtain in the
pastoral situation.

67
A stroll through pastoral settings is a theme of Alexander Sumarokov's idyll
Muchitel'naia mysl', prestan' menia terzati... [Cease Torturing Me, Agonizing Thought...;
1755]. All the places where this pastoral romance takes place could be located in the
territory of a big park, as for example, Kuskovo discussed above, and the poem seems to
be a good reflection of the behavior pattern of the inhabitant of an aristocratic park:
Нельзя мне здесь, нельзя любезныя забыть!
Когда я в роще сей гуляю,
Я ту минуту вспоминаю,
Как в первый раз ее мне случай видеть дал. …

В сем часто я гулял с ней поле.
В сих чистых ключевых водах
Она свои мывала ноги.
На испещренных сих лугах
Все ею мнятся быть протоптаны дороги...

(Idylls; 1755)

At some point Sumarokov‘s strolling shepherds find themselves in the situation
canonized by Virgil‘s Bucolics: i.e., in the shadow of a wide-spreading oak, where they
are occupied with their romance:
Под тению сего развесистого древа,
Не опасаясь больше гнева,
Как тут случилось с ней мне в полдни отдыхать,
Я в первый раз ее дерзнул поцеловать...
В дуброве сей
Я множество имел приятных с нею дней....
However, it is the stroll that combines the pastoral places in a single romantic path similar
to a thematic path in the English garden.
Strolling is the main way to enjoy nature in Nikolai Karamzin‘s landscapes. The
pastoral is the obvious subtext of Karamzin‘s descriptions of nature and it often appears

68
as a justification and framework for the images of the contemplation of nature. In
Karamzin‘s poetry, the pastoral loses its allegorical meaning and connection with
shepherds to become a poetry of nature. Karamzin introduces in his poetry a walking trip
in search of scenic views as a method for enjoying nature—in a walking trip. This habit
is connected in Karamzin not only with park behavior but also with tourism, which
Karamzin describes in the Letters of a Russian Traveler (Pis'ma russkogo
puteshetvsnnika). As a result, nature as it is described by Karamzin is situated beyond the
limits of the estate park. However, his landscapes give an idea of how the pastoral
identity of nature spaces is bound to an aristocratic behavior clearly indebted to the park
culture.
The typical position of a Karamzin observer is taking a stroll or viewing a scenic
vista from a stable observation point:
Картина мне мила в Природе,
Когда я с сердцем на свободе
Гуляю по коврам лугов,
Смотрю вдали на мрак лесов,
Лучами солнца оглашѐнных,
Или на лабиринт ручьев,
Самой Натурой проведенных
В изгибах для красы полей. (Kartina)
Such viewing of scenic vistas is combined with typical pastoral environments in
Karamzin's pastoral drama Arkadskii pamiatnik (Arcadian Monument, 1789) . Two
sisters, the Arcadian inhabitants, exchange their preferences in viewing nature as follows:
Дорис:
Посмотри, как прекрасно все вокруг нас блистает! Как все хорошо пахнет!
- Мне, право, кажется, что ввечеру, когда заходит солнце, все виды
бывают прекраснее, нежели поутру.

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Лавра:
А я лучше люблю утро. Когда вдруг все поля, покрытые мраком, в
чистейшем свете представятся глазам нашим; когда дремавшая Природа
пробудится и снова придет в движение, и все, на что ни взглянешь, оживет
и возрадуется; когда весь хор маленьких сладкогласных птичек, сидящих
по кусточкам, пристанет к кроткой песне парящего жаворонка...

Дорис:
А когда после жаркого дня приближится сладостный вечер и прольет на
все нежную прохладу; когда под тихий шепот осинника и тополя и под
журчание ручья запоет соловей громкую вечернюю песнь свою; когда
стада протянутся вниз по пригорку, благовонными травами усеянному...

The visual perception of the pastoral place is also present in the introduction to
Bednaia Liza (Poor Liza), a tale whose pastoral connections cannot be overlooked. In the
tale‘s opening, the author takes a stroll in the suburbs of Moscow for the sake of the
panoramic view of the town. The pastoral world is part of the picture opening to the
author even though it is shown with elements of realist disenchantment:
...Но всего приятнее для меня то место, на котором возвышаются мрачные,
готические башни Си...нова монастыря. Стоя на сей горе, видишь на правой
стороне почти всю Москву, сию ужасную громаду домов и церквей,
которая представляется глазам в образе величественного амфитеатра:
великолепная картина, особливо когда светит на нее солнце, когда
вечерние лучи его пылают на бесчисленных златых куполах, на
бесчисленных крестах, к небу возносящихся! Внизу расстилаются тучные,
густо-зеленые цветущие луга, а за ними, по желтым пескам, течет светлая
река, волнуемая легкими веслами рыбачьих лодок или шумящая под рулем
грузных стругов, которые плывут от плодоноснейших стран Российской
империи и наделяют алчную Москву хлебом.
На другой стороне реки видна дубовая роща, подле которой пасутся
многочисленные стада; там молодые пастухи, сидя под тению дерев,
поют простые, унылые песни и сокращают тем летние дни, столь для
них единообразные. …

In the last part of this description, Karamzin provides an image of a typical
pastoral space—a shady oak grove and young shepherds singing their songs—but the

70
beauty of nature is not presented as a background for the idealized life of the shepherds.
The young shepherds sing their songs not out of enjoyment but as a means to ward off
boredom; their songs are ―cheerless,‖ and life is ― monotonous.‖ Karamzin‘s pastoral
landscape emphasizes his distancing of the pastoral picture he depicts. Nevertheless, the
experience of the estate park is the prototype; the eye seeks out and expects to find in
nature those pastoral landscapes and scenes to which it is accustomed from experience in
a Russian landscape park.

3.4. The Russian Arcadia on Canvas: Shchedrin, Soroka, Venetsianov
Visual representations of the estate park can provide an illustration of how space, as
defined by the principles of jardin anglais design, functioned. Once the eye becomes
accustomed to the visual structure of this space, it starts to recognize it even in non-park
settings. As a result, nature as observed outside of the estate park takes on a pastoral
identity.
Landscape representation of the national countryside is relatively rare in Russian
art until the mid-nineteenth-century era of the Wanderers. However, examples can be
found in such early-nineteenth-century artists as Silvestr Shchedrin, Alexei Venetsianov,
and his pupil Grigorii Soroka. The subject of these artists is Russian estate parks and
Russian parks and country estates, and their aesthetic is different in many respects from
that of the Wanderers. In particular, these authors prefer sunny landscapes, geometric

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lines and idealized peasant images. In their paintings, estate park designs palpably
influence the artistic vision of nature outside of the estate park.
Silvester Shchedrin, besides the numerous Italian landscapes for which he mostly
famous, left a number of the images of Russian nature—in particular, views of parks, of
St. Petersburg parks, and pastoral scenes. The image of space in Shchedrin is always the
same in his wild nature landscapes, garden landscapes and city landscapes, many of
which have a similarly situated viewpoint. Shchedrin's landscape space is based on a
curvature motif, and his views emphasize plumose tree crowns and the river with its plain
water surface and isles and curved banks. The image of the English park of Gatchina in
the painting Vid na Gatchinskii dvorets s Dlinnogo ostrova [A View at Gatchinskii Palace
from Dlinnyi Island] gives a clear idea of this space and illustrates its connection with this
particular park design. The ―View at Tuchkov Bridge from Vasil'evskii Island‖ and the
pastoral landscape with a peasant woman and animals (Peizazh v okrestnostiakh Sankt-
Peterburga [A Landscape in the Environs of St. Petersburg] are clearly modeled on this
space design. All three paintings incorporate the image of a smooth and silent water
surface, which attracts the eye and becomes a structural center in motivating the main
curvature motifs—the contour of the shoreline. Besides being a crucial motif of jardin
anglais landscape design, the surface of the river is reminiscent of Palladian rounded and
symmetrical forms, and thus evokes the image of classical space. The juxtaposition of the
river with neoclassical sculpture (the vase) and the rounded geometrical surfaces of the
palace's roof underlines the importance of a Palladian connection of the river. On the
other hand, in the painting of the park as well as in the other three paintings, the sky is

72
vast and open and covers the landscape in a dome-like way. This is especially clear in the
St. Petersburg view but is also visible in pastoral pictures. As a result, the water and sky
bring out the image of neoclassical space in these landscapes.
The landscapes in Shchedrin's paintings convey the image of tranquility and slow-
paced movement. The figures of people and animals in these landscapes stand still and if
they move (as two figures on horseback (A View at Tuchkov Bridge...), and the peasant
woman with child, (A Landscape in the Environs of St. Petersburg), they seem frozen in
the same way that movement is represented in classical statues. On the other hand, the
experience of both stillness and slow movement is embraced in the alternations of
curvatures and rounded forms of nature objects. These perceptions, which are important
motifs in the pictures, are actual bodily experiences in garden space which are accessible
not only through contemplating the garden design, but also in the kinesthetic experience
of adjusting to the geometry of space while strolling. These experiences of perception
can be easily identified with the emotions dominant in the national image of nature's
beauty associated with tranquility and smoothness.
Schedrin‘s paintings can illustrate how the neoclassical geometry of the jardin
anglais is responsible for the image of wild nature and, in particular, for nature in the
framework of the pastoral genre.
Soroka (1823-1864) lived his entire life as a serf on the Ostrovki estate in the
Tver‘ region, which belonged to his landlord, Nikolai Miliukov. For a certain period of
time, Miliukov allowed him to live on Venetsianov‘s estate of Safonkovo in order to get

73
an artistic education. In contrast to the curriculum of the Academy, Venetsianov‘s
pedagogy consisted in having students paint from nature before they started copying the
old masters. Therefore, while living with Venetsianov, Soroka painted the estate‘s
landscapes and also made paintings of the estates of both his owner and his relatives.
The geometrical vision of space in Soroka's paintings is not only due to their
design but also to Venetsianov's painting system. Venetsianov aimed to develop in his
students the vision of geometric forms exhibited in reality. As Alekseeva points out in
quoting the diary of Apollon Mokritskii, one of Venetsianov's students: ―Instead of a
tiresome long-term copying the originals he ordered a student 'to start examining nature
straight away in straight geometrical lines‖ [Alekseeva 1982, p. 78].
The eye that Soroka developed as his paintings re-enforces the geometric structure
inherent in the park design. The geometrically structured space with strong neoclassical
and also pastoral readings, is a ground for an experience of tranquility.
Such Soroka's landscapes as Vid na ozero v imenii Ostrovki [1840s; A View of the
Lake in the Estate Ostrovki], Rybaki [second half of 1840s; Fishermen], and Vid na
plotinu v imenii Spasskoe [late 1840s; A View of the Dam in the Estate of Spasskoe]
illustrate the image of nature based on a designed park with its curvatures, classical
statues and architecture, vast and tranquil water surfaces and the open dome-like sky.
The figures of peasants in the landscapes are depicted in arrested motion similarly to
those in Shchedrin's landscapes. Comparing to Shchedrin, Soroka shows more interest in
straight lines than Shchedrin (the building, obelisks and the dam in the A View of the

74

Dam...), and his curvature lines are not so vividly picturesque but more smooth. In
contrast to Shchedrin, who obviously re-designed the landscapes he depicted, Soroka
painted from nature using the resources provided by national nature and ordinary parks.
Venetsianov establishes the image of national pastoralism in such paintings as Na
pashne. Vesna [1827; In the Fields. Spring]; Na zhatve [1827; Harvesting. Summer];
Senokos [1827; Hay-Mowing]. It is due to this that Venetsianov's paintings bring the
pastoral theme out of the garden into the places associated with peasant labor. Indeed, the
three paintings listed above present the views of the fields rather than landscapes, which,
in contrast to the settings of aristocratic garden, re-connects pastoralism with agriculture.
Nevertheless, the image of garden space is not replaced by that of wild nature but
rather incorporated in it. The garden geometry is recognizable by elements as the
curvature motif (a smooth zigzag line of the harvest in the Harvesting...; the smooth line
delineating the ploughed filed in the Spring...), and the design of the free land in the
Spring... with a group of trees at the foreground is reminiscent of the garden designs
where such groups among green grass-plots are common.
Besides the English park elements, Venetsianov's vision might be influenced by
the regular park, given that outside St. Petersburg and Moscow, the combination of them
were common. Thus, in the Hay-Mowing... the monumentally looked haystacks, resemble
clipped bushes, and, as they are seen in a row, provide the space with the regularity and
density of parterres and bosquets. The tranquility of the body at a stroll is recognizable in

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the movement of the woman ploughing at the foreground (whose movements have also an
obvious connection to dance).
The images of nature in the three artist considered above illustrate how the
experience of garden space influences the visual representation of the pastoral. The
garden pastoralism also played an important part in the poetry of the eighteenth to early
nineteenth century. The park space can be considered an integration of the classics in the
national culture, and in particular, is responsible for the adaptation of Roman pastoralism
to the themes and imagery of Russian literature.

3.5. The Russian Arcadia in Verse: Trediakovskii and Derzhavin as
Russian Horaces
The image of the country-estate as a pleasant retreat in which the benefits of
Arcadian life are secured by living in accordance with Horace's ideal of a modest farmer,
becomes a popular literary cliché in the eighteenth- to early nineteenth-century poetry.
The influence of Horace's Epode 2 on this pattern of representing the estate in literature is
crucial.
The Epode was introduced in Russian culture by Vassilii Trediakovskii who
published his free translation entitled Strofy pokhval'nye poselianskomu zhit'iu
[Glorifying Stanzas to Coutry-side life] in 1752. In spite of the fact that Trediakovsky
produced a free translation, it manages to render the main motifs of Horace's eulogy of
country life. In particular the poem features the depiction of the farm labor which the

76
landlord enjoys; the depiction of fun things to do in winter, such as hunting animals and
birds; a portrayal of the industrious landlady who oversees the home and is busy in
preparing meals; and a preference of a home grown food over imported products. It also
embraces the moral lesson of the Epode's opening lines: the life in one own farm is
blissful because it is free of debt, and protected from the perils of politics, war and travel.
Trediakovskii's translation shows a distinct tendency to project Horace's poem
onto the national reality; in particular he introduces the specifics of both national nature
and estate habitus. Thus, for example, he describes a typical Russian orchard on the farm:
Осень как плодом обогатится,
Много яблок, груш и много слив;
О! как полным сердцем веселится,
Их величину, их зря налив.

The translator also replaces the Roman details of distributing the harvest with the
habits of the Russian land owner. Compare in Horace:
How he takes delight in picking the grafted pears/ And the grapes that vie with purple,/
To honour Priapus, and Father Silvanus/ Who‘ll protect his boundaries
And in Trediakovsky‘s translation:
Что тогда из всех плодов зреляе,
Отбирает разно по частям:
То шлет в храм к молитве, что честняе;
Приходящим часть хранит гостям.

Часть в подарок сродникам, часть брату;
Благодетель ту б взял, говорит;

Ту несите куму, ту часть свату,
Пусть за ту мне друг благодарит.

77
Trediakovsky‘s version also contains similarities with Vergil's pastoral world but
rather than being a direct influence of Bucolics they are more likely to come through the
mediation of Horace's vision of the country-side nature in the Epode:
It‘s pleasant to lie now beneath some old oak-tree,
Or now on the springy turf,
While the streams go gliding, between their steep banks,
And little birds sing in the leaves,
And the fountains murmur, with flowing waters
That invite us to gentle sleep.

The image of enjoying nature in Horace might be a reference to Meliboeus's lying
―under the canopy of a spreading beech.‖ Trediakovsky not only incorporates the
translation of this landscape description but makes a connection with the pastoral more
palpable:
Иногда лежит под старым дубом,
Иногда на мягкой там траве;
Нет в нем скверных мыслей зле о грубом:
Что есть дельно, то все в голове.

Быстрые текут между тем речки;
Сладко птички по лесам поют,
Трубят звонко пастухи в рожечки,
С гор ключи струю гремящу льют.
Толь при разном диком сельском шуме
Ненадолго спит вздремавши он;
Что ни было доброго на думе,
Забывает все в глубокий сон. (emphasis mine)

The underlined line, added by Trediakovskii, introduces an abstract pastoral
image, and shows that to the Russian poet, Horace's farm is a part of the imaginary
pastoral space. Trediakovskii's poem idealizes the country-side living and explicitly
connects it to the notion of the Golden age. This contrasts to Horace's original which

78
contains an evocation of the idealized past meant as a reference to the republican moral
values associated with farming:
Blessed is he, who far from the cares of business [―procul negotiis‖]
Like one of mankind‘s ancient race,
Ploughs his paternal acres, with his own bullocks,
And is free of usury‘s taint...

Instead of referring to history, Trediakovskii introduces a cliché reference to the
Golden age. The Golden age as an image of innocent and peaceful past (and not in its
agricultural aspect of spontaneous growing and natural riches) is a standard treatment of
the pastoral space in the tradition of 17th-18
th
century pastoral criticism. As René Rapin,
a seventeenth century author of eclogues, writes in the Discourse of Pastorals (published
in 1684): ―Pastorals were the invention of the simplicity and innocence of [the] Golden
Age, if there was ever any such, or certainly of that time that succeeded the beginning of
the World: For tho the Golden Age must be acknowledged to be only in the fabulous
times, yet 'tis certain that the Manners of the first Men were plain and simple, that we
may easily derive both the innocent imployment of Shepherds, and Pastorals from them.‖
(Rapin 1684, p.p. 14-15) Trediakovskii compares the estate life with the peaceful, stable
and secure life of the Golden age:
Счастлив! в мире без сует живущий,
Как в златый век, да и без врагов;
Плугом отчески поля орющий,
А к тому ж без всяких и долгов.

While making the Golden age the frame of reference of his translation,
Trediakovskii removes the ambiguous ending of Horace's Epode thus interpreting the

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idealized rusticity in a completely serious way. The ending of Horace's Epode makes
many scholars believe that the poem introduces an irony towards hypocritical appeal to
old values. Indeed, the finale of the Epode reveals that the monologue is pronounced by
an usurer who decides to move to the country-side and sell away all his possessions, but
soon he changes his mind and asks his clients to return the deposits. Trediakovskii avoids
such ambiguities, and does not convey any doubt about the value of the idealized country
living. He replaces Horace‘s ending with a moral statement thus linking the idyll to the
―holy simplicity‖ of primal innocence of the Golden age:
Насыщаясь кушаньем природным,
Все здорово провождает дни,
Дел от добрых токмо благородным,
Не от платья и не от гульни.
Счастлив, о! весьма излишно,
Жить кому так ныне удалось.
Дай бог! чтоб исчезло все, что пышно,
Всем бы в простоте святой жилось.

Like Trediakovsky, Derzhavin also tackled Horace‘s epode under the title
Pokhvala sel'skoi zhizni [A Praise of Country-side Life 1798]. Derzhavin's version is
more precise and preserves the ironic finale:
Так откупщик вчерась судил,
Сбираясь быть поселянином, -
Но правежом долги лишь сбрил,
Остался паки мещанином,
А ныне деньги отдал в рост.

In contrast to Trediakovskii, Derzhavin does not view the country-estate as a
pastoral space, and does not introduce any pastoral motifs in the text. At the same time,
the image of Horace's farm in Derzhavin‘s translation has more references to the specific

80
traits of the national estate culture. For example, Derzahvin elaborates on the description
of national cuisine and attacks the French cuisine:
И тут-то вкусен мне обед!
А как жаркой еще баран
Младой, к Петрову дню блюденный,
Капусты сочный кочан,
Пирог, груздями начиненный,
И несколько молочных блюд, -
Тогда-то устрицы, го-гу,
Всех мушелей заморских грузы,
Лягушки, фрикасе, рагу,
Чем окормляют нас французы,
И уж ничто не вкусно мне.

Derzhavin imbues the representation of the small farm with the recognizable details of
the Russian land-lord‘s life. At the dinner, the landlord enjoys and reflects upon his
prosperity, while looking at his barn full of animals and the yard ―swarming‖ with serfs
whom he calls ―slaves,‖ probably to preserve the classical aura of the image:
Меж тем приятно из окна
Зреть карду с тучными волами;
Кобыл, коров, овец полна,
Двор резвыми кишит рабами -
Как весел таковый обед!

Derzhavin makes another take on adapting Horace's small farm image to the
national environment in his poem Evgeniiu. Zhizn' Zvanskaia [To Evgenii. The Life in
Zvanka 1807]. In this poem which is loosely based on the themes of Horace's Epode,
Horace is named as one of two poets who the landlord of Zvanka venerates:
Оттуда прихожу в святилище я муз
И с Флакком, Пиндаром, богов воседши в пире,
К царям, к друзьям моим иль к небу возношусь
Иль славлю сельску жизнь на лире;

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In contrast to both Horace's and Trediakovskii's landlords, Derzahvin's owner of
the country estate describes it primarily as a place to enjoy nature, art and country-side
amusements. This image of the blissful country-side is largely based on the estate park
practices discussed earlier (see sections 3.1-3.3).
The poem begins with depicting the pleasures of a stroll in the estate. The
contemplation of the nature places the poet in harmony with God. The innocence
associated with an idealized country-side is reinterpreted in terms of the philosophical and
religious views of nature:
Дыша невинностью, пью воздух, влагу рос,
Зрю на багрянец зарь, на солнце восходяще,
Ищу красивых мест между лилей и роз,
Средь сада храм жезлом чертяще.
Иль, накормив моих пшеницей голубей,
Смотрю над чашей вод, как вьют под небом круги;
На разноперых птиц, поющих средь сетей,
На кроющих, как снегом, луги.
Пастушьего вблизи внимаю рога зов,
Вдали тетеревей глухое токованье,
Барашков в воздухе, в кустах свист соловьев,
Рев крав, гром жолн и коней ржанье.

The garden provides a pattern of enjoying nature through seeing and strolling. The
strolling poet even plays an amateur architect in stopping to draw a design of a palace
with his stick :
Ищу красивых мест между лилей и роз,
Средь сада храм жезлом чертяще.

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The garden also displays recognizable features of the pastoral space: not only the
shepherd's horn, but also the clouds looking like ―little sheep in the air‖ exemplify the
pastoral fauna.
The estate in Derzhavin's poem is a place of various games and playful
entertainments including looking at the environs through telescope, hiking, picnics,
celebrations, hunting and fishing, observing village crafts, partying, dancing, and staged
spectacles. The estate is used mostly for fun and rest and these activities are presented as
inseparable from art and poetic occupation. The poet himself besides reading the classical
poets, writes his own poetry, and spends time thinking about philosophy and Russian
history.

3.6 The Russian Arcadia in Prose: “Fathers and Sons”
In Turgenev's Fathers and Sons, the aesthetic and behavioral practices of country
estate are in focus because of their centrality to the culture of the liberal aristocracy of
1840s, or ―the fathers.‖
Turgenev uses pastoral Arcadia as an allegorical reference that conveys the ironic
attitude of the positivist generation of the 1860s, ―the sons,‖ towards the ―outdated‖
romantic values of ―the fathers.‖ In particular, the pastoral reference conveys a notion
that the life-styles of the liberal aristocracy of the older generation are based on aesthetic
practices, such as art, music, poetry, and enjoying nature.

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The very name of Arkadii Kirsanov, one of the main characters of the novel,
alludes to the Arcadian allegory. Arkadii is a young descendant of an aristocratic family
who is strongly influenced by his friend Evgenii Bazarov, a medical student and
―nihilist.‖ Trying to imitate Bazarov, Arkadii claims to be a democrat and derides the life
styles of his father and uncle, but his own tastes and values betray that he is an organic
part of the estate culture.
This name connected with pastoral Arcadia has two interpretations in the novel's
context. On one hand, it mockingly presents an idealist and naïve Kirsanov, as a cliché
shepherd character of an eighteenth-century pastoral, and corresponds to Bazarov's
criticism of the estate folk. In Bazarov's eyes, the aristocrats naïveté and helplessness
before real life reveals their idleness and living at the expense of their serfs. On the other
hand, the word ―Arcadia,‖ echoed in the name of the young Kirsanov, refers to the
romantic paradigm of idyll which promotes the value of the naïve life close to nature and
art. The ―Arcadia‖ reference points to the estate as a peaceful retreat of the people with
developed aesthetic perceptions for whom nature and art has a spiritual significance. The
name of Bazarov is opposed to these two meanings of Arcadia. The name originates from
bazar – which means ―market-place‖, and is also a colloquial word for a noisy argument,
wrangle. Thus, Bazarov's name alludes to city life, gathering of crowds, and squabble.
Thus, the names of the main characters express the opposition between the pastoral and
the urban and reinforces the main ideological conflict of the novel.

84

One of the most important dialogs that Bazarov and Arkadii have in the novel is
presented as a reenactment of a pastoral scene. The landscape description is done in the
contemporary realist style, and focuses on the familiar features of the national country-
side. However, the setting of the scene in which the characters enjoy the outdoor estate
nature is not all that different from the cliché stemming from Virgil's Bucolics: Bazarov
and Arkadii are lying on the grass in a shadow and conversing:
It was midday. The sun was burning hot behind a thin veil of unbroken whitish
clouds. Everything was hushed; there was no sound but the cocks crowing
provocatively at oen another in the village, producing in every one who heard
them a strange sense of drowsiness and ennui; and somewhere, high up in a tree-
top, the incessant plaintive cheep of a young hawk. Arkady and Bazarov lay in
the shade of a small haystack, putting under themselves a couple of armfuls of dry
and rustling but still greenish and fragrant grass. (Turgenev 1989, p.101)
[Настал полдень. Солнце жгло из-за тонкой завесы сплошных беловатых
облаков. Все молчало, одни петухи задорно перекликались на деревне,
возбуждая в каждом, кто их слышал, странное ощущение дремоты и скуки;
да где-то высоко в верхушке деревьев звенел плаксивым призывом
немолчный писк молодого ястребка. Аркадий и Базаров лежали в тени
небольшого стога сена, подостлавши под себя охапки две шумливо-сухой,
но еще зеленой и душистой травы (chapter XXI)]

The source of the shadow, in contrast to Bucolics, is not a leafy tree but a haystack, whose
hay is used as a bed. The hay adds a national color to the scene, but the ―eternal‖ images
of the protecting shade and soft grass bed are a bucolic legacy.
The connection of the natural setting of the scene with the pastoral landscape is
stated explicitly in Bazarov‘s sarcastic remark:

85
Ah, Arkady! do me a favor, let‘s really quarrel for once till we‘re both laid out
dead, until we‘re destroyed.‖
―But then perhaps we should end by …‖
―Fighting?‖ put in Bazarov. ―So, what? Here. On the hay, in these idyllic
surroundings, far from the world and people‘s eyes, it wouldn‘t matter.‖
(Turgenev 1989, p. 105)

[- Ах, Аркадий! сделай одолжение, поссоримся раз хорошенько - до
положения раз, до истребления.
- Но ведь этак, пожалуй, мы кончим тем...
- Что подеремся? - подхватил Базаров. - Что ж? Здесь, на сене, в такой
идиллической обстановке, вдали от света и людских взоров - ничего.
(chapter XXI)

It is difficult to tell if Bazarov is completely opposed to the aesthetic of country-
side nature. Probably not, since the scene takes place in the estate where his parents live;
and it has, according to the character himself, an intimate connection to his childhood
memories. Bazarov's ironic reference to the idyll entails that he understands idyllic
settings as a secluded retreat, remote from the chaos of the outside world.
The garden settings in Turgenev might suggest pastoral connections in some
scenes without characters' being aware of it. One of the novel's scenes presents Arkadii
and Katia in the garden as he confesses his love for her. Although the association of the
scene with the pastoral is not claimed explicitly, it is conveyed by the tone of the
description. The meeting takes place in a typical estate garden, and the characters are
engaged in the regular activities typically associated with the garden: Arkadii is holding
has a ―half-open book‖, while Katia is feeding birds with breadcrumbs:
At Nikolskoe Katya and Arkady were sitting in the garden on a turf seat in the
shade of a tall ash tree; Fifi had placed herself on the ground near them, giving
her slender body that graceful curve which is known among hunters as ―the hare
bend.‖ Both Arkady and Katya were silent; he was holding a half-open book in
his hands, while she was picking out of a basket the few crumbs of bread left in it

86
and throwing them to a small family of sparrows, who with the frightened
impudence peculiar to them were hopping and chirping at her very feet. A faint
breeze stirring in the ash leaves kept slowly moving pale-gold flecks of sunlight
back and forth over Fifi's tawny back and the shady path; a patch of unbroken
shade fell upom Arkady and Katya; only from time to time a bright streak
gleamed on her hair. Both were silent, but the way in which they were silent, in
which they were sitting together, was expressive of confidential intimacy; each of
them seemed not even to be thinking of his companion, while secretly rejoicing in
his presence.(Turgenev 1989, p. 134-135)
[В Никольском, в саду, в тени высокого ясеня, сидели на дерновой
скамейке Катя с Аркадием; на земле возле них поместилась Фифи, придав
своему длинному телу тот изящный поворот, который у охотников слывет
"русачьей полежкой". И Аркадий и Катя молчали; он держал в руках
полураскрытую книгу, а она выбирала из корзинки оставшиеся в ней
крошки белого хлеба и бросала их небольшой семейке воробьев, которые, с
свойственной им трусливою дерзостью, прыгали и чирикали у самых ее
ног. Слабый ветер, шевеля в листьях ясеня, тихонько двигал взад и вперед,
и по темной дорожке, и по желтой спине Фифи, бледно-золотые пятна
света; ровная тень обливала Аркадия и Катю; только изредка в ее волосах
зажигалась яркая полоска. Они молчали оба; но именно в том, как они
молчали, как они сидели рядом, сказывалось доверчивое сближение;
каждый из них как будто и не думал о своем соседе, а втайне радовался
его близости [chapter XXV]

The setting of the scene resemble that of a rococo pastoral scene: not only a tree shadow
but also a book, a dog lying nearby, and the bird feeding are typical attributes of the
pastoral scenes by such artists as Francois Boucher and Jean-Honoré Fragonard. The fact
that Turgenev's vision of the scene is dominated by a painterly image is obvious from the
emphasis given to the play of light and colors in the description of the landscape. The
appeal of the rococo aesthetics for Turgenev may be difficult to explain given that by the
time it was perceived as outdated. However, in the mid 19
th
century, the estate garden as
such, became a holdout of a conventional sentimentalist worldview.
Pastoral settings accompany the scene between Bazarov and Fenechka, the young
girlfriend of Arkadii's father Nikolai Petrovich, which takes place in the garden pavilion.

87
Bazarov uses pastoral idiom ironically to describe his behavior while trying ( rather
clumsily) to court Fenechka. Being a sworn enemy of the aristocratic mannerisms,
Bazarov is so angry at himself for this attempt to play a game of courtship that he
sarcastically congratulates himself upon ―formally joining the ranks of Celadons‖
[chapter XXIII). The reference to Celadon, the proverbial pastoral lover, from d'Urfé's
popular novel Astrée, is meant to convey negative connotation of cheesy sentimentality.
In Bazarov's view, the effete inhabitants of the estate are expected to re-enact this kind of
a low-brow sentimentalism. Fenechka, who comes from a poor lower middle-class
family, is uneducated and lacks urban sophistication, makes a perfect pastoral character.
However, it is possible to see that not only Bazarov's uncharacteristic sentimentality but
also the settings of the scene (a green overgrown pavilion, lots of fresh roses) as such
evoke this pastoral re-enactment:
One day at seven o'clock in the morning, Bazarov, returning from a walk came
upon Fenichka in the lilac arbor, which was long past flowering, but was still
thick and green. She was sitting on the garden seat, and had as usual thrown a
white kerchief over her head; near her lay a whole heap of red and white roses
still wet with dew. He said good morning to her.
―Ah! Evgeny Vassilyich!‖ she said, and lifted the edge of her kerchief a little to
look at him, in doing which her arm was bared to her elbow.
What are doing here?‖ said Bazarov, sitting down beside her. ―Are you making a
bouquet?‖ (Turgenev 1989, p. 117-118)

[Однажды, часу в седьмом утра, Базаров, возвращаясь с прогулки, застал в
давно отцветшей, но еще густой и зеленой сиреневой беседке Фенечку.
Она сидела на скамейке, накинув, по обыкновению, белый платок на
голову; подле нее лежал целый пук еще мокрых от росы красных и белых
роз. Он поздоровался с нею.
- А! Евгений Васильич! - проговорила она и приподняла немного край
платка, чтобы взглянуть на него, причем ее рука обнажилась до локтя.
- Что вы это тут делаете? - промолвил Базаров, садясь возле нее. -
Букет вяжете?
- Да; на стол к завтраку. Николай Петрович это любит.

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 Но до завтрака еще далеко. Экая пропасть цветов! (chapter XXIII)]

Collecting and plating with flowers is an aesthetic practice which bridges the estate life-
styles to the pastoral aesthetics. In Turgenev, the formal connection of sorting the flowers
and the pastoral is emphasized by the presentation of the female character. Fenechka is
described as a young girl wearing a peasant kerchief and being attractive with simple and
healthy ―peasant-like‖ beauty (described earlier in the same chapter).

3.7. The Fauna in the Russian Pastoral
Since the Russian country-estate park serves the decorative and entertaining rather
than economic function, the herd animals are not part of the park environment, as they
were in the European ferme ornée. To be precise, the animals are present at such a villa
as part of the decorum: in the hunting park, a zoo, and by the pond. However, these
animals are not part of its economic life, and the relationship between people and animals
take place only in the context of aristocratic entertainments, such as horse riding and
hunting.
The fact that pastoral descriptions of the Russian countryside rarely include herd
animals in contrast, for example, to the classical Mediterranean, Italian, Dutch, and
French landscape aesthetics, is an important idiosyncratic feature in Russian landscape
painting. Except for some academic paintings and artists (for example, some works by
Silvestr Shchedrin and Fedor Klodt), Russian landscapes from Andrei Martynov (1768-
1826), Silvestr Shchedrin and Soroka to the Wanderers rarely contain animals.

89
Pushkin's Ode ―The Village‖ (Derevnia) provides an illustrative example of the

animals‘ exclusion from pastoral space. In this poem Pushkin bases his invective of

serfdom on the subversion of a rustic idyll. Pushkin's poem follows the theme and

rhetoric of the idyll in the first four stanzas, and addresses the countryside as a retreat

from urban vicious vanity,

Приветствую тебя, пустынный уголок,
Приют спокойствия, трудов и вдохновенья,
Где льется дней моих невидимый поток
На лоне счастья и забвенья.

This description of the picturesque rustic environment evokes the aesthetics of the

18
th
century aristocratic park, although downplaying its parade aspect. The opposition of

the philosophical leisure of the countryside to the immoral life in the city is a reference to

the ―Horatian‖ idyll considered in earlier sections.

Я твой: я променял порочный двор цирцей,
Роскошные пиры, забавы, заблужденья
На мирный шум дубров, на тишину полей,
На праздность вольную, подругу размышленья.

The landscape description in the ode consists of two parts: an aristocratic garden with

adjacent land and the landscapes of happy and contented peasant life:

Я твой: люблю сей темный сад
С его прохладой и цветами,
Сей луг, уставленный душистыми скирдами,
Где светлые ручьи в кустарниках шумят.

The second element of the landscape description is the sequence of images associated

with happy and prosperous peasant exis tence presented as if from distance,

Здесь вижу двух озер лазурные равнины,
Где парус рыбаря белеет иногда,

90
За ними ряд холмов и нивы полосаты,
Вдали рассыпанные хаты,
На влажных берегах бродящие стада,
Овины дымные и мельницы крилаты;
Везде следы довольства и труда...

Grazing herds do make an appearance as one of the idyll clichés, but are clearly
associated with the peasantry rather than with the aristocracy. They are part of the
beautiful view that is removed from the world of the landlord‘s house and the garden.
To conclude, the central feature of the Russian pastoral aesthetics is its association
with the world of the country estate and estate park architecture. In Russia the estate
garden and park spaces wеrе used as a basis for the recreation of the pastoral myth. The
presence of Mediterranean flora in the parks, orangeries and hothouses reinforces the
connection of the Russian park with the classical locus amoenus. The recreation of the
pastoral in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century arts and poetry is shaped by the
social and bodily practices of the aristocratic leisure, in particular such mundane activity
as strolling in the park. Thus, while park and garden architecture served as material for
quasi-classical pastorals, the artistic and literary representation of the aristocratic estate
often included Arcadian motifs and allusions.
Because the Russian pastoral was based on the estate park, its literary and artistic
treatment is dominated by the references to garden flora and park related leisure activities
such as strolls, and bird feeding. The layouts of Russian park spaces are such that the
animals do not play a significant role in the Russian recreated Arcadias. Finally, another
important peculiarity of the Russian pastoral consists in the symbolic division of the

91
idyllic universe: the aristocratic idyll is lacking the typical inclusion of animals, who are
only granted a cameo in the role of the livestock in the peasant spaces.
My analysis has shown that in 18
th
and 19
th
century Russia, the pastoral
maintained some traits of its classical prototype, while appropriating important influences
of the contemporary Western sentimentalist pastoral discourse, and developing new
idiosyncratically Russian elements. Throughout this period the pastoral (or, if you wish,
the pastoralist mind set) was an important and influential paradigm permeating various
media and literary genres, and reacting beyond the literature and arts into the realms of
real life architecture and landscaping, and even bodily practices. This flowering of the
pastoral set the stage for the radical experiments of the Silver Age.

92
Chapter 4. The Theme of the Pastoral and the Russian Silver Age

4.1 Introduction: the Concept of Unity with Nature and the Theme of
the Pastoral in the Fin de Siècle
In the realist art of the nineteenth century, pastoral themes, if they do not vanish
completely, appear in landscape painting integrated into the settings of countryside
landscapes (e.g. in John Constable, Jean-Baptiste Corot, Jean-François Millet). At the
end of the century, however, the pastoral regains genre independence in rococo and
ancient classical stylizations, featuring elegant rococo beaus and smart ladies, as well as
satyrs and other mythic characters of the classical pastoral. In the fin de siècle repertoire
of symbols, the pastoral theme becomes a common framework to convey the world
creationist agency of art. As the pastoral music and rhythm penetrate nature, it appears
flawlessly beautiful and enchanted either by the power art or by that of a mystic epiphany.
The overbearing tendency of nature representation in the western Style Moderne
and Symbolist art is to create a detached image of nature, a dream-object of artistry and
fantasy (e.g. in Arnold Böcklin, Maurice Denis, Aubrey Beardsley, Charles Conder; cf.
also Pierre Puivis de Chavannes). Following Kenneth Clark's comprehensible, if
empirical, classification of landscape types, this image of nature is characteristic of non-
realist landscapes expressing mental realities—―landscape of fantasy‖ (Clark 1979, p. 73)
and ―ideal landscape‖ (Clark 1979, p. 109).

93
Although the Russian modernist culture picks up the theme of the pastoral from
the western Style Moderne and Symbolist pastoral stylizations, it does not place a
similarly strong emphasis on created environments. Besides the contemporary modernist
art, Russian artists also admire the French Barbizon school, the ideas of John Ruskin, and
the artistic legacy of the English Pre-Raphaelites; and, as these interests suggest, they
have never renounced the rustic realities as a basis of pastoral fantasy.
Despite the fact that Russian modernists reject the naturalist style of the
―Wanderers,‖ the observation of spontaneous countryside environments plays a
significant role in their landscape vision (cf. for example, among many others, the
countryside landscapes by Olga Della-Vos-Kardovskaia, Stanislav Zhukovskii, Boris
Kustodiev, and Zinaida Serebriakova). Perhaps a legacy of the jardin anglais taste, even
the images of parks by Alexander Benois, Victor Borisov-Musatov, and Konstantin
Somov often emphasize spontaneous compositions and non-designed nature features,
such as woods, naturally growing grasses, and water (cf. Benois's drawings of Pavlovsk
and ―The Gardens of Diana,‖ the panneau for the Contemporary Art showrooms; Somov's
images of Versailles and other parks; and Borisov's paintings of his estate).
The position of an observer or, rather, a participant in rustic life suggests a more
intimate and less controlling connection with the environment. In the Russian versions of
the pastoral theme, art's domination over nature is overshadowed by the environment's
impact on the artist and the sentiment of unity with the environment in communication
and interaction. By no means a serene and placid experience but rather full of neurotic
anxiety, and, perhaps, reinforced by the neurotic element, this sentiment of unity conveys

94
the intuition of ancient ritual practices incorporated in the classical Golden Age myth.
Indeed, as was shown in the first two chapters, the classical pastoral myth also renders
anxieties of relationship with nature—those of interaction between the human body and
the environment in the mimetic ritual, and those related to the animal sacrifice.
According to the arguments of these chapters, pastoral song can be linked to the
rituals that define the role of animals in the economy of farmers as opposed to the
economy of hunters, and, in particular, emphasize the change in sacrificial practices. The
intimate connection and identification with big animals, the condition of their use for
sacrifice in the community of hunters (Burkert 1983), is underpinned by guilt and anxiety
aroused by the killing of human-like creatures. This guilt and its overcoming is the main
theme of the pastoral myth of the peace between species (Virgil's eclogue 4). This myth
appeals to the images of bloodless sacrifice and evokes the memories of the economy
based on gathering, opposed to the hunters‘ economy, as the Golden Age of the ancient
past. The intimate brotherly connection with cattle and other livestock is emphasized in
the pastoral as a symbol of the agricultural community being purified from guilt for
sacrificing the animals.
As was shown, besides the forms of bloodless sacrifice with products of
agriculture and gathering, the pastoral‘s intimate bond with the environment is traceable
in various motifs based on mimetic practices, such as, for example, the song which
engages human body in mimetic recreation of the world and is echoed in the songs of
trees, rocks, etc. In these practices, the magic power of world creation enclosed in the
song is counterbalanced by the impact of the environment on the human body, engaged in

95
mimesis. Anxiety about this impact results in the violent images in the myths about
Pan‘s lovers and in the images of harmful or impure confrontations with nature, as, for
example, in the myths referred to by Selenus in Virgil's Eclogue 6 (lines 41-81).
A discovery of the ritual ground of the classical pastoral would not be
unthinkable
10
in the culture of Russian fin de siècle educated elite, which enjoyed direct
access to original Greek and Roman classical texts and was especially interested in the
classical myth. Nevertheless, it is hardly possible to find a sufficient ground for
anthropological thought in Russian decadent culture, but sooner, a psychological context
emerges in which the images and anxieties of the classical pastoral myth render the
sentiment of unity with nature.
I will consider the notion of unity with nature in the light of the psychoanalytic
theory of Melanie Klein, which explains the presence of conflict and anxiety as embedded
in the images of unity with nature. Klein makes a brief analysis of the experience of unity
in connection to the notion of depressive position, which she was first to describe.
Hanna Segal believes that artistic creation begins with the depressive position—
that is, with the feeling that the ―internal world is shattered, which evokes in the artist a
necessity to recreate it‖ in creating ―something that is felt to be a whole new world.‖
(Seagal 1991; p.86) Segal bases her argument on Klein's psychoanalysis, where the
depressive position is characterized by the ego's efforts to accept the unity of the external

10
Despite the fact that the connection of the pastoral with agricultural rituals has not been discussed until
modern scholarship (e.g. in McCulloh [1970] and Halperin 1983), it might appear as an occasional
intuition, in particular, among the educated elite interested in the authentic classical culture. An example of
such intuition is John Keats's ―Ode to a Grecian Urn.‖ In Keats, the sculpture relief on the Attic marble
vase, which he describes as ―Cold Pastoral‖, is populated by images of ritual celebration and folk music and
dance. The central image of the vase is the people's gathering in a procession to accompany a ―mysterious
priest‖ and a ―heifer‖ decorated for sacrifice on the ―green altar.‖

96
realities previously perceived as separate entities. As is the case with a theory of perinatal
relations, all discussion in Klein refers to the child's relationship with the caregiver. At
the stage previous to depressive, ego is not able to perceive the caregiver's figure as a
unity but views it, depending upon the caregiver's agency, as two different beings—one
good and kind and the other evil, the former being an object of love and the latter a target
of aggressive impulses. At the depressive stage, ego is able to internalize the caregiver's
figure as one integral person and is overwhelmed by the sense of guilt for aggressive
feelings that it grew toward the evil part. The guilt and pain that accompany integration,
as a result, contribute to the sense of separation from the beloved object, which begins the
lifelong experience with the sentiment of loneliness. According to Klein's analysis, the
process of integration is at the same time a source of anxiety or guilt, even if the ego is
strong enough to bring integration to completion.
Unity with nature is a powerful symbol of integration which grants one the feeling
of serenity and completeness. However, as one of Klein's sample analyses shows, this
unity is in itself a complex emotion, not free from traces of anxiety and loneliness. Klein
describes a patient who from early childhood found ―comfort and satisfaction in being out
of doors.‖ (Klein 1975, p. 307] She emphasizes that he was able to ―overcome his sense
of loneliness in relation to the countryside, while still experiencing it in connection with
the town.‖ (ibid) In Klein's interpretation, being with nature for the patient was an image
of successful integration of ―loving and hostile feelings‖ (ibid p.308). She emphasizes, in
particular, that this patient's connection to nature was not free of ―some aggression‖ and
―his own relation to the countryside was (…) not wholly good,‖ and involved ―robbing

97
nests and damaging hedges‖ when he was a child. However, his relationship to nature
was free of guilt since in the eyes of this patient, nature was ―rich and invulnerable‖ and
―always repaired itself.‖ (all - ibid.)
In Klein's analysis, nature represents for the patient both beauty and goodness
(ibid p.307), and his experience of the unity that the countryside provides for him could
hardly be built without either one. For Klein, the aesthetic attitude to nature goes without
saying, while she emphasizes the sense of nature's goodness as something specific for this
patient. In contrast, along with tensions concerning the psychological experience of
harmony with nature, the history of the pastoral theme features resistances to accepting
the aesthetic aspect of this unity.
The concept of unity with nature is introduced in the connection with the theme of
the pastoral in Friedrich Schiller's seminal essays collected under the title ―Naive and
Sentimental Poetry.‖ Whereas prior to Schiller, closeness to nature was put in moral
terms as living a life of simplicity and innocence in accordance with nature's guidance
(cf., for example, in Rene Rapin and in Jean-Jacques Rousseau), he points to the moral
handicaps of such a unity but emphasizes the value of its aesthetic and psychological
aspects. Although the link between the pastoral and the sentiment of unity with nature
has become a cliché in pastoral scholarship since Schiller, Schiller's own approach to it,
as I will show, suggests a resistance to accepting the aesthetic value of the ―naive nature,‖
that is, of nature's objects as such. Perhaps, because the theme of the pastoral countryside
attracts urbanites, the struggle to accept the aesthetic value of the rustic outdoors is
recurrent in imagining pastoral nature after Schiller. In particular, as I will show, in the

98
urban aesthetics of the western Style Moderne, in the symbols of art's domination over
nature, all her imperfections are distilled away. Pastoral nature is rendered in the images
of sublimated beauty which, however, enclose hidden death drives. As a result, the
western Style Moderne image of nature reinforces a psychotic split into life and death,
beauty and corruption, rather than suggesting integration. Although this split is a
powerful theme of the Russian decadent culture as well (see Bowlt 2008, passim, and esp.
pp. 201 - 219) the Russian fin de siècle pastoral shows a tendency to create true images of
harmony with nature in the images and themes of the classical pastoral myth. In
approaching the classical pastoral, the authors of pastoral stylizations display affection for
nature along with the symbols of aggression. As a result, such unity is feasible in
principle if torn apart by neurotic conflicts and anxieties.
In this chapter, I examine how constructing pastoral nature is carried through in
Russian modernism by comparing it to its western influences. I suggest that in Russia,
the theme of the pastoral nature is rendered with less aesthetic and psychological struggle
than in the west, because of the agrarian ground of national lifestyles. The country estate
which was connected with the pastoral theme in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century
cultures continued to play a significant role in the lifestyles even in the era of fervent
capitalist development.

99
4.2 Schiller's essays and the Aesthetic Struggle with Rustic
Environment

4.2.1. Escape to Nature in the Pastoral Criticism of 1950s-1970s
The embodiment of unity with nature in the image of the pastoral countryside is a
common point of the definitions of the pastoral in 1950s-1970s scholarship. However,
although Schiller's essays in all probability influenced this pastoral scholarship directly
11
,
the latter's premises of the absolute value and feasibility of this unity cause a
misinterpretation of Schiller.
The 1950s-1970s definitions of the pastoral as a dream-image to be fulfilled by
humanity are based on Freudian ideas about the repressive function of civilization and
Marxist utopia. The seminal studies that inspired this paradigm are Renato Poggioli's The
Oaten Flute (a collection of articles published between 1957 and 1963) and Leo Marx's
The Machine in the Garden (1964). This influential trend in twentieth-century pastoral
scholarship defines the pastoral as a dream-world and the image of wish-fulfillment, and
introduces into the discourse of pastoral scholarship such terms as ―liberation‖ and the
―discontents of civilization.‖ The pastoral is viewed as an image of the liberation of
nature
12
and, especially, of sexual freedom. Simultaneously, this scholarly trend

11
David Halperin's "Before pastoral: Theocritus and the ancient tradition of bucolic poetry": ―The essay is
more specifically a ‗mirror for modern critics,‘ as the Elizabethans might have said, because Schiller's
categories of sentimental poetry correspond remarkably to what many critics still describe as the uses of
pastoral etc‖ (p. 30-31); Alpers‘ ―What is Pastoral?‖ agrees with Halperin's stipulation (pp. 28-35)
12
To Poggoli, for example, the pastoral is a form of ―compensation for the renunciations imposed by the
social order on its individual members, and of reconciling men to the sacrifices they have made in
civilization's behalf.‖ Along the same lines, ―the function of pastoral poetry is to translate to the plane of

100
identifies the role of nature in the pastoral as a place of flight from urban civilization. An
individual craves escape to the ―fresh air‖ of the countryside and seeks ―to find in
country-life a relief from the problems of a sophisticated society‖ (Lerner1972, p. 19) and
from the ―fever and anguish of being.‖ (Poggioli 1975, p.9) These premises in pastoral
scholarship are likely to be responsible for the fact that it pays no attention to direct
manifestations of the urban specifics in the pastoral. The flight to nature from
civilization, identified as countryside nature and the urban environment respectively, is
considered a default desire of the pastoral subject
13
. This assumption is aided by another
one: that the psychological framework of the pastoral phenomena maintains stability
despite all historic transformations. For example, in speaking about Romantic versions of
the pastoral theme, Marx points out: ―[w]hen we strip away the topical surface,
particularly, the imagery of industrialism and certain special attitudes towards visible
nature, it becomes apparent that the underlying pattern is much older and more universal.
Then the Sleepy Hollow motif, like a number of other conventions used by romantic
writers, proves to be a modern version of an ancient literary device. It is a variation upon
the contrast between two worlds, one identified with rural peace and simplicity, the other
with urban power and sophistication, which has been used by writers working in the
pastoral mode since the time of Virgil.‖ (Marx 1964, p.19)

imagination man‘s sentimental reaction against compulsory labor, social obligations, and ethical bonds.‖ (
p.31)
13
The combination of Marxist and Freudian premises in this scholarship is similar to Herbert Marcuse's
utopian theory of liberation. A Marcusian element in the assumed unity with nature in Poggioli and other
scholars is also very probable. C. Fred Alford (―Nature and Narcissism: The Frankfurt School‖) believes
that the psychological prototype of reconciliation with nature in Marcuse is narcissistic loneliness and
longing for completeness. According to him, Marcuse constructs the narcissistic image of unity as
dissolution in the object and fusion with it.

101
4.2.2 Infeasibility of Escape to Nature as Viewed by Schiller
The reconciliation with nature in Schiller not only is much less feasible than in the
mid-twentieth century‘s stereotype but also much less resembles an escape. As Halperin
points out, ―[u]nlike Poggioli … Schiller sees the proper function of pastoral not as the
invitation to a retreat from civilization but rather as a summons to purify civilization and
make it conform more closely to a reasoned and natural harmony.‖ (Halperin 1983, p.49)
The naïve nature
14
is indeed innocent and happy in Schiller but it is situated beyond
morality. According to Schiller, since the world of nature is irrational and ruled by
instincts and not by reason as far as the animated nature is concerned, both nature's
advantages and its disadvantages are results of its lack of free will and being a domain of
blind necessity. Nature is beyond the moral world which humanity cannot give up, much
like free will, its pivotal element. Whereas innocence and happiness are to be longed for
(but clearly can never be achieved in actuality and only as ideas and objects of art
(Schiller 1966, p.105), unity with the amoral world of nature would be catastrophic for
humanity. Despite the hardships and discontents of civilization, the escape to nature is
not a favorable choice, ―That nature which you envy in the irrational is worthy of no
respect, no longing. It lies behind you, and must lie eternally behind you (ibid. 178, p.
101). As it follows, the acquisition of naïve nature yields a completely positive result
only in art, ―But when you are consoled at the lost happiness of nature then let her

14
Schiller's argument is difficult to follow because of the hectic structure within the collection of essays, its
connection with a narrow and concrete biographical context of discussions with Goethe (see Elias 1966),
and the ambiguity of the term ―nature‖, which in some contexts refers to human nature, in some to the
nature generating things, and in some to the environment. But the main reason for the difficulty is the
vagueness of the subject and the difficulty of correlating it with reality: although by the naïve Schiller
means nature, the aspects of the naïve in question sometimes exist in actuality and sometimes belong to the
ideal.

102
perfection be your heart's example‖ (ibid. 179, p. 101). However, this art has the
significant fault of being resourceful only for emotions but not for reason,
Since they [pastoral idylls] can only attain their purpose [to represent the Golden
Age of the pre-civilized epochs] by the denial of all art, and only by simplification
of human nature, they possess together with the utmost value for the heart, all too
little for the spirit, and their narrow range is too soon exhausted.‖ (ibid. 224, p.
149)

Schiller's treatise, despite the fact that it introduces the notion of the naïve—as an
ideal of art, as a type of temperament and as a type of an artist—dismantles naïve nature
as both impossible and insignificant. The greatness of his work perhaps consists in that it
evidences the loss of the pastoral for the culture of modernity and by the same token
implies its connection with primitive consciousness. Indeed, the naïve and primitive are
congruous concepts in Schiller, and the naïve person is too close to the savage although
not necessarily turning into one, ―Beneath the unclouded skies, in the simple conditions
of the primitive state, and with limited knowledge nature is easily satisfied, and man does
not become savage until dire need has frightened him‖ (ibid. 224, p. 148). According to
Schiller, the modern pastoral author, ―who is immersed in civilization‖ (ibid. 223, p. 148)
and whose psyche is endowed with complexity and sophistication, is able to love the
naïve as an ideal but can approach it only through imagination and sentimental love for it
and not in reality. Whereas the aesthetic of the naïve nature—understood in the meaning
of essential nature objects—is available to the primitive consciousness, Schiller's key
concept of the sentimental exposes the problem with accepting this aesthetic. The
modern man loves nature as a separate aesthetic object produced by spontaneous

103
creativity, and, therefore, secondary to art, a product of free will. Schiller opposes the
modern man to the primitive Greeks, who did not alienate themselves from nature,
If one recalls the beautiful nature that surrounded the ancient Greeks; if one
ponders how familiarly this people could live with free nature beneath their
fortunate skies, how very much closer their mode of conception, their manner of
perception, their morals, were to simple nature, and what a faithful copy of this
their poetry is, then the observation must be displeasing that one finds so little
trace among them of sentimental interest with which we moderns are attached to
the scenes and the characters of nature. (ibid. 179, p. 102)

However, the lack of sentimental interest in nature among the Greeks has a serious
shortcoming in that they did not differentiate between natural objects of beauty and man-
created objects of everyday reality,
The Greek is indeed to the highest degree precise, faithful and circumstantial in
describing them, yet simply no more so and with no more preferential
involvement of his heart than he displays in the description of a tunic, a shield, a
suit of armor, some domestic article or any mechanical product. In his love for an
object, he does not seem to make any distinction between those which appear of
themselves and those which arise as a result of art or human will (Ibid)

In other words, the absence of a sentimental taste for nature among the Greeks, according
to Schiller, results in their lack of aesthetic sensibilities. Although they are part of nature,
they are not able to embrace its aesthetics.
However, Schiller's exposition, made from the position of sentimentality, lays
bare the lack of confidence in referring exactly to the aesthetic qualities of nature. The
reason why we love ―the inanimate world‖ (this probably applies not to animals but only
to landscapes, a curious breach in an essay dealing with the pastoral) is moral; it is our
sympathy to the naïve—―the choiceless but calm necessity of the irrational‖ (ibid. 180, p.
103). In the beginning of the essay, Schiller explains human love for nature by the fact

104
that it is nature that is the not-created-by-art. It includes not only the environment but
also human nature, and, according to Schiller, nature, the uncreated, is the subject of
human love just by virtue of being such,
There are moments in our lives when we dedicate a kind of love and tender
respect to nature in plants, minerals, animals, and landscapes, as well as to human
nature in children, in the customs of country folk, and to the primitive world, not
because it gratifies our senses, nor yet because it satisfies our understanding of
taste (the very opposite can occur in both instances), rather simply because it is
nature.‖ (ibid. 161, p.83)

The condition of this love is nature's authenticity and its being in opposition to art—that
is, probably its quality of being simple, non-ornate, spontaneous. What we love it for is
defined as self-content presence and, on the other hand, any aesthetic considerations are
beyond it,
… this kind of interest in nature can take place only under two conditions. First,
it is absolutely necessary that the object which inspires it should be nature or at
least be taken as such; second, that it be naïve (in the broadest meaning of the
word), i.e., that nature stand in contrast to art and put it to shame. (…) Nature,
considered in this wise, is for us nothing but the voluntary presence, the
subsistence of things on their own, their existence in accordance with their own
immutable laws. (ibid, 161, 83-84)

It turns out, however, that the presence of aesthetic qualities in the objects not created by
art are beyond question,
For what could a modest flower, a stream, a mossy stone, the chirping of birds,
the humming of bees etc., possess in themselves so pleasing to us? What could
give them a claim even upon our love? (ibid 162, p.84)
15

As the passage continues, it becomes obvious that Schiller's attitude to nature in this essay
is restrained to the idea and does not take into consideration emotions:

15
Compare above—the opening passage of the essay 161 on p. 83, ―[we feel love for nature] not because it
gratifies our senses, nor yet because it satisfies our understanding of taste (the very opposite can occur in
both instances).‖

105
It is not these objects, it is an idea represented by them which we love in them.
We love in them the tacitly creative life, the serene spontaneity of their activity,
existence in accordance with their own laws, the inner necessity, the eternal unity
with themselves. (ibid. 163 pp. 84-85)

Moreover, Schiller's argument implicitly suggests that aesthetic imperfection is inherent
in the naïve itself as nature to him is an eternity of accidents, and each of the new forms,
produced by accident to infinity, has its limitations. The presence of limitations,
according to Schiller, is the property of nature since the infinity of nature‘s forms entails
that it is ―always radically limited.‖ (ibid 225, p. 150) The naïve poet, who unconsciously
participates in the eternal flow of creation in infinitely individualizing its subjects,
―presents its subject with all its limits.‖ (ibid 225, p. 150) It is acceptable as a sort of
organic form which does not require poetic elaboration; but in the eyes of the modern
civilized society, despite the fact that it is eternal, it is aesthetically insufficient,
The sentimental poet (…) does not well understand the advantages when he
borrows his subjects from the naïve poet; in themselves they are completely
indifferent and only become poetic by their treatment (ibid. 226, p. 150).

Besides the fact that defining love for nature in terms of reason and idea is
Schiller's conscious philosophical premise, the environment indeed has little spontaneous
attraction for him. The references to environments are made twice, and both times in
connection with the Mediterranean (both references are quoted above). The emotional
poverty of this attitude to the landscape is especially obvious in comparing to his
contemporaries' Johann Joachim Winckelmann's and Johann Wilhelm von Goethe's well-
known fascination with the favorable warm climate and incredible nature of this region.

106
Schiller's interpretation of the image of nature in the pastoral had a major
influence on modern scholarship. According to Halperin, Schiller's ―On the Naïve...,‖
which, as he quotes, ―Thomas Mann called … 'the greatest of all German essays,'‖
―constitutes the intellectual foundation for all modern approaches to pastoral.‖ (both
quotations from Halperin 1983, p. 43). Since the essay was widely known in Europe (the
Russian translation appeared in … ), the stereotypical image of calm pastoral nature (see
above quotation from Schiller 1966 180, p.103; cf. also ibid. 229, p. 153) can be linked to
its influence. Similarly, the identification of nature and idyll in Schiller also explains the
common view of the pastoral as a beautiful landscape (which lasted until the modern
reconsideration of the pastoral paradigm in the 1980s), cf., ―Let her [nature] surround you
like an enchanting idyll in which you can always find yourself safe from the
waywardness of art … .‖ (ibid. 179, p. 102)
Schiller's theory is constructed on the basis of the contemporary taste for nature.
This taste is set on the beautiful, picturesque or sublime, but not on the (so to speak)
primitive. Schiller's theory could not be created if the aesthetics of natural objects and
phenomena (water, moss, grass, stone, pieces of wood), which is at home in the cultures
of the East, already had been adopted. The great influence of Schiller‘s essay is perhaps
negative. He demonstrates the aesthetic struggle with the image of unity with nature.
The displeasure in the ―naïve‖ bucolic nature, which is thus palpable in the
romantic theory of idyll, corresponds to the main tendencies of romantic landscape
painting. The latter favors visually impressive environments and approaches landscape as
a ―sight.‖ The objects are shown at a distance and usually much exceed human scale,

107
whereas singular nature‘s objects, especially those commensurable with human scale,
play a minor role.
The aesthetics of primitive nature and natural objects are on the spot in the
response to the Romantic vision of nature in the post-romantic aesthetics.

4.2.3. Integration of Countryside Nature in Ruskin's Landscape
Aesthetics
Ruskin refers to the image of nature embellished by the sentimental imagination
as ―pathetic fallacy.‖ His critique of the Romantic taste for nature is based on his
notorious repugnance to Claude's landscape style, which he views as the archetype of the
Romantic picturesque sight. Ruskin opposes Romantic aesthetics based on the delights of
eyesight to the appreciation of simple and not picturesque nature in the classical culture of
Homer's era. According to him, the Greeks based their landscape ideal on the bodily
experiences acquired in their agrarian lifestyles. Ruskin's discussion of primitive
landscape style in the classics is a framework of integrating the image of countryside
nature in his aesthetic theory.
Although Ruskin does not use the term naïve as Schiller does, his interpretation of
Homer's art obviously falls in this category. In particular, Ruskin points out that it lacks
what Schiller calls ―sentimental‖ admiration for nature, and instead, features aesthetic
indifference to her. For example, he emphasizes the concrete factuality of the exposition
in the description of Calypso's cave in the Odyssey, where ―throughout the passage there

108
is not a single figurative word expressive of the things being in any wise other than plain
grass, fruit or flower.‖ (Ruskin 1873, p. 201) In Schiller, this aspect of the naïve attitude
to nature among the Greeks is questioned as both aesthetically insufficient and unfeasible
for a modern man (see above), but Ruskin believes it to be an ideal to pursue in
modernity.
Ruskin explains the Greeks' inclination to the ―naive‖ and, so to speak, a-
sentimental perception of nature by the theory which John Onians (Onians 2007)
considers an anticipation of modern neuroscience. Onians points out that Ruskin follows
John Locke's ―Essay Concerning Human Understanding‖ in believing that ―many people
fail to look at things properly.‖ (Onians 2007, p. 88) The automatic vision, ―looking
without attention‖ (ibid., p. 89), is the cause of the fact that the impressions made on the
perceptions cannot reach the mind. According to Ruskin,
...unless the minds of men are particularly directed to the impressions of sight, objects
pass perpetually before the eyes without conveying any attention to the brain at all; and so
pass actually unseen, not merely unnoticed, but in the full, clear sense of the word,
unseen. (Ruskin in ibid., p. 88 and note p. 210)
16
.

Along with these points, the Greeks were incapable of perceiving beauty specifically
because the environment by which they were surrounded had an excess of it. Since the
Greeks throughout their lives saw incredible nature around them, their imaginations
became dull, inert and incapable of inciting attention to perceiving beautiful sights,
...the Greeks lived in the midst of the most beautiful nature, and were familiar
with blue sea, clear air, and sweet outlines of mountain, as we are with brick
walls, black smoke and level fields. This perfect familiarity rendered all such
scenes of natural beauty unexciting, if not indifferent to them, by lulling and

16
quoting ―Modern Painters,‖ vol III, pt II, sect. 1. ch. 2,50 (quoting Locke's ―Essay...‖ book 2, ch. 9, sect.
3.

109
overwearying the imagination as far as it was concerned such things.‖ (Ruskin
1873, p. 199)

This particular quality of human perceptions, according to Ruskin, caused the
Greeks' indifference to the picturesque and sublime aspects of the surrounding nature. On
the contrary, they favor the landscape features of the locus amoenus,
17 “
Thus, as far as I
recollect, without a single exception, every Homeric landscape, intended to be beautiful,
is composed of a fountain, a meadow, and a shady grove‖ (ibid., p. 201).
Locus amoenus is a mostly sensual and by no means a visually spectacular
aesthetic object. In accordance with his theory, Ruskin emphasizes that the Greeks were
genuinely interested in the landscape features that can be not as much perceived by seeing
as felt through the body‘s other perceptions, especially kinesthetic ones. For example, in
the description of Calypso's cave quoted above, he emphasizes the connection between
―the evident subservience of the whole landscape to human comfort, to the foot, the taste,
or the smell‖ (ibid., p. 201).
Whereas seeing entails a contemplative distance with the object—both a physical
and mental one (in Johann Gotfried Herder‘s words, ―sight is the most philosophical of
the senses‖ (Herder 2002, p. 39) —Ruskin‘s theory emphasizes close and unmediated
experience of the environment through the body's sensuality. According to Ruskin, the
―McMansion‖ elements of the locus amoenus landscape are those that Homer's people,
from simple peasants to princes, can experience with their bodies and for which they

17
Although Ruskin draws his examples exclusively from Homer and never mentions the bucolic or uses
the term locus amoenus , it is clear that he speaks about this particular Mediterranean environment.
Elsewhere, Ruskin's exposition suggests a direct lineage in the representation of the landscape from Homer
to Virgil and Dante.

110
develop a taste in their everyday labor. In particular, he emphasizes that the sensations
that Hermes experiences on Calypso's island are not purely aesthetic in our modern sense,
but also connected with the practice of agrarian lifestyles, ―...the air is perfumed not only
by … [the] violets and by the sweet cypress but by Calypso's fire of finely chopped cedar
wood, which sends a smoke as of incense, through the island‖ (Ruskin 1873, p. 201).
According to Ruskin, the vision of Homer‘s people is also shaped by lifestyle
realities. Thus, Hermes contemplates Calypso‘s island as an idling aristocrat, and his
―admiration is excited by the free fountains, wild violets, and wandering vine. Odysseus,
on the contrary, sees the garden of Alcinous as a peasant as he is attracted by the vines in
rows, the leeks in beds, and the fountains in pipes.‖ (ibid., p. 202)
Ruskin believes that the enjoyment of the beauty of nature's simple facts is
available to the inhabitants of agrarian areas in modernity as well. For example, he
believes that the closest approximation of the Greek mind is that of ―a good,
conscientious, but illiterate Scotch Presbyterian Border farmer of a century or two
back.
18
‖ (ibid., p. 210)
Ruskin‘s approach to the aesthetics of nature, on the one hand, agrees with
Schiller‘s. In both Schiller and Ruskin, a significant aspect of nature‘s aesthetic is
accessible to primitive peoples and primitive lifestyles but not to the modern urban taste.
However, in Ruskin‘s view, the taste can be educated by contemplating the landscapes,
similar to the classical locus amoenus, which can be found in modern Europe—for
example, in France:

18
despite the indispensable differences in artistic forms since the Greeks are benefited by ―softer climate
and surrounding luxury.‖ (Ruskin 1873, p. 211)

111
The spot to which she [Nausicaa] directs him is another ideal piece of landscape,
composed of a ‗beautiful grove of aspen poplars, a fountain, and a meadow,‘ near
the roadside; in fact, as nearly as possible such a scene as meets the eye of the
traveler every instant on the much-despised lines of road through lowland France;
for instance, on the railway between Arras and Amiens—scenes, to my mind,
quite exquisite in the various grouping and grace of their innumerable poplar
avenues, casting sweet, tremulous shadows over their level meadows and
labyrinthine streams. (ibid., pp. 203-204)

Ruskin‘s own theory about the connection between artistic style and environment
can be applied, in a slightly modified form, to the difference between his and Schiller‘s
tastes for countryside nature. According to Ruskin, the environments that the artist was
used to looking at as a child, have a lifelong impact on his perceptions, ―no man ever
painted or will paint well anything but what he has early and long seen, early and long
felt, early and long loved...‖ (in Onians 2007, p. 90) Whereas Schiller's resistance to the
aesthetics of naïve nature is couched in his urban upbringing and life experience, Ruskin,
a son of a wealthy wine merchant, was raised in a semi-rural suburb of South London
(Hewison et al. 2000, p.12) and, in the summer, traveled a lot in the English countryside
with his father, who delivered orders to his clients (Onians 2007, p. 93).
Ruskin's aesthetic ideal of the simple features of the locus amoenus entails a focus
on concrete nature‘s object as such
19
. Consequently, it justifies the aesthetic appreciation
of the features of the non-exotic rural areas in British rural areas, Northern France, as well
as in European Russia
20
.

19
Cf. for example, Ruskin's drawing ―Moss and Wild Strawberry‖ (c. 1870-1872, fig.4) among many
others.
20
Cf. Greg Thomas's (Thomas 2002) point that building the taste for the environment beyond the aesthetic
triad of beautiful – picturesque – sublime in this era is a consequence of the development of national
tourism. Specifically, he speaks about the aesthetic appreciation of the national countryside in France,
echoed in the art of the Barbizon school.

112
The aesthetic integration of the countryside that Ruskin‘s theory suggests
anticipates the significant tendencies in both western and Russian aesthetics of nature in
the late nineteenth century. In the west, it influenced the Pre-Raphaelite and Art Moderne
aesthetics of nature representation, and in Russia, it made a great impact on the ―World of
Art‖ landscape aesthetics. The consequences of Ruskin‘s ideas in the west, however,
were combined with a psychological disenchantment in the notion of reconciliation with
nature.

4.2.4 Beautiful if Uncanny: the Western Image of the Pastoral
Countryside Nature in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century
Ruskin's aesthetics influenced the representation of natural objects in neo-
romantic paintings of the Pre-Raphaelites. In the presentation of individual trees, flowers
and fruit in the Pre-Raphaelites‘ paintings, the emphasis is placed on the articulating these
objects in separating them from the background—cf., for example, the fruit in William
Henry Hunt's ―A Peach and Grapes.‖ (c. 1858) and the flowers in Charles Allston
Collins's ―Convent Thoughts‖ (1850-51). Simultaneously, in many Pre-Raphaelite
works, the vision scale is magnified to show individual shapes of leaves and stems of the
grass. The primitive aspect of such as vision of nature is its ―thingness‖ as discussed in
the first chapter in connection with the classical pastoral.
Despite the shortening of aesthetic distance from nature in the work of the Pre-
Raphaelites, its beauty in the explicitly stylized imitations of the Medieval and Early

113
Renaissance style
21
are often detached and emotionally cold. Moreover, happy and
blissful associations are not typical of the image of nature in Pre-Raphaelite works.
Nature's beauty is combined with an uncanny element, expressed through repetitiveness
22
,
infertility and images of death. In particular, uncanny themes in Pre-Raphaelite nature
landscapes are bound to the sinister presence of female beauty. For example, it is very
obvious in John Everett Millais‘ celebrated ―Ophelia‖ (1851-52) and John Waterhouse's
―Hylas and the Nymphs‖ (1896). Whereas in the Millais painting, the uncanny effect is
introduced by the corpse's presence, in Waterhouse, it is caused by the fact that the
nymphs surrounding the youth in a deadly dance have one and the same face.
Although the image of nature in Pre-Raphaelite art suggests the acceptance of the
aesthetics of the countryside landscape and its simple features, it hardly suggests a
symbol of unity with nature. In the Pre-Raphaelite presentation of the country, the
emotional constituent of the experience of unity (along with Klein's exposition, see
above, p. 95-96 of the present paper)—the experience of nature's goodness—is absent.
These uncanny images of nature clearly symbolize a psychotic split and resistance to
accept the image of integration in the consciousness that created and enjoyed them.

21
Besides the explicit imitation of the Medieval and Early Renaissance style, the fashion for Chinese and
Japanese aesthetics of nature clearly contributed to this style of representing nature through objects since in
these cultures things of nature—water, moss, flowers—have been always aesthetic objects (Cf. Ruskin's
―Moss and Wild Strawberry.‖)
22
In the essay ―The Uncanny,‖ Freud points to the uncanny effect that a spontaneous ―recurrence of the
same thing‖ (Freud 2003, 145) makes on the human imagination. He connects this effect with the
―dominance of a compulsion to repeat‖ ―in the unconscious mind.‖ (ibid) According to Freud, this
compulsion ―proceeds from instinctual impulses,‖ and, he believes, ―probably depends on the essential
nature of the drives themselves.‖ (ibid) In the poetic language of the essay, which critics believe itself to be
an instance of uncanny imagination, he points out that the compulsion to repeat ―is strong enough to
override the pleasure principle and lend a demonic character to certain aspects of mental life... .‖ (ibid)
Freud was convinced that ―anything that can remind us of this inner compulsion to repeat is perceived as
uncanny.‖ (ibid)

114

Figure 4: John Ruskin. Moss and Wild Strawberry

In Pre-Raphaelite art, the pastoral appears as a genre motif in the framework of
landscape art, and the image of pastoral nature, despite its radiant beauty, is characterized
by a subliminal resistance to the experience of unity with nature, emotional anxiety and
uncanny overtones. In such works as Millais's ―The Blind Girl‖ (1854-56); Ford Madox
Brown's ―The Pretty Baa-Lambs‖ (1851-59) and Hunt's ―The Hireling Shepherd‖ (1851-
52) the spectacular sunny landscape suggests the happiness of the naïve nature but the
quality of light—radiant but cold and blinding—intimates detachment. In Hunt's
paintings on pastoral subjects—―The Hireling Shepherd‖ and ―Our English Coasts
(Strayed Sheep)‖ (1852) —the transparent Christian symbol of the strayed sheep
23

introduces anti-pastoral overtones of despair, unrest and loneliness, taken to extreme in
the thematically close ―The Scapegoat‖ (1854-58). The countryside landscape in

23
see in Barnes 1998, pp. 17, 71, 76

115
Millais's ―Blind Girl‖ is full of vibrant beauty, but the outlandish and somehow ecstatic
smile of the blind girl is odd and almost sinister, and evokes the entire uncanny
connotation of blindness
24
.

4.2.5 Millet's “Daphnis and Chloe”: Integration of Aggressive Impulses
in the Image of Pastoral Nature
Along the lines of Ruskin's theory discussed above, it is possible to speak about an
essential interest to the image of pastoral nature in the late-nineteenth-century artists
whose aesthetic tastes and lifestyles are bound to countryside. The pastoral theme in the
genre paintings by Camille Corot, Jean- François Millet, and other Barbizon artists is
unique in the tangibility of the happy emotions combined with the aesthetic pleasure of
the visions of national countryside. Association of their country living with the bucolic
was common among the artists settled in Barbizon; and in Millet, specifically, the
pastoral is represented not only by such common landscape motifs as shepherds and herds
but also by a direct reference to the classical pastoral.
In the pastel ―Spring,‖ or ―Daphnis and Chloe,‖ (1865) Millet closely follows
Longus‘ novel to create a story for his painting. In particular, Millet uses a theme of
Longus‘ chapter 9 of part 1 which tells about the children's enjoying the advent of spring.
Millet, a peasant by birth, spent the most of his life in the countryside, first in his
native village in Normandy and later in Barbizon near Paris. In elaborating on the
subject of the classical pastoral, the artist emphasizes the features of his native

24
Compare Freud in ―The Uncanny‖ about fear of becoming blind and fear of blind eyes; also as a popular
superstition.

116
Normandy countryside with a stripe of sandy shore by the sea at the background, fresh
poplar leaves, and simple common flowers. Daphnis is sitting on the slope of a little hill
and holding a nest with baby birds on his knees, and Chloe is kneeling by him, reaching
her hands toward the nest in a gesture of mixed endearment, curiosity and surprise. Pan's
statue is decorated with wreaths, and a small altar with rustic sacrifices is set under it.
Behind the group, we can see the birds agitated by the loss of the babies and flying down
into their direction, and a she-goat suckling her baby. The image of nature in this
interpretation is not emphatically picturesque but expresses emotional attachment to the
features of national countryside. In particular, the picture is full of realist details
referring to the rustic lifestyles and pictures that must have been familiar to the artist
from experience, such as withered flowers in a hat, small pieces of bread and bread
crumbs in Chloe's bag, a boat on the shore and another one on the sea. The details of
ancient lifestyles are not specifically stylized but rendered through the features that can
be found in the national rustic environment: a pumpkin water bottle, a pile of simple flat
cakes on Pan's altar, the flowers typical for the national environment, a sheepskin next to
Daphnis. Millet provides a subtle psychological and realist interpretation of the scene.
Its core theme is a contrast of the nakedness of the characters' immature bodies, which
refers to the erotic sense of the story, and their absorption into children‘s activities.
Simultaneously, the artist remains within the frame of reference of the Romantic naïve.
The naïve is one of the important emotional categories of the painting and is expressed in

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the childish reactions (especially Chloe‘s surprise) and in the emphasis on simplicity and
spontaneity of all its content.
In this visual rendering of the classical pastoral, the acceptance of the countryside
aesthetic is complemented by the psychological harmony with nature which, as in
Klein's example, does not exclude some aggression toward nature. On the one hand,
nature, a source of warmth, food, and helpful things and beauty, is full of happiness. On
the other hand, as in Klein‘s example, discussed above, the image is centered on the
destroyed bird nest. It might have fallen of its own accord or Daphnis might have
collected it, but in either case, the children's interest in its inhabitants must be harmful
for them. The theme of aggression toward nature is shown in the alarmed birds flying
down to the lost nest and in the dead yellow flowers in the hat. Nevertheless, the
motherly associations of nature prevail as shown in the image of mother goat as well as
in Pan's parental figure flashing a broad simpleton smile.
Millet's vision of the pastoral theme as a unity with rustic nature, in which the
images of beauty and happiness prevail while destructive emotions are present but not
overwhelming, is unique in late nineteenth-century culture. In the fin de siècle, the
totality of nature's presence occurs in urban or, more broadly, civilized space (for
example, that of a park). Simultaneously, similarly to Pre-Raphaelite art, the landscapes
of refined beauty conceive the death instinct subliminally in the aestheticized and
symbolic forms, so that the symbols of depressive integration (as defined in Klein) are

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displaced by those of psychotic split into mutually exclusive polarities of beauty and
decay.

4.2.6. The Beauty of the Artificial: The Fin de Siècle Image of Nature

4.2.6.1 The Plant Life in the Urban Space
As Bowlt writes about the totality of the Style Moderne organic presence in the
urban life, ―[l]ike a persistent liana, the Style Moderne invaded the objects of the
material environment from public buildings to private homes, from ashtrays to
antimacassars, from set designs to bond certificates.‖ (Bowlt 2008, p. 129) The space of
the house, with its walls inside and outside, becomes filled with Style Moderne
ornamental creations in murals and furniture. The Style Moderne use of the plant
ornament creates only a simulacrum of nature‘s life as if the countryside outdoor space
in the fin de siècle is being experienced as fearful and uncomfortable. The emphasis on
vegetation in this style has been considered by critics a decisively urban feature, and the
resulting image of the city it evokes is of course a cultured garden and not a spontaneous
countryside environment
25
.

25
cf. Benjamin's quoting from Dolf Sternberger's ―Jugendstil‖: ―...the city is a garden full of freely growing
house organisms...‖ etc – Benjamin p. 550, S3a,3

119

4.2.6.2 The Fin de Siècle Image of Nature and the Uncanny
Turning nature into ornament paradoxically returns art to the notion of the naïve
and provides it with a vibrant aesthetic appeal. By this emphasis on the shapes of nature
objects, they reappear in their thing-like integrity, and as a result, the Style Moderne
ornament creates common context with both the painterly decorum of Roman villas and
the Pre-Raphaelite renderings of Renaissance-style floral images. However, although
representation of nature is dominant in this style, and despite the factthat it is akin to the
anti-capitalist aesthetics of Ruskin, William Morris, and the Pre-Raphaelite focus on the
ideal of natural life and renouncing machinery (Bowlt 2008, p. 140), the central motif of
the modernist nature ornament is the rhythm of mechanic repetitions.
In the highly stylized works, the repetition is overwhelming as included in the
rhymes and rhythms of plant ornaments or human movements. According to Belyi,
quoted in Bowlt (ibid. p.140), ―rhythm is a force of life, meter its denial.‖ As Bowlt
points out, this ―intellectual division (…) helps to illuminate many of the cultural
manifestations of his time, including the Style Moderne,‖ (ibid) and in particular, it refers
to ―cutting across the established meters of the Classical canon‖ and ―rejecting … the
finite construction in favor or eternal composition‖ (ibid) in Style Moderne art.
On the other hand, however, the rhythm of floral forms masks the presence of
repetitive meters inside them, and the absolute creativity of life in these images is

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subliminally underpinned by death drive
26
. The Style Moderne images of distilled
beauty suggest that death is kept hidden under their beautiful surface. While the uncanny
effect is present, the rhythm cannot extinguish but can only aestheticize it. For example,
musical rhythm is a core of the respective paintings on the subject of sacred groves by
Puivis de Chavannes, Böcklin and Denis. In each of these works, the rhythm of human
poses and motions is echoed in the rhythms of nature's plant forms. All three images are
enigmatic and strange, and hardly free of sinister elements. As in the Pre-Raphaelite
paintings discussed above, the uncanny is evoked by human presence. It is especially
well sensed in Böcklin‘s procession of the people in white hoods to the mysterious altar
which, together with its reflection in the water that flooded the lawn next to it, suggests
the shape of a cross. In Puivis de Chavannes‘ ―Grove of the Muses,‖ the uncanny effect
is a result of the fact that the grove's inhabitants are like statues, arrested in their poses
and movements. Denis‘ painting ―Sacred Grove‖ evokes the effect of the Waterhouse‘s
―Hylas and the Nymphs‖ mentioned above. The three women or nymphs at the
foreground are connected through the rhythm of a dance-like movement which engages in
slow undulations their poses, flowers and the folds of their garments. In the background,
the rhythm is doubled by the ornament of tree crowns. The sinister effect of the beauty of
the women is achieved by the fact that all three have the same face.
As the emphasis on death drive in the fin de siècle image of nature is current, the
pastoral theme also appears within its framework.

26
Cf. in Mikhail Kuzmin's essay about Somov's Style Moderne images:
―And only tender silk [garments], and butterflies, and the tendrils of flowers (and still, how often
are Somov's garlands similar to little intestines) flourish on this earth, full of decay.‖ (my translation;
Kuzmin 1979, p. 471)

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4.2.6.3 The Theme of the Pastoral and the Fin de Siècle: “Twilight of the
Gods”
The pastoral is one of the popular themes of fin de siècle art and literature in the
west. In the Style Moderne context, the pastoral appears in the stylizations of both
rococo gallant scenes and pastoral ballets as well as in the motifs of the classical bucolic.
Fin de siècle pastoral images are populated by myth creatures, satyrs, nymphs and Pan,
which, according to the authors of the book Icons of Horror and the Supernatural: An
Encyclopedia of our Worst Nightmares, are awakened by the powerful fin de siècle
symbol of the twilight of the gods
27
. Brian Stableford writes:
It is no coincidence that the god of Arcadia, Pan, was the only Greek god whose
passing was explicitly recorded in Hellenic mythology, nor that there was a very
obvious resurgence of Arcadian fantasy—especially fantasies in which Pan is
represented as a tragic figure—as the end of the nineteenth century approached
and passed. When Pan was not personally present in such works his place was
often taken by his trivial strand-ins, fauns and satyrs, or by their traditional female
counterparts, nymphs.‖ (Stableford 2007, p. 328)

The death of the gods in the present and nostalgia about the mythic Golden Age
that has passed is a common theme in Anatole France's short story ―St. Satyr,‖ which
Stableford mentions as an outstanding example of this tradition, Stéphane Mallarmé's
eclogue ―L'après-midi d'un faune,‖ Aubrey Beardsley‘s pastoral landscapes featuring
nymphs and satyrs, and in Böcklin's images of Pan and Satyrs (as, for example, his
―Idyll‖ (―Pan amidst Columns,‖ 1895). This theme is broadly represented in the Russian
fin de siècle as well—for example, in the classical images by Bakst, Benois and Nikolai
Feofilaktov; and in Mikhail Vrubel's ―Pan,‖ which pictures Pan as a creature of national

27
They even derive the revival of the pastoral during fin de siècle era from this tradition.

122
folklore—Leshii, the wood-goblin, with the elaborate landscape of national countryside in
the background. The theme of the gods' twilight is also represented in the prose and
essays of Dmitrii Merezhkovskii, who, in particular, was the author of the Russian
translator of France's ―St. Satyr,‖ and Alexander Kondrat'ev (both authors will be
considered separately later in this chapter).

4.2.6.4 Elysian Nature in the Modernist Pastoral
The mythic settings that correlate with the twilight theme are not the finite
Arcadia but the eternal Elysium. Whereas death is present in Arcadia (indeed, ―et in
Arcadia ego,‖) Elysium is the land of eternal bliss and immaculate beauty beyond death.
Schiller envisions that Arcadian ideal in the modern culture is to be replaced by Elysium,
an image of refined nature aesthetics created by art—that is, an artistic utopia:
Let him undertake the task of idyll so as to display that pastoral innocence even
in creatures of civilization and under all the conditions of the most active and
vigorous life, of expansive thought, of the subtlest art, the highest social
refinement, which, in a word, leads man who cannot go back to Arcady forward
to Elysium.‖ (Schiller 1966, p. 153)
As an image of artistic utopia, Elysium suggests a problem with the aesthetic
appreciation of Arcadian countryside. Elysian imagery in Schiller is supposed to be a
form of overcoming instinctual compulsory life of nature by the freedom present in art.
The fin de siècle Elysian nature is a break from the idea of nature's reality. The beauty

123
of Elysian imagery is too ephemeral and fragile and cannot sustain unity with the world
of material nature
28
.
The presentation of pastoral landscape during fin de siècle is set on the
straightforward images of Elysian beauty, and elegance of nature as contours, shapes and
rhythmic repetitions of curvatures dominate in the ornament-based imagery.
The analysis of the economy of the relationship with nature in Beardsley‘s
drawing on the pastoral theme provides an illustration.

4.2.6.5 Nature's Surrender to Art in Beardsley’s and Mallarme’s
pastoral themes
Beardsley‘s drawing representing a satyr reading to a lady is used as an
illustration to Sergei Diagilev's essay ―The Principles of Art Criticism‖ in the World of
Art magazine (1899). The drawing displays beautiful park settings, a collection of
dream-images of nature—a small river, trees, grassy lawn and the flowers distinct against
the grass by their elegant shapes. On the riverbank, a satyr reads a book to a lady, and a
nymph sitting on top of a vase, barely recognizable among the plants, listens to his
reading as well. The smart lady in a rococo-style outfit is seen in three quarters, as her
upper body is turned toward the satyr. The satyr's book forms the compositional center of

28
Cf. Salvador Dali's vision of Style Moderne architecture quoted in Benjamin:
―Perhaps no simulacrum has provided us with an ensemble of objects more precisely attuned to the
concept of ―ideal‖ than the great simulacrum that constitutes the revolutionary ornamental architecture of
Jugendstil. No collective effort has succeeded in creating a dream world as pure, and as disturbing as these
Jugendstil buildings. Situated, as they are, on the margins of architecture, they alone constitute the
realization of desires in which an excessively violent and cruel automatism painfully betrays a sort of hatred
for reality and need for refuge in an ideal world that we find in childhood neurosis.‖ (Benjamin 1999, S2,5
p. 547. Benjamin's reference: Salvador Dalì, ―L'Ane pourri,‖ Le Surréalisme au service de la révolution, 1,
no. 1 (Paris, 1930), p. 12.)

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the drawing. The satyr, the nymph and the woman create a triangle in which it is
inscribed. It is possible to inquire what Diagilev, or the World of Art editors, had in mind
when they chose this drawing. The claim of the essay is that the source of beauty in art
lies not in the nature but in the artist's imagination and, as a result, art is beyond imitating
nature. One of the crucial points of the essay is that beauty is an expression of the artist's
inner nature in images and therefore audience should not be concerned about ―where
those images are taken from.‖ (Diagilev 1899, p.84) In stating this, Diagilev argues
against the requirement of realism expressed in a paraphrased quotation of Emile Zola's
stating that ―a work of art is a piece of nature observed through temperament.‖ (ibid., p.
85 and note #20 on p. 358) In the view of all this, the satyr reading a book can be
probably interpreted as an image of nature surrendering to the reality created by art.
Whereas the natural landscape supplies sensual pleasure, all three participants in the
scene symbolize a preference for art over nature as they are absorbed by the reading and
focus on the book and not on contemplating the surrounding landscape.
The presence of artistry is total both in the nature and in its creatures. The satyr's
hair is carefully styled into a rococo-style coiffure and is decorated by a large elegant
hair-slide. The landscape is treated as a decoration since the leaves on the trees and the
shapes of branches create an ornamental rhythm and the flowers display beautiful forms
echoing the shapes of the lady's clothing.
Probably an inner emphasis of this drawing is on that the satyr is deprived of his
expected artistic tool—the pipes. The scene closely resembles the archetypal pastoral
scene where human beings and forest creatures enjoy pastoral music of the pipes. The

125
replacement of the pipes by the book is probably emphatic in this work. The satyr holds
the book not in the right hand, as would be expected, but in the left hand, which leaves his
right hand free. This hand cannot be seen, however, behind his body as we look at him
from the left-hand side. The pipes might be held in his right hand, resting on the ground,
but the instrument‘s hypothetical presence is overshadowed by the presence of the book.
Whereas the hypothetical pipes (even if absent in this drawing, a legitimate part of
pastoral pattern), a phallic image, would provide the satyr with a power of domination,
the book conveys the sense of control over him. More entertaining for the agents of this
picture than the landscape or the hypothetical flute, it conveys the controlling power of
written word.
This drawing as a result places a strong emphasis on civilized and non-
spontaneous art and artistry, which tame nature. However, the conflict between nature
and art is not explicit but only intimated in the actual imagery of the drawing insofar as
all these conjectures are made on the basis of pastoral patterns and we do not see whether
the satyr's right hand is empty or not.
Whereas Style Moderne fantasies might repress the conflicts of the unity
subconsciously, on the surface they generate the images that reconcile such polarities as
nature and artistry and naïve and sophisticated in subjugating natural elements to
civilization. Benjamin's intuitive cultural history provides a concise definition of the art's
domination:
―In Jugendstil, the bourgeois begins to come to terms with the conditions—not yet, to be
sure, of its social dominion—but of its dominion over nature. Insight into these conditions

126
engenders a strain at the threshold of its consciousness. …‖ (Benjamin 1999, S 9,4 p.
559)
The Style Moderne approach to the pastoral is recognizable in the broader fin de
siècle material. For example, similar principles are present in the image of pastoral nature
and pastoral art created in Stéphane Mallarmé‘s symbolist ―L'après-midi d'un faune.‖
Mallarmé‘s poem has the subtitle ―an eclogue‖ and is set on a stylizing of the classical
genre. The image of nature is supposed to be perceived as that of an authentic classical
bucolic, and the poet uses explicit evocations of Sicily. Despite that, geographic
precision is not accomplished in Mallarmé‘s poem, and at some point the name of the
geographic object turns out to be more relevant as a reference to the ancient genre than
the image of nature as such. Indeed, the open perspectives, and verdures over fountains
with swains, do not sound much like Sicily:
when, on the green gold of distant
Verdure offering its vine to the fountains,
An animal whiteness undulates to rest:
And as a slow prelude in which the pipes exist
This flight of swans, no, of Naiads cower
Or plunge…

(Translated by A.S. Kline)
This description reminds one more of a French park with its distant perspectives than of a
Mediterranean landscape. The park as a model directly inspires the reference to a stylized
grove planted with roses:
I carry them off, without untangling them, and fly
To this grove, shunned by the frivolous shade,

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Where the sun drains every perfume from the roses... (Translated by Alan Edwards)
Nature is beautified in the environment created by art. It is noticeable that art is
dominating and aggressive toward nature as it transforms it and nature is sacrificed to it
as a tool of creating beauty. Natural objects are caught at the climactic moments of their
sensual beauty, moments at which they are consummated and are destined to die: the
pomegranate bursts open and is being consumed by bees (―You, my passion, know that,
purple and perfectly ripe,/Every pomegranate bursts open and murmurs with bees‖;
Transl. Alan Edwards); the Sun drains every perfume from the roses, and the Faun sucks
the grape cluster. Nature is not preserved but consumed, and art is what is left as a new
life of the empty shell: ―the hollow cluster‖ raised ―to the summer sky‖ to see through,
(So, when I have sucked the brightness of the grape,
To banish a regret brushed aside by my pretense,
Laughing, I raise the hollow cluster to the summer sky
And, blowing lightly into the luminous skins, thirsting
For intoxication, gaze through it until evening.)
The dead nature is revived as the Faun blows ―lightly into the luminous skins,‖ but its use
is completely ―subverted‖ now: for the sake of ―thirsting/ For intoxication,‖ the Faun
gazes ―through it until evening.‖
Mallarmé eventually introduces the theme of communication with nature as ―confused
equations‖ and the attribute ―credulous‖ at the melody point to the pastoral music's ability
to identify with nature. However, the art is monologically acts upon nature ―in a long
solo‖ and turns it into music,
Only through vast twin reeds played to the skies,
That, turning to music all that clouds the eyes,
Dream, in a long solo, that we amused
The beauty all around us by confused
Equations with our credulous melody... (Translated by Henry Weinfeld)

128

Syrinx, the tool of artistic transformation and the flight into the illusion, is part of nature
as it grows on the lake,
Try then, instrument of flight, o wicked Syrinx,
To flower again on the lakes where you await me!

However, Mallarmé‘s insights into the specifics of nature in Virgil's eclogues do not

question the primacy of art as a creative power:

I, proud of my murmurings, will speak long
Of the goddesses; and in idolatrous paintings
Lift yet more girdles from their shadow... (Transl. Alan Edwards)

In this poem, as in the Style Moderne artifacts, nature is a decorative tool but only art has
substance. As a result, the harmony with nature is not at stake, whereas art‘s experiment
with nature can be interesting.
A subject of the Style Moderne rhythm, fin de siècle pastoral nature is
characterized by the rational settling of inner tensions and harbors the image of art‘s
domination. In contrast to Millet‘s example, it displaces integration of the rustic nature
through attachment and aggression, with the rational domination of art over nature. In the
fin de siècle environment, nature is secondary to art and admits its power without revolt.
The absolute beauty of nature‘s form in them is beyond guilt and anxiety but rational and
detached.

129
4.3. The Pastoral Theme as a Myth and Life-Creationist Utopia in the
Russian Silver Age

4.3.1. Introduction
In Russian fin de siècle, the theme of the pastoral that detaches from its western
context, receiving a much more multifaceted interpretation. The symbolism of unity
with nature in the Russian fin de siècle pastoral is expressed not only as an aesthetic and
psychological utopia but also as a political myth. In the work of Russian authors, the
aesthetic symbol of nature's perfection is complemented by the theme of the brotherhood
of men with the animal world, impregnated with the political symbols of democratic and
anti-hierarchical relationships.
Pastoral subjects are introduced in the Russian modernist culture in the
framework of Art Moderne rococo stylizations. The main themes of these stylizations
are scene gallant, especially well-represented in Somov; pastoral ballet in Sudeikin and
other artists of the Blue Rose group; and pastoral music. The images of pipe players are
especially frequent, which does not come as a surprise in the view of the era's fascination
with rhythm and music.
In the Russian modernist culture, however, the connection of the pastoral nature
with the Greek and Roman classics evokes a more engaged interest than its rococo
context. Whereas the art of the classical pastoral has not been a relevant context in the

130
Russian culture, as was argued in chapter 3, Russian fin de siècle pastoral aesthetics fill
this gap by actively using the contents of the classical myth. The themes of the classical
pastoral myth take over the Art Moderne image and geographically stretch beyond the
borders of the rococo park. In the framework of the classical pastoral myth, the national
countryside, which has built a distinct classical identity throughout the history of the
Russian pastoral (see chapter 3), yields the images of unity with nature.
The images of unity with nature are powerful in the Russian pastoral as
relationships and interactions. As was pointed out above, this unity is not free from a
neurotic component, since underneath the peaceful motifs, the themes of guilt and anxiety
are tangible. However, projected on the experiences of national countryside, this unity is
sustained as a form of integration in the two main images—pastoral music and a brotherly
relationship with animals.
The formation of the specifics of Russian fin de siècle pastoral is characterized by
the three factors of cultural history that I consider below:
- being in the countryside becomes a part of the urban bourgeois lifestyle;
- classical education of the era emphasizes myth-creation and life-creation in the
approach to the classical material;
- the Golden Age myth becomes a powerful cultural symbol and embraces revolutionary
and utopian meanings.

131
4.3.2. The Countryside Outdoors in the Russian Fin de Siècle
In fin de siècle Russia, the monopoly of urban culture over art producers and art
consumers was not total. The countryside is where capitalist development directed both
the aesthetic search and the status search. Freed from its economic significance in the
capitalist economy, the countryside continued to play a significant role in the life of
bourgeois urbanites in the culture of dachas.
As Elena Pervushina points out, ―turning country-estates into dachas was the sign
of the time.‖ (my translation; Pervushina 2008, p. 234) According to her, ―building
dacha settlements was one of the most profitable uses of land at the turn of the twentieth
century.‖ (ibid) For example, as Pervushina notes, Count Alexander Sheremetev secured
himself a yearly rent of 38,000 roubles from 584 plots that he cut from his land on the
northern outskirts of Moscow. His brother Sergei Sheremetev made more than 27,000
roubles in 1909 by renting out 363 plots of land in his estate, Kuskovo, which was
discussed in chapter 3. (ibid)
The development of transportation opened access to distant territories, and city
dwellers spent a significant amount of time in their dachas furnished with all the facilities
available in the city. As the author of a builder's manual published in 1882 points out,
...during the last decade, the inhabitants of large cities, especially those of the
capital, showed a significant tendency to move from the overpopulated city as far
as possible with the advent of early spring, and bring their families not rarely a
few hundred versts away, since they are not prevented by such distances, thanks
to the more or less significant development of our railway system.‖ [my
translation; ―Dacha‖ 1882, p. 920]

The automobile that became an indispensable element of the lifestyles of the rich and

132
powerful in the early twentieth century facilitated the realization of their appetites for the

acquisition of out-of-town mansions.

The wealthy invested capital in restoration of what was called in Russian cultural
tradition ―old aristocratic nests.‖ This phenomenon was reflected in the blueprint of the
magazine Stolitsa i usad'ba, (1914-1917) whose motto was ―the magazine of beautiful
life‖ [zhurnal krasivoi zhizni]. The magazine capitalized on the interest in aristocratic
lifestyles and specifically addressed the wealthy bourgeois who could afford an
automobile
29
. The magazine promoted the prestige of ―old aristocratic nests‖ in the
context of both healthy lifestyles consistently described as ―English‖ and the values of
aristocratic history. Every issue of the magazine opened with a publication about a
historic estate and its previous and current owners.
Living in the countryside continued to supply emotional experiences to urban
people, and estate images were abundant in the art of Russian fin de siècle. The fin de
siècle pictures of the country estate are happy landscapes full of sunlight and painted with
bright and rich colors (among many others, Kustodiev, Serebriakova, Alexander Golovin,
Della-Vos-Kardovaskaia, Somov, Mikail Larionov, Natalia Goncharova, and Sudeikin).
The era left a significant legacy in its photographs of gardens, summer homes,
countryside environments and dacha activities (see for example, in Nashchokina).
Nashchokina emphasizes that countryside lifestyles ―stretched beyond the garden border.‖
(Nashchokina 2007, p. 73) She lists such activities popular among fin de siècle estates
and dacha dwellers as making herbariums, picking mushrooms and berries, catching

29
Commercial ads for tires and automobile firms are on display in every issue of the magazine.

133
butterflies, boating (including use of engine-driven boats), horseback riding, hunting and
fishing, picnics in the forest, and most importantly, strolls and car trips around
neighborhoods, as well as sports. (ibid., pp. 73 – 81) Besides memoirs, on which
Nashchokina bases her overview, the writings of fin de siècle authors such as Chekhov
and Ivan Bunin, and poetry and prose by Alexander Blok and Kuzmin among many
others, give a clear idea of the extent to which out-of-town locations were incorporated in
the fin de siècle lifestyle.
Despite all this, the pastoral is only one of the myth identities of the countryside of
the era. In the cultured space of modernism it was often displaced by Elysian imagery,
which conveyed western landscape aesthetics. The ideal of the ―meager nature‖
associated with Russian realist culture with agrarian life-styles, of course, was changed
radically in the fin de siècle. Intensive building in the countryside inspired landscape
creativity, and generously funded building and restoration enterprises engaged landscape
designers and artists whose involvement greatly raised the requirements of nature
aesthetics. In the hands of these professionals, the ideal of nature as national identity,
poor in inherent aesthetic qualities, monotonous and untouched by the designer's efforts,
gave way to the spectacular qualities that can be achieved through design. The tastes in
the fin de siècle design of nature are set on diversity and introduction of the foreign.
The perfection of garden nature, however, does not provoke naïve enjoyment
and cheerful game, and the Arcadian interpretation of the garden, which was powerful in
the early Imperial estate culture (see chapter 3), was replaced. The design of the garden
space of the symbolist era suggests metaphors other than pastoral Arcadia—Elysium, the

134
Garden of Eden and the enchanted garden. The Edenic symbolic space is set on flora as
both a vehicle of sensual pleasure and the embodiment of metaphysical symbolism
(through colors and shapes). The flora in the symbolist garden carries through the view
of nature as an embodiment of metaphysical beauty. On the other hand, the
impossibility of attaining such beauty is also conveyed through the language of flowers,
with their fragility and ephemeral bloom, while the fashionable shades—violet, orange
and pink—and suffocating fragrance evoke anxiety and loneliness.
A quintessential illustration of the ambivalence of the symbolist aesthetics of the
garden both as a Garden of Eden and the ―oasis‖ of death and decay is Alexander Blok's
Solov'inyi sad [The Nightingale Garden], a modernist version of the enchanted garden
where the Calypso-like nymph retains her prisoner apart from reality. The image is based
on the motifs of paradisiacal space, narcotic-driven fantasy, deadly suffocation and
satiety. Similarly, deadly and melancholy images are present in Borisov-Musatov's estate
paintings and in Vrubel's Lilac.
The pastoral and Golden Age motifs are alien to the symbolist garden despite its
possible connection with the classics. The work of the Blue Rose artists in the design of
the New Kuchuk Koi in Crimea illustrates how the myth of Arcadia and the Golden Age
is challenged and questioned in the symbolist Edenic space. In the design of New
Kuchuk-Koi (late 1890s – 1910s), an estate near Yalta, the artists of the Blue Rose group
played off the features of Mediterranean nature to convey the motifs of Greek and
Roman classics and simultaneously, Old Testament themes. The garden design
explicitly suggests the image of Edenic riches in using the resources of the southern

135
nature in which the local Mediterranean species were introduced alongside exotic
tropical plants (see Nashchokina p. 186). Bowlt (p.145) points to the whimsical
ornament of the Kuchuk-Koi murals based on floral and animal themes, a fantastic
image of nature penetrated by unpredictable rhythms. The flowers on the flower beds
were displayed by color and fragrance and chosen so they were open at night as well. As
a result, the flora prominently dominates in this garden and its continuous bloom
conveys an ―extra-natural‖ rather than natural symbolism. Sensual pleasures of the
garden in bloom, and the beauty of bright and exotic colors, inspire Edenic dreams and
evoke the symbol of transcendental beauty manifested in earthly material objects.
It is obvious that the image of unity with nature is hardly to be sought in the
symbolist garden, which can be interpreted as a symbol of the decadent ―hatred for
reality,‖ to use Dali's expression (see above). In constructing the image of unity with
nature, if not free from tragic contrasts and inner strife, the Russian fin de siècle authors
appeal to the legacy of the classical pastoral. The rediscovery of Arcadian themes occurs
in the context of the era's interest in the Greek and Roman classics; and the significant
role of the Arcadian myth in the era's life-creationist practices is prepared by the new
developments within classical education.

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4.3.3 Myth Creation as a Practice of Fin de Siecle Classical
Education

4.3.3.1. The Controversial Standing of the Classical Gymnasium in Fin
de Siecle Russia
Latin
30
was introduced into the curricula of Russian public schools -
gymnasiums
31
- in 1804. Between 1810 and 1849, the number of Latin hours at
gymnasiums increased, and Greek was also added to the curricula. The instruction hours
of Latin went through significant fluctuations throughout the nineteenth century. By the
1860's, the balance of both classical subjects and sciences in the school curricula was
secured by a newly adopted statute of secondary schools. However, a conservative
reform of education was passed in 1871 under the aegis of the newly appointed minister
of People's Education (Minstr narodnogo prosveshcheniia) Count Dmitrii Tolstoy. This
reform reduced the number of subjects taught in gymnasiums in favor of the classical
languages – Latin and Greek.
The reform was ―grammatically oriented,‖ (Nosov 1996, p. 214), and the target of
classical education was defined as ―mastering grammar and translation to and from
languages, including knowledge of the most important classical texts, and understanding
the aesthetics of both ancient and modern speech.‖ (ibid., p. 214). The reform passed

30
The overview of the history of Russian classical education in this section is based upon A.Nosov 1996.
31
At that time both Latin and Greek were taught only in male schools; however, in the 1870's some short-
lived attempts were made to introduce Latin to female gymnasiums.

137
only due to the intervention of the Tsar, while the majority of the State Council voted
against it
32
. The priority of political and ideological concerns in the implementation of
national classical education was a clear reason why it evoked a sense of political
rejection, estrangement and disorientation in the majority of those who had to cope with
it.
With the rise of democratic movements in the second half of the 19th century,
classical education was consistently criticized in Russia for filling curriculum with
subjects disconnected with modern life, and for supporting political conservatism.
Classical education was also criticized for imposing class limitations on education, since
the mastery of Latin and Greek and preparations for final examinations required that
students hire tutors. Simultaneously, classical education monopolized the reproduction of
the highest state and intellectual elite, since universities did not admit non-classical
students until the late nineteenth century. It was only in 1888, after the end of Tolstoy's
classicism, that non-classical students were admitted to mathematical and medical
departments.
The authors of Russian memoirs about the instruction of classical languages at
gymnasiums, often speak about their dissatisfaction with the teachers of classical
languages, and often paint them as despotic, incompetent and political reactionaries. On
the other hand, reaction against the reform fostered admiration for classical knowledge in
the educated elite. Direct access to classical authors was the most valuable result of
classical education. This was in opposition to the more formal study of grammar, which

32
see: Vladimir Korolenko 1972 Part 3 Chapter 18 p. 160 with a reference to the history of the reform in
the magazine Syn Otechetsva [The Son of Fatherland]

138
was a more common gymnasium practice (in Nosov, especially pp. 218-220). For
example, Benois, who was a student during the years of Tolstoyan classicism, studied at a
public gymnasium in St. Petersburg before transferring to the private gymnasium of Karl
Mai. Benois remembers in Moi Vospominaniia [My Memoirs] that as a child he was fond
of his Latin tutor because he let him ―read Caesar and Ovid, 'as they read a novel,' without
a dictionary, cursorily, in trying to understand the meaning of sentence by context, and
also by similarity of Latin with other languages familiar to [him].‖ (my translation;
Benois 1980 II, 11, p. 403) It had been a poor experience with grammar-based Latin
instruction in the public gymnasium which prompted Benois' parents to enroll him in the
classical gymnasium of Karl Mai, one of the best private gymnasiums in St. Petersburg.

4.3.3.2 Elite Classical Schools and Fin de Siecle Culture
From the 1880's to the early 1900's, when many intellectuals of the Silver Age
were gymnasium students, many of their schools parted ways with the principles of
official ―formal‖ classicism. A charismatic teaching presence was often a decisive factor
in the classical education of the Silver Age intellectual elite. Thus, for instance, Innokentii
Annenskii's work at different points of his career in two gymnasiums (one in Tsarskoe
selo – Nikolaevskaia gymnasium, and one in St. Petersburg – gymnasium #8) was crucial
for making classical education a particularly good experience for students. Both Nikolai
Gumilev – a graduate of the Tsarskoe selo gymnasium, and Alexander Kondrat'ev, who
graduated from the St. Petersburg gymnasium worshiped Anneskii as a classical and

139
literary mentor, and considered their respective gymnasium experience a formative
influence on their careers
33
.
On the other hand, many middle class families sent their children to private
gymnasiums. The educational principles of these schools were often in opposition to
official educational policies. As Nosov points out, ―[d]espite that private gymnasiums
were under the control of the Ministry of Public Education, and were obliged to use its
curricula, they were able to overcome, to a certain extent the grammatical tendency of
public gymnasiums.‖ (Nosov 1996, p. 220-221)
In Benois's eyes, the bad experience with the Latin teacher at his public
gymnasium had a truly decisive impact on his life and future artistic career; by changing
gymnasiums, he met lifelong friends and future World of Art collaborators – Somov,
Dmitrii Filisofov, Sergei Diagilev's cousin, and Walter (Valentin) Nuvel' at Mai's
gymnasium. Mai was a follower of the liberal pedagogy of Nikolai Pirogov and
Konstantin Ushinskii. According to memoirs, the atmosphere in the gymnasium was
truly democratic. Even though many of the students were children of the rich and
powerful, students of low social origin were also accepted in the school. The gymnasium
was also favored by families of the intelligentsia some of whom sent their children there
for several generations (as for instance, the Benois and the Roerichs). A significant
number of state and army officials graduated from this school, and many of Mai's
graduates became artists, and were crucial figures of Russian fin de siecle artistic culture.
Besides Benois's friends, also Valentin Serov, Nikolai Roerich, Mstislav, Alexander

33
see, for example, Gumilev's poem Pamiati Annenskogo [In Annenskii's Memory].

140
Iakovlev, and Ivan Puni graduated from Mai's. Another private gymnasium that supplied
the Silver Age cultural elite was Lev Polivanov's school in Moscow. Three major
symbolist poets - Andrei Belyi, Valerii Briusov, and Maximilian Voloshin – graduated
from this school.

4.3.3.3 Fin the Siecle Classical Education: Becoming Cultural Capital
The classicism of the Silver Age appeared as a reaction against a tendency to
annihilate classical education. As was pointed out earlier, many members of the Russian
decadent elite had first-hand access to classical knowledge, and came from middle class
families which were interested in classical secondary schools. Some of them also learned
classical languages at universities. Three of the most prominent figures in Russian fin de
siecle literary classicism – Faddei (Tadeusz) Zelinskii, Viacheslav Ivanov, and Annenskii,
were all simultaneously prominent classical educators.
In general, classicism's leaders of the Russian Silver Age supported Tolstoy's
system. Thus, according to the memoir of Annenskii's cousin T.A Bogdanovich,
Annenskii believed his duty was to protect Russian classical schools, and when he was
thinking of resigning from his profession and dedicating himself exclusively to literature,
he asked himself rhetorically:
―Does a convinced defender of classicism have a right to drop the banner at that moment

141
when it is surrounded by evil enemies from all sides? Will he not be ashamed to run
away? (Bogdanovich in Bavin and I.Semibratova 1993, p. ).
Tolstoyan reform was revised in 1890 when the grammar-centered curriculum of
gymnasium education was officially criticized, and reconsidered by the beginning of the
twentieth century. Written exams in classical languages which were required for
universities and which also guaranteed privileges in military and civil careers (Nosov
1996, footnote p. 207) were canceled in 1900. At the turn of the century, Latin
instruction began only from 3rd grade (and not from the pre-school) and Greek
instruction began in 4th grade, but Greek remained only in 5 gymnasiums (ibid., p. 227).
Simultaneously, the classics which were publicly stigmatized during the previous
three decades (for being anti-democratic and for triggering conservative ideology and
religiosity) started regaining cultural capital particularly by projecting decadent ideas of
political and sexual freedom. A famous example of the democratic intelligentsia's attitude
to classical teachers and their subjects, in Anton Chekhov's ―The Man in a Case‖ (1898),
a Greek teacher is presented as an iconic retrograde coward who represents the
totalitarian power of the state. On the contrary, in Mikhail Kuzmin‘s ―Wings‖ classical
literature, art and culture are among the major interests of the characters and the lovers of
all things classical are presented as open-minded intellectuals and refined aesthetes. The
classics are not only freed from retrograde associations, but also endowed with those of
mystery and unconventional life-styles. The novel revolves around the initiation of the
gymnasium student Vania Smurov into an international community of homosexual
Platonic lovers. The guide of his initiation is his old gymnasium classical Greek teacher.

142
4.3.3.4. Slavic Renaissance of the Classics
Reconsidering the image of the classicism had the most sophisticated and
revolutionary response in the milieu of classical professors. They introduced the notion
of myth and life-creationist experience. In the writings of these professors (as well as
through their personal influence), studying the classics was intended as a political and
psychological framework of constructing identities - both personal identities and those as
an entire nation - on the basis of classical myth. One of the most utopian and peculiar
ideas was the idea of the national renaissance of the classics.
The Slavonic renaissance, also often called Third (or Slavonic) Renaissance of the
Classics is a specific ideological construction and in Catriona Kelly's words ―one of the
most remarkable, if one of the most eccentric phenomena of the early twentieth century.‖
(Kelly 1989, p. 236) The Slavonic Renaissance was not a theory but a particular Silver
Age ideology which combined a strong emphasis on nationalism while simultaneously
trying to incorporate Russia into a more European cultural context by reconciling
Slavophile discourse with westernizing discourse. Similar to Slavophiles' ideologies, it
claimed national superiority on the basis of Russian Orthodoxy's unique spirituality.
However, this superiority was eventually understood as a connection to the legacy of the
classical cultures of the Mediterranean, especially the ancient Greek culture which was
considered more authentic than Roman (and by proxy the Romantic tradition).
The ideas of the Third Renaissance did not establish a delineated ideological
system or a representative movement, but spread throughout Silver Age culture and were
echoed in the voices of various Silver Age authors. If the classicism of the Silver Age did

143
not provide ideological solidity, it at least provided a certain representative framework
towards which many other movements defined themselves
34
.

4.3.3.5. “Our Debt to Antiquity”: Classicism as a Life-Creationist
Experience
In promoting classical education, Zelinskii became one of the authors of this
nationalist myth connecting Russian culture and classical legacy. His vision of the
classics as a foundation of modern national civilization were voiced in a series of eight
lectures which he delivered to the highest classes of St. Petersburg gymnasiums in 1903.
These lectures, in which he fiercely defended the advantages of classical education, were
published in that same year under the title Drevnii mir i my [―The Classical World and
Us‖]. The lectures were translated into German, and in 1909, the English translation was
published in London. According to the authors of the English translation of this book,
titled ―Our Debt to Antiquity,‖ Zelinskiis' lectures received ―somewhat unfavorable
reception in the press,‖ but ―the work created a widespread interest... ‖ (Zelinskii 1971, p.
V).
Zelinskii's thesis is that classical education is crucial to building intellectual
national culture, in contrast to professional education and the study of the sciences.
Zelinskii attacked the program of professional education (an official alternative to

34
They were interestingly productive after the 1917 Revolution, when the so-called Union of Russian
Renaissance (Soiuz russkogo vozrozhedeniia) was established by Zelisnkii's disciples. The members of the
Union, for example the brothers Nikolai and Mikhail Bakhtin, tried to combine its ideas with those of
revolutionary populism (about: Nina Braginskaia's compact, if not strongly charged with subjective
attitudes, overview of the history of the idea of Slavic renaissance in Slavianskoe vozrozhdenie antichosti.
Braginskaia 2002; pp. 49-80.)

144
classical education) which attempted to demonstrate that professional education is
intellectually limited and secondary, whereas classical education is self-sufficient. In
Nina Braginskaia's words, Zelinskii emphasized that the classics are omnipresent in
modern cultures through inherited cultural forms. Examples of such forms are the
Romantic languages and the ideas of Greek and Roman authors. (Braginskaia 2002; pp.
49-80). According to Zelinskii, classical civilization is the embodiment of successful
practices advanced by the Greeks and Romans, even before the sciences proved these
experiences to be the right choices for civilization. Thus, for instance, a vegetarian diet is
considered a civilized advantage, in opposition to the meat diet of ―uncivilized‖
barbarians. As a result, classical education can provide a positive knowledge about
civilization; as Zelinskii points out, ―it is a fact that the system of classical education
dates from time out of mind; that it has at the present day spread to all the nations who
enjoy the benefit of so-called European civilization, and who, indeed, could not be called
civilized till they adopted this system.‖ (Zelinskii 1971, p.)
Moreover, Zelinskii believes that the knowledge of the classics provides a direct
foundation of Russian national culture. In particular, it is classical languages which
enable modern speakers of Russian to understand how their own language is constructed,
as well as to correct the illogicality inherent in the national language and, as a result, in
the national mind. According to Zelinskii, Greek is the most authentic cultural language
since it has the least amount of cognate words from other languages. Specifically, he
refers not to all foreign words but to the cultural loans which ―have been translated from a
foreign tongue into Greek.‖ (ibid., p. 59) These words in contrast to the historical layer of

145
the words of foreign origin, ―have found their way into the language by a purely external
process, without having passed through the forge of popular consciousness.‖ (ibid., p. 59-
60). Accordingly, Zelinskii concludes that ―the greater the percentage of such words in a
language, the less does that language reflect the consciousness of the people who speak
it.‖ On this basis, he argues that Greek language is superior and should be studied in order
to understand the national language and national cultural concepts:
―...the entire Greek language as it is presents us with a reflection of the mind of the Greek
people, so that had all Greek literature perished, we could restore an image of this mind
with the mere aid of a Greek dictionary. On the other hand, modern languages (including
Russian) offer no such possibilities. Indeed, Russian in particular contains such a number
of these translated words that not only the educated classes, but even the most ignorant
peasants cannot speak straight from the heart and conscience without them‖ (ibid)
Most interestingly, Zelinskii also muses about the direct role of classical education
in social life as a vehicle of social Darwinism, a trigger of ―the law of Sociological
Selection.‖ According to him, the real purpose of Sociological Selection (…) in its
maintenance of classical education has been at all times one and the same – namely, the
intellectual and moral improvement of humanity. (ibid., p. 16)
Zelinskii introduces a utopian project whereby the work put into classical studies
becomes a basis for ascribing people to social classes on fair grounds:
―And labour.... Yes, and that word brings us to the reproach leveled at classical education
in schools. Here the misunderstanding obviously does not consist in the fact itself –
classical work in schools is difficult if pursued conscientiously - there is no need of

146
discussing the point. The misunderstanding lies in the deduction, which is drawn from
that fact. It is difficult, people say, and so away with it! It is difficult, I rejoin, and that is
an extra reason for keeping it.‖ (ibid., p. 206)
Zelinskii believes that the role of classical education is to serve as a practical
criterion of students' intellectual abilities and work ethic, and that those gymnasium
students who are unable to master classical languages or unwilling to put effort into them
should be precluded from moving ranks in society. His version of social Darwinism
interestingly combines communal labor ethics, an intellectual hierarchy of Plato's ideal
state (as in Plato, society in Zelinskii, is ―an army at work‖ that ―has its common soldiers
and officers‖) with controlled selection. Zelinskii claims that a classical education is the
only social means capable to perform this selection. As he focuses on the question:
―How, then, are people appointed to be officers?‖ (ibid), he uses a striking allegorical
image to demonstrate his point to the audience of young gymnasium graduates:
―I should now like to summon a vision before you, an ominous, imposing, and alas!
exceedingly real vision. It is a young man of your years, only he is dressed not in clean
clothes, but filthy, evil-smelling rags. On his head he wears not a smart cap like yours, but
a workman's greasy hat. His face bears the marks of the privation and the vice which
haunt the lives of those ―at the bottom‖ of the social pyramid. You introduce yourselves
to each other. ―I,‖ you say, ―by the grace of God, am a candidate for an officer's post.‖
―And I,‖ your vision answers, ―by the wrath of God, am of the proletariat.‖ And fixing a
vicious glance on you he asks: ―And why is it, sir, you become an officer and I not?‖ Two
answers are possible to this question, the first a very disgraceful one, the second a very

147
good one. The former is: ―Because my father was a man comparatively well to do, who
paid for my education in a secondary school seven or eight years in succession, and
during that time gave me leisure for my studies, whereas your father, supposing you had a
father, was a poor devil, who fed and brought you up on copper farthings and at the same
time exploited your labour.‖ Yes, that answer will, unfortunately, contain a large
proportion of truth; but I fancy the conscience in each one of you will shrink from it. The
second answer, against which no reproach is possible, is: ―Because I have gone through
an amount of mental work which would be beyond your power. Only think, fifty of us
entered the first class and only thirty pass out.‖ (ibid., p.p. 210-211)
In his lectures, Zelinskii introduces the utopian project of social improvement by
means of a classical education complemented by a nationalist myth. In the special
appendix (ekskurs), called Credo in the second edition of Drevnii mir i my (1907), he
introduced the idea of the Slavonic Renaissance of the classics as a myth. In Khoruzhii's
words (which I rely upon here since the second edition of Zelinskii's book has not been
made available to me; Khoruzhii 1994, p. 54), this idea is presented as an image of the
rising dawn and of the world silently awaiting of what in the last words of the essay is
called for the ―[T]he third word of the craved freedom (vozhdelennoi svobody) – the
word of Slavonic Renaissance!‖

4.3.3.6 Myth-Creation Project in Ivanov
Ivanov's version of the Russian classical myth is also closely connected with
nationalist ideology and deeply rooted in the powerful myth creationist discourse made by

148
the reception in Russia of Nietzsche's ―The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music,‖
and ―Thus Spoke Zarathustra.‖ Ivanov, one of Nietzsche's main Russian adepts, refers to
the Slavonic Renaissance in his 1907 essay ―O veselom remesle i umnom veselii (On the
Joyful Craft and the Joy of Spirit) which he concludes with a bold prophecy: ―The
country will be covered by orchestras and thymelas where there will be a round dance.‖
(Ivanov in Khoruzhii 1994, p. 54)
Ivanov's belief that art is to become a collective (sobornyi) experience that is to
operative national symbols, the ―nation's ancient heritage‖ (Ivanov 2001, p. 125) and to
be ―directed toward the nation's soul‖ (ibid). This entails that art turn into myth creation,
and that the artist become a mythopoet (mythopoiós). This new art is defined in romantic
metaphors of ―universal liberation of unincarnated energies‖ (ibid., p. 123). The
liberation is symbolized by Dionysus, referred to in this essay as ―our Slavic god.‖
According to Ivanov, Dionysian liberation is a contribution of the barbarian soul into
Alexandrian culture and the legacy of antiquity embedded in the Latin culture.
Ivanov compares the barbarian renaissance with the eternal repetition, the
repetition of Helen‘s abduction ―by her uncivilized lovers‖ (ibid., p. 120), which
symbolizes the appropriation of the Greek culture by the barbarians
35
. According to
Ivanov, confrontation of barbarian culture with Latin (classical culture) is inevitable:
―[t]ruly, what to those Athenians is wisdom, to barbarians is madness. The fate of the
former is to preserve the heritage and traditions of their ―elders‖; we, as Lotophagi, feed
on the lotuses of oblivion.‖ (ibid., p. 121)

35
Ivanov believes that the creative ―barbarian‖ element is represented in the west by Nietzsche, Wagner,
Ruskin and Morris, Walt Whitman, Henrik Ibsen and in Russia, by Fedor Dostoevskii.

149
This concept of barbarian renaissance in Ivanov seems to constitute a reaction to
the loss of classical knowledge and the decline of classical education:
―The frightened friends of culture exclaim: 'A long night of moribund stagnation is
nearing. Education in decline. Vandalism is appearing. The possibility of the overthrow
of ruling classes is a mortal treat to all cultural values'...‖ (ibid., p. 126) Cultural decline,
however, is not problematic in this conceptual view, since the deconstruction of the Latin
culture, according to Ivanov, is a desired goal of the barbarian renaissance. According to
Ivanov, Latin culture is not supposed to withstand the invasion of barbarian creative
elements. In the meantime, in passing through decadence with its ―truly Alexandrian
fragrance of elegance and dying, of flowers and the sepulcher,‖ (ibid., p. 123) it discovers
an antidote, poetry as rhythm and movement through educated and analytic classicisim
(e.g. ―Parnassians‖ in France). (ibid., pp. 122-124)
Ivanov envisions that Latin Alexandrian culture is to be overthrown by the
barbarian renaissance when the direct access to the values of the past will be open in the
collective religious mythopoetic experience that involves the entire nation,
Hellas serves the humanists of the barbarian ―renaissance‖ as a thesaurus of
values necessary for the revaluation of all values. Following the banner of
Friedrich Nietzsche, they aspire to different Hellas than that up to now has been
dear and holy to those who would evoke Helen, not the Hellas of radiant harmony
and harmonious balance, but barbarian Hellas, orgiastic, mystical, primordially
Dionysian Hellas. (ibid., p. 123)

Whereas Ivanov's thought did not have deep philosophical originality (as he
heavily draws on the ideas of Nietzsche and Oswald Spengler) his discourse is abundant
in poetic energy and myth creationist inspiration, which had a powerful influence on

150
Russian intellectual elite. Both classical professors - Ivanov and Zelinskii – conveyed
the notion of a direct intellectual and psychological experience of the classical legacy to
their audiences. In particular, being influential proponents of the Russian reception of
Nietzsche, they are responsible for popularizing fantasies of ecstatic unity, with the
nature of the collective of modern bacchantes within Silver Age intellectual culture.

4.3.3.7 Russian Reception of Nietzsche during Fin de Siecle
Intense discussion of Nietzsche's ideas in Russian thick journals began in 1892
with the presentation of Nietzsche's ideas by V.P. Preobrazhenskii in the magazine
―Voprosy filisofii i psikhologii‖ [Problems of Philosophy and Psychology, 1889-1918].
Preobrazhenskii's article was titled ―Friedrich Nietzsche: The Critique of the Morality and
Altruism‖ (Lane 1986, p. 51] According to Rosenthal, Russian intellectuals also knew
about Nietzsche during the 1890's from his Russian admirers, such as Merezhkovskii,
Valerii Briusov and Ivanov. The symbolist writers who read Nietzsche in German and
French learned about his ideas during their travels to the West. These writers
disseminated ―The Birth of Tragedy‖ and ―Thus Spoke Zarathustra,‖ two of Nietzsche's
most poetic works. [Rosenthal 1986, p. 10] As Rosenthal points out, [―t]he Dionysian
became a symbol for interrelated esthetic, psychological and religious impulses.‖ (ibid.)
Simultaneously, Zarathustra's teaching fueled the symbolists' ―esthetic individualism‖ and
―contempt for the herd‖ (ibid). They admired ―Nietzsche's affirmation of life, including
its sufferings,‖ (ibid) and relied upon it in their opposition to bourgeois philistinism.

151
Among the values of the fin de siecle intellectual elite formulated around Nietzsche's
ideas (as listed in Rosenthal) are ―individualism, self-affirmation, self-expression,
sensuality, liberation of the instincts, pride, heroism, courage, struggle, affirmation of life,
defiance of death, iconoclasm (…), and the contempt for the mob, for bourgeois society,
for tradition, and for custom. (ibid., p. 7-8) However, despite Nietzsche's iconoclasm and
explicit protests against Christianity, Russian fin de siecle intellectual culture used his
legacy to reconsider the Christian paradigm while integrating Nietzsche's ideas about the
equal value of the body and soul based on western Medieval Christian Mysticism and
Neo-Platonic thought.
36
As Michael Meerson points out,
Ironically, Russians transformed Nietzscheanism into a kind of religious
humanism opposite to Nietzsche's own doctrine. They Christianized and
―Solovyovized‖ Nietzsche, incorporating Nietzsche's ―truth about the earth‖ into
Solovyov's idea about God's humanity as the necessary material component of the
Christian doctrine of Incarnation. They reinterpreted the pagan classical antiquity
glorified by Nietzsche into cultural and religious background which anticipated
Christianity and provided it with abundant symbolism‖ (Meerson 2005, p. 54)

As a result, the Silver Age culture sometimes produced straightforward and eccentric
syntheses such as for example, direct identifications of Dionysus and Christ in Viacheslav
Ivanov's ―Ellinskaia religiia stradaiushchego boga,‖ and the analogies between both
Dionysian and Orphic cults and Christianity in his book Dionis and pradionisiistvo.
Both the Slavonic renaissance and Nietzschean Dionysian religion were the
framework of myth creation which electrized the imagination of the fin de siecle
educated elite. Dealing with classical legacy also engaged creationist practices and
experiences in individual lives.

36
see about Meerson 2005

152
4.3.3.8 Life-Creation and Classical Education
Zelinskii's project was based on overtly unpopular ideas and the compulsory
educational system did not work for secondary schools. However, in this epoch, the
demand for classical education at the university increased, and popular and energetic
professors, such as Zelinskii himself and his colleague Mikhail Rostovtzeff were able to
address masses of students. Memoirs from this epoch show that the influence of
Zelinskii's personality on the young generation was enormous.
Zelinskii, whose main interest was Greek religion, and whose manner of lecturing
was clearly indebted to the expressionist style of Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy..., was
a genuinely charismatic professor, and he surrounded his communication with students
with an aura of classical myth which duplicated reality. Nikolai Antsiferov (1889-1858),
an historian of culture and the author of a memoir which documented the life of the
Russian intelligentsia of the 1890's – 1930's, described the intense effects of Zelinskii's
lectures and personality on his audiences,
One of the most popular professors of the department of History and Philology
was Faddei Frantsevich Zelinskii (Pan Tadeusz]), and the students from all
departments came to listen to his lectures. One science student (… ) told me that
he attends Zelinskii's lectures for the sake of pantheistic experiences (radi
panteisticheskikh perezhivanii). As if one breathes the smells of the boundless
sea. Another science student (Vilchinskii) wrote me from Athens: 'Faddei
Frantsevich was with us on the ship. He was sitting at the nose surrounded by his
female students. They took off their scarves and decorated the ropes [kanaty ?].
The wind played with these colored little flags over the master's head. And he
narrated how the Athenians returned from Tauris or Kolchis and looking into
distance, when awaiting to see the spear of Athene, crowning Acropolis, sparkling
in the Sun.' While on the shore of Hellas yet, Vilchinskii saw that Zelinskii was
going to swim and ran after him. It seemed to him that it was an upraised god of
Hellas that was going to immerse into the ever-murmuring sea his ―divine torso.‖
I have to mention that the both exalted scientists were sober characters and
constantly made fun of my rapturousness. (Antsiferov 1992, p. 157)

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Antsiferov remembers that Zelinskii taught his course in a room in which the
fragments of ancient sculptures were displayed. He points out that this art was as an ideal
background for Zelinskii's persona, and describes his manner of speech as follows:
...it seemed that in his wide-opened eyes, the world which he revived with his
inspired speech reflected itself. He spoke slowly, solemnly, a little bit through his
teeth, and it seemed that it was not us that his words addressed, but that he
addressed a remote audience over our heads. At times his voice trembled and tears
sparkled in his eyes, which resembled the eyes of a deer. (Antsiferov 1992, p.
157)

It is possible to notice ironic ambiguity in Antsiferov's attitude to Zelinskii, and his
resistance to overtones of cultish religiosity and mass hysteria in others' adoration toward
this professor.
In the fin de siecle epoch, the traditional importance of the teacher's role in Russia
received additional momentum in an atmosphere electrified by educational projects
involving women. In his memoir, Antsiferov mentions a group of Zelinskii's female
students at Bestuzhev Courses* (Bestuzhevskie kursy) who, inspired by his ideas and by
Isadora Duncan's dance studied classical texts and musical movement. Eventually, they
became a commune of dancers (1918), and besides performing and experimenting with
―musical movement,‖ also taught this art to children. The name of the group - Geptakhor
(Heptachorus) based on the original number of dancers was invented by Zelinskii. One of
the Geptakhor members, Stefanida Rudneva gives tribute to Zelinskii (whom she in her
and her friends called ―Master
37
) in her Memoir of the Happy Person (Vospominaniia
schastlivogo cheloveka). As she points out, his pivotal influence was not only on their
intellectual development, but also on their life choices. For example, she quotes the

37
the word is capitalized everywhere in her memoir.

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following conversation with Zelinskii in the Crimea, a conversation that led Rudneva to
become one of his closest students:
We were going along the white road under the stars, and I decided: now or never;
I must tell him about the most important thing for me. Stumbling and half-
whispering, I asked him to be my Master, show me my road and lead me along it.
He answered quietly and simply: ―Nobody can lead the other on his [sic] road; it
is possible only to help finding it.‖ And this is how he became my (and
Geptakhor's) Master for all life. (Rudneva 2007, p. 129)

As follows from both Antsiferov's and Rudneva's memoirs, Zelinskii's influence
was as emotional as it was scholarly. It provided actual emotional connections with
classical material and made it a psychological reality to the young Petersburg intellectual.
This influence also incorporated a powerful erotic component even though (as is typical
in Russian culture) it was partly refracted through a more religious concept of love. For
example, Antsiferov remembers:
The ancient world revived by Zelinskii, was not the world of reality. His heroes
are statues of Parian marble sparkling in the sunlight like fresh snow. But they
were not as cold marble or snow. They were like Pygmalion's Galatea, animated
with the spirit of love. They expressed those human passions which subjugated
people to Moira and they gave birth to tragedies. (Antsiferov 1992, p.158)

Whereas making personal life a myth was a typical practice in the decadent
culture, in Zelinskii's case classical legacy was fully involved. One of Antsiferov's
memories shows how closely his ideas, the classics, and his professorship were connected
with his personal life:
In 1911 Geptakhor experienced a drama that shocked the group. There was a
rumor spread about Zelinskii's 'victim.' One of his closest students had had a child
by him. (…) And us students, Zelinskii's admirers, were deeply exasperated with
our professor's behavior.
Zelinskii considered it necessary to justify himself publicly. But how he
went about this! His extra-curricular lecture ―The Tragedy of Faithfulness.‖ was
announced in Bestuzhev Courses. Students from every department overcrowded
the auditorium. Zelinskii opposed the concepts of male faithfulness to female

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faithfulness. Female faithfulness is negative. For a woman to be faithful, she has
to refuse all invitations of other love. Male faithfulness is positive, since a man is
able to be faithful to many women simultaneously without rejecting multiple
embodiments of his Eros. This 'philosophy of a rooster' was presented with such
dignity and talent that it made not a repulsive impression (as one would expect)
but a positive one. And a group of students presented Zelinskii with a bouquet of
lilies as a sign of his being cleansed.‖ (ibid., p. 159)

Besides this lecture, Zelinskii obviously relates to this situation in the tale ―Taina dolgikh
skal‖ (―The Mystery of Long Rocks.‖ In ―Iresiona. Atticheskie skazki.) which retells the
myth about the princess Kreusa giving birth to a child by Apollo.
This episode, also related in Rudneva's memoir, was crucial to her relationship

with Zelinskii. However, in her account the Geptakhor's moral judgment is more

favorable for Zelinskii than Antsiferov suggests. Geptakhor indeed decided to part with

the Master, but only temporarily in order to save the ideal relationship, and after a period

of separation they were planning to return to their ―purified‖ teacher. Rudneva recollects,

F[addei] Fr[antsevich] (i.e. Zelinskii) was a man deeply committed to his
philosophical principles, and convinced in the rightness of his life rules. He
strongly believed that a cultured man is obliged to contribute to the improvement
of the human race by all means, including leaving descendants after himself. He
believed the right for unlimited childbearing to be the inalienable right of the
cultured healthy man. (Rudneva 2007, p. 135)

She concludes, ―[e]verything was cleared with light, everything was meaningful and
beautiful. (…). We believed in our teacher, and obtained him again.‖ (ibid., p. 137)
Although this decision shows the group's ability to separate from Zelinskii's influence, it
is obvious that they were nearly ―hypnotized‖ by his charismatic personality.
Besides the intimate emotional connection with the classical material triggered by
the deep engagement with Zelinskii's personality, his students were introduced into the

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classical material through direct experiences of the psyche. The aesthetic experience of
classical art was complimented by the psychological experience of the physical reality
which contributed to the creation of this art. As Braginskaia mentions (Braginskaia 2002),
Zelinskii was familiar with the concept of empathy (Einfuhlung) used in Theodor Lipps's
philosophy of art. The role of this concept was emphasized in his lectures as suggested by
Rudneva's account:
[his] inspired sermon-like lectures (lektsii-propovedi) not only full of deep
knowledge but also always revealing ―the connection of ages‖, a deep intransient
meaning of ancient Hellenic culture, poetry, and philosophy for the entire
European heritage, and for the entire human culture and life. F.F. [i.e. Zelinskii]
had the capability to engage the audience in the world about which he spoke. A
prominent specialist in ancient religion, he believed that studying any religion is
only possible by taking the point of view of the people who created it, and only by
―believing‖ in it. In classical literature and poetry, in myths and philosophy, he
always revealed the deeply ethical and moral grounds of the given people and of
the given epoch. (Rudneva 2007, p. 126)

The author of the memoir admires Zelinskii's ability to establish connections
between modernity and the classical past, and in particular his ability to engage the
modern audience on the direct experience of the ancient culture. For example, Rudneva
provides an interesting account about her direct sensual experiences of Greek antiquities
during an expedition to Greece with her friends in the summer of 1914. This excursion
was intended to top their years at Bestuzhev Courses. She emphasizes real present time
communication with the classical past through nature and points out the primacy of first-
hand experience over museum knowledge:
Although we were well-equipped archaeologically and philologically; although
we had a batch of recommendation letters to scholars in various corners of
Greece; and although we visited and studied museums, and excavation sites with
a sincere enthusiasm it is Greece itself which attracted us the most. The land that
produced this culture and life was similar to nothing else; and the people who

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created and kept in itself some seeds of it. Because of that we could skip
something in the museum and leave for the shore of Old Faliro and there pick
little rocks; or take a streetcar and go to the suburbs of Athens; roam in the empty
fields with solitary olives under the fierce sun; stop by a cook-shop and have a
glass of local wine… . But the main powers of attraction were the Acropolis and
Athens. (…) And on the Acropolis, we roamed, climbed, sat and lay more than
looked around, ―communicated‖ with the images surrounding us more than we
studied them. Some days we went there in the morning, and bought bouquets of
small (but so bright and fragrant) Greek carnations, and stayed until evening. At
noon, when all the tourists left, we were alone at the top; and lay on the hot slabs
or 'drums' of Parthenon's columns... (ibid., pp. 167-168)

During fin de siecle, the classical education as well as modernist forms of classical
knowledge, supply a framework for myth creationist and life-creationist practices.
Experience of nature is a vital element of these practices as nature indeed played an
important role in the classical myths and their modernist interpretations. In the following
sections I will show how the pastoral myth fits into this same framework of life and myth
creation.

4.3.4 Arcadian Myth in the Russian Fin de Siècle
It is probably true, as is a common opinion, that the interest in the pastoral Golden
Age conveys a fear of the present and a hope for a happy, utopian future. During the
period of social unrest from the late 1890s to the beginning of World War I, the interest in
the pastoral myth was obvious in magazine publications and books. A number of works
about idyll, and in particular about Virgil, appeared, including monographs, publications
in scholarly magazines and translations. For example, two years before the revolution of
1905, the political magazine Russkaia mysl published an essay by O.F. Baziner titled
―Ideia o proshlom i budushchem zolotom veke‖ (―The Idea about the Past and Future

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Golden Age,‖ November 1902); and A.G. Filonov‘s book Idilliia i obraztsy ee was
published in 1907 (St. Petersburg), in the same year as Ivanov's ―On the Joyful Craft and
the Joy of the Spirit.‖ Some of the publications about the idyll popularized the content of
works by western scholars, thus introducing Russian audiences to the western intellectual
content of the genre. For example, a book by a Professor of the Imperial Kazan
University, D.I. Naguevskii‘s Vergilii i ego eklogi (Virgil and his Eclogues, Kazan 1895)
drew on Wilhelm von Christ's Geschichte der griechischen Literatur (Noerdlingen, 1889).
The book had a clear goal: to prepare the audiences for the psychological adoption of
classical cultural specifics. It included a detailed discussion of classical pederasty in
Virgil‘s biography.
Among Virgil‘s translations, three eclogues were especially popular, and all three
fit the context of the fin de siècle lifestyle and intellectual mood: eclogue 1, which
compares Meliboeus‘s blissful life in the countryside with Tityrus‘s sad fate in leaving it;
eclogue 2, about Corydon's desperate love for the beautiful boy Alexis; and the prophecy
about the return of the Golden Age in eclogue 4. These eclogues corresponded to the
modern mind‘s interest in mysticism, eroticism and deviation from the norm. In contrast
to what is often believed, the idyll themes popular during fin de siècle were not
necessarily those of serene tranquility and return to nature's serenity (compare
Klement'eva 2006, p. 65). On the contrary, these themes did not exclude anxieties and
conflicts. Thus, for example, Meliboeus‘s banishment outside the pastoral world
reminded readers of the lack of stability in the present; the despair in modernity evoked
the symbol of the Iron Age from eclogue 4; and the hope for future revolutionary change

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often enclosed a tragedy. For example, the amateur poet K.A. Ivanov‘s Lepestki
(―Petals‖) published a translation of eclogue 4 in a collection of poetry that he wrote upon
the tragic death of his baby daughter.
Despite all this, the nature theme in the idyll was clearly projected on the
contemporary fascination with countryside. Besides ―Bucolics,‖ ―Georgics‖ were
translated in the idyll's framework. For example, excerpts from Georgics are published in
A.G. Filonov‘s Idilliia i obraztsy ee. (translated by S. Amfiteatrov, St. Petersburg 1907).
Interestingly, in writing about the pastoral, the modern experience of dacha dwellers is a
basic cultural reference. For example, the article about dachas in the builder's manual
quoted above emphasizes ―tendency of the inhabitants of big cities, especially of the
capitals, to move out with the advent of spring to the farthest possible distance from the
multi-populated cities... (―Dacha‖, p. 920).‖ Naguevskii, in his book about Virgil, speaks
about the same tendency as a ground for the interest in the idyll, as he mentions that city
dwellers escape ―from the stuffy atmosphere of living quarters‖ to nature, ―to the
simplicity of the rural pastoral life.‖ (Naguevskii 1895, p.10) Dmitrii Merezhkovskii in
his essay about ―Daphnis and Chloe‖ applies the similar words to Eros, who ―leaves the
cities to the quiet fields, to shepherds, goats and sheep ...‖ (Merezhkovskii 1973, p.219).
The dacha lifestyle provides a living framework for life-creationist experience as
the fin de siècle imagination inhabits the countryside with the images and themes of the
classical rural myth. For example, Benois speaks in this vein about the grove in the
village of Martyshkino in the St. Petersburg area, where he lived at a dacha with his
family (1895). He calls it ―Orpheus‘s Grove‖:

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But not only sands and orchards stretched along the seashore. Not far from them
(…) there was situated a small grove of undersized pines (…). It evoked some
dreams ―about ancient Hellas,‘ and I called it because of that ‗Orpheus‘s Grove.‖
(Benois 1980, IV, 6, p. 59)
Benois not only plays on an image of Greek mythology but—even if unconsciously—
projects the contents of the Greek myth onto the surrounding environment. Indeed, the
further description of the grove illustrates how the theme of Ovid's Metamorphoses
becomes a key to the reading of this space:
The trunks of these pines were amazingly crooked, bent in different ways by sea
winds, and with half-naked roots. They seemed to be some charmed creatures
turned into trees. (ibid.)

The Ovidian image of creatures turned into trees, inspires viewing the ―enchanted nature‖
as a nature-created artifact:
‗Orpheus‘s Grove‘ became completely magical when the setting Sun splashed it
with flame-red rays, and from the trunks, bright greenish-blue shadows stretched
and intertwined against the orange sands. (ibid)

This vision seems to be artistically productive as it can be recognized in his 1908painting
of Apollo and Daphne. The painting represents Apollo with a lyre, sitting on the roots of
the old crooked tree, singing, and nymphs and satyrs listening to him. The landscape
depicted in this painting is not like Greece, with which Benois was not familiar at that
time, but rather a central European rural territory that is likely to be suggested by both
France and Russia. The central motif of a crooked tree-trunk with articulated ―half-
naked‖ roots also suggests the possibility that the painting is inspired by ―Orpheus‘s
Grove.‖

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The classical pastoral is placed into estate environments in two of Borisov-
Musatov‘s works on the subject of ―Daphnis and Chloe.‖ Borisov‘s sketch of the late
1890s (―Prud‖) shows an adolescent sleeping by the pond, a running female figure across
the pool from the sleeper and a male figure chasing after her. This group can represent
Chloe and the shepherd Damon, or one of the novel's myths about Pan chasing women,
as, for example, a myth about Pan and Syrinx. Finally, the chaser might be Daphnis
himself, as he dreams of chasing Chloe, in which case a dream is integrated into reality.
The myth scene is set in a typical landscape of a jardin anglais park—the pond with a
marble bridge situated in the center of the drawing, surrounded by statues and big leafy
trees of yellow autumn shades. The landscape theme clearly dominates over the mythic
meaning in this drawing, at least in its sketch version.
The painting of 1901 represents a development of the classical theme, and
evidences an influence of Nietzschean thought. The scene is situated at the outskirts of
an estate park, since the big geometrically shaped bushes suggest the artificial origin of
the landscape. The procession moves among the aspens toward a full-flowing and slow
river. However, we can see only a relatively small part of the landscape, lacking depth
and perspective, that provides a background for the figures. In this work, Borisov
preserved and strengthened the motif of movement from the sketch, and put it in the
context of some ecstatic ritual. A young man and a girl, both naked, run toward the river,
followed by their herds. Daphnis is blowing a horn (and not the pastoral flute, as may be
expected), and Chloe reaching her arm upwards as if appealing to the divine presence
(probably the addressee of the ritual is Pan). The animals run fiercely after them at a

162
speed a little unusual for a sheep herd. The image can be viewed as a fantasy on a
Dionysian theme given its ecstatic element, and the black goat that stands out against the
white sheep appears to be a clear Dionysian symbol.
Unity with nature is an explicit theme in this image of a ritual procession. In
contrast to the western Art Moderne pastoral, this type of unity does not involve human
domination over nature. However, as I will show, the sense of unity in rendering the
theme of pastoral nature is not free from the symbols of ―depressive‖ (in Klein terms)
loneliness. In contrast to Millet‘s balanced attachment and aggression, discussed above,
the image of unity in the Russian fin de siècle entail a neurotic economy of guilt and
aggression.
The following part of this dissertation demonstrates how the image of pastoral
nature simultaneously exposes an anxiety in the relationship with nature. Whereas in the
images of the western pastoral discussed above, nature was taken under the control of art,
in the Russian versions of the pastoral theme, nature is viewed as an active agency and
the human position toward it is passive and receptive. Nature's articulate presence
interferes with the notion of a smooth and solid harmony in various different ways—
through the presence of animals, atypical for the Russian pastoral before fin de siècle, and
in the fantasies about the control of the pastoral nature over the singer and artist. I
suggest a psychological interpretation of this phenomenon in the context of the depressive
loneliness, which can be assumed to be one of the leading psychological experience of the
era's psyche.

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4.3.5 The Dominance of Nature over the Human Body in the Russian
Modernist Pastoral.
As was discussed in the previous sections, musical rhythm in western
modernism is a common symbol of artistic power over the world, and its present, in
particular, emphasizes the presence of artistry in the image of nature. In Russian
modernism, the rhythm is embodied in the images of real rustic environments, and
conveys a sense of harmony with nature, for example: in Borisov-Musatov's ―Pastoral.‖
The drawing represents two women dancing a slow meditative dance in the meadow
with a shepherd boy accompanying them on the pipe. The presence of a single common
rhythm is obvious in the dancers' motion and in the contours of the landscape. However,
the location of the scene in the open space of the forest clearing suggests the motif of
silence which counter-balances the artistry of musical rhythm.
On the basis of Klein's paper about loneliness it is possible to interpret the motif
of nature's silence as a symbol of integration. According to Klein, the early pre-natal
relationship on which the ideal of integration is based, ―implies a close contact between
the unconscious of the mother and of the child‖. (Klein 1975, p. 301) She emphasizes
the ―preverbal‖ quality of this experience and views it as a prototype of all relationships
of understanding:
This is the foundation for the most complete experience of being understood and
is essentially linked with the preverbal stage. However gratifying it is in later
life to express thoughts and feelings to congenial person, there remains and
unsatisfied longing for an understanding without words – ultimately for the
earliest relation with the mother. (ibid)

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In the Russian fin de siecle pastoral, a Style Moderne rhythm often suggests the meaning
of the silent communication.
In Pavel Kuznetsov's painting ―In the Steppe‖, the landscape features create a
contour whose rhythm is echoed in the poses of both people and animals. The painting
from the cycle on the subject of nomads on the Kirghiz steppe, indebted to Paul
Gauguin's influence, represents a pastoral scene with two women and six grazing sheep.
The painting shows a small pastoral oasis against the background of vast spaces of sea
and sky. Beside them, the oasis territory is marked by a few stylized trees displayed
symmetrically on both sides and by warm shades of yellow and green against the cold
blue tones of the rest of the space. The ―pastoral oasis‖, the steppe beyond it, the sea and
the sky are arranged in concentric circles beginning at the bottom of the painting, and the
undulation of the sea echoes that of the steppe. The contours and rhythmic patterns are
emphasized in the trees, their leaves, human postures, and in the arrangement of the
sheep. This arrangement displays a rhythmic pattern: the five animals are lined from
foreground to background in such an sequence that the even sheep are facing left, and the
odd sheep are facing right. The sixth sheep also faces right and breaks the pattern to rid
the sequence from the sense of monotony. The emphasis on the contour in this image
―reveals silence‖, to paraphrase Sternberger's words quoted in Benjamin's ―The Arcades
Project‖. Sternberger writes about the Style Moderne ornament: ―veil of silence reveals
itself clearly enough as a form of contour or as truly animated … form of ornament‖.
[Benjamin 1999, p. 550 S3a,2] Similarly, the rhythmic contour of shapes and curvatures

165
in Kuznetsov's painting envelopes the scene and evokes an experience of a silent
communication.
Whereas the pastoral pipe as an image of art conveys a metaphor of artistic
control, as for example, in Mallarmé's eclogue, the Russian pastoral emphasizes the
receptive and passive role of the human body in embracing the rhythm of nature. The
pastoral images in Russian modernism often emphasize the body's response to the rhythm
as well as the silence of the pipe.

Figure 5: Konstantin Somov. Vignette.

For example, Somov's vignette for one of the 1903 issues of the World of Art magazine
(fig.5), shows a naked youth leaning on the stylized bunch of roses with a vacant pipe
resting in his hand. The relaxed and passive pose of the shepherd's body is echoed in the

166
pose of a little white dog which leans against his leg, its belly turned towards the viewer.
The uselessness of the pipe is emphasized by its position: it is turned upside down
towards the shepherd as if he has forgotten about its presence. In the absence of music,
the vast rustic landscape seen behind the shepherd suggest silence. This motif is
reinforced by the boy's meditative pose, his head slightly bowed on the side and propped
by two fingers of his right hand. The silence in this image is a more powerful presence
than shepherd's music. Simultaneously, the shepherd's passive elongated and effeminized
body repeats the undulation of the the rose stems and is controlled by their rhythm.

Figure 6: Konstntin Somov. Illustration for ―Daphnis and Chloe.‖

One of Somov's illustrations for ―Daphnis and Chloe‖ (1927 – 1928) represents a
slightly ironic development of these motifs as it depicts Daphnis and Chloe in a

167
meditative state listening to Daphnis's music (fig.6). This provocative image was not
published in the book probably because it is explicit in showing private parts of the male
body. Human poses and harmonized with the forms of nature and playing pipes suggests
both the magic power of the instrument and the body's passivity especially emphasized in
the male body's sexualized response to the music.
In an ink sketch of an Ex libris titled ―Idyll,‖ (1920s), Sergei Gruzenberg
represents a rococo beau playing pastoral pipes under a ramified tree. Gruzenberg creates
a rococo version of Virgil's Titurus: the player absorbed in meditation is situated amidst a
locus amoenus which Gruzenberg, an architect, designed in detail. The landscape
displays rocks against which the man presses his foot and arm, tree leaves and the grass
shaped in patterned clusters, a rural land with a small river and a remote castle. Against
the background of the landscape's harmony and precision, the human figure in this
drawing is a source of ambiguity. Although the piper is male, his face suggests feminine
features and the body, draped in the clothes, can be both male and female. Most
importantly, there is a great disproportion in size between the figure and the surrounding
nature. The piper lies on the ground leaning his back against the tree trunk. However, his
height is gigantic as compared to natures objects, and if he stands up he will be higher
than the tree and extend through the round frame circumscribing the picture. Although
such a disproportion is acceptable in an ex libris miniature, its awkwardness is obvious to
the viewer. The piper is arrested in his relaxed position in the small nature world around
him. As a result, his harmony with nature emphasizes his weakness and passivity which
are the conditions of preserving it.

168

Human weakness in the scenes of harmony with nature is an important motif in
the Russian images of the classical pastoral myth. The vision of the active role of natural
agencies and the passive role of people in this myth is probably indebted to
Merzhkovskii's essay ―O simvolizme Dafnisa i Khloi‖ [About the Symbolism of
'Daphnis and Chloe]. Both the essay and Merezhkovskii's translation of the Greek text
were responsible for the popularity of Longus pastoral novel during the era.

4.3.6 Nature's Agencies in the Control of People in Merezhkovskii's
Essay about Longus
One of Merezhkovskii's themes in the essay is the role of nature‘s agencies in the
life of the story protagonosts. Although Longus's text features completely safe and
―healthy‖ images of spring flowers and ripe fruits, Merezhkovskii's frame of reference is
clearly the Symbolist garden. In this moribund paradise which he compares to the
healthy landscape ideal of the fifth century BCE classics,
[I]nstead of icy splendor of mountain heights, instead of strengthening
thunderstorm breathing of Fate, there is only fragrance of dangerous poisoned
flowers and only seductive comfort and heat.‖

["Вместо ледяного блеска горных вершин, вместо грозового и
укрепляющего дыхания Рока - только благовоние опасных ядовитых цветов,
только обольстительная нега и зной." (Merezhkovskii 1973, p.208)]

In Merezhkovskii's interpretation, the characters could not sustain living in this
dangerous world without direct divine interventions,

169
They both [Daphnis and Chloe‖] cannot stand any sufferings and every touch of crude
life to their naked, helpless, and passionate souls is almost deadly. Had Nymphs, Pan
and Eros a little less cared about them, those too beautiful timid children were to die
unavoidably. (ibid., p.207)

[―Они оба не выносят никакого страдания, и каждое прикосновение грубой
жизни к их обнажѐнной, беззащитной и страстной душе почти смертельно.
Если бы Нимфы, Пан и Эрос немного меньше заботились о них, эти
слишком прекрасные робкие дети неминуемо должны бы погибнуть.‖]

As in Merezhkovskii, subliminal presence of nature agencies is one of the themes
in representing the images of the pastoral myth. It is present, for example, in Benois
recollection of the ―Orpheus's Grove,‖ in Somov's rococo painting ―In the Bosquet‖
which features an intriguing statue of a satyr playing pipes, and in Bakst's panel
―Elysium.‖ In ―Elysium,‖ this presence represents a charade as a gigantic sphinx is not
immediately recognizable in the picture at the background of greenery. In the picture, we
can see the whole world populated with the images of the classical myth and ritual - a
satyr or perhaps Pan playing pipes at the pedestal of a enormous marble vase, a river god
assaulting a girl, two young lovers, possibly Daphnis and Chloe, and the people gathering
by the temple. A part of the crowd raise their heads up and look at the green winged
sphinx, hidden among dense vegetation behind a cypress tree. The viewer's position is
above the sphinx which suggest that we look down through the eyes of another myth
creature, probably even more powerful, a motif familiar from Bakst's ―Drevnii uzhas‖
(―Pristine Fear‖).

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Figure 7: Konstantin Somov. The Stroller's Rest.

Perceiving nature as a presence and agency is especially important in Somov
throughout his artistic career. In his notebooks he writes about imaginary pictures he
envisioned before falling asleep, ―I could not fall asleep for a long time and thought about
… pictures, which in my imagination seemed beautiful to me.‖ (my translation; Somov
1979, p. ) In one them, based on a Longus theme, Pan is conceived as a presence
invisible to the characters,
The detail of the picture Daphnis, Chloe and Pan: Daphnis bended to Chloe, one
can see the back of his head, his chin, and mouth; she is half lying on his knees
Pan is near them en face but they don't see him ….‖ (ibid)

Besides this unrealized fantasy, some Somov's works can be interpreted as images
of the invisible presence of nature's agencies. For example, one of Somov's landscapes
represents a modernized vision of a pastoral scene. The painting ―The Stroller's Rest‖
(fig.7) shows a man and a dog resting on the grass in the clearing. The man's pose
suggest a motif of pastoral relaxation as he lies on the ground leaning against his bag. He

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man looks up in the pearl grey sky covered with a pattern of pink clouds. Although he
clearly enjoys being close to nature, his body exposes some tension and the gesture in
which he frees his collar reminds of suffocation. His head is thrown back which
emphasize the line of the neck. Whether consciously or not, Somov conveyed in this
pose, his neck open, his shoulders raised a little upwards and the bottom part of his torso
pressed down, sense of being open to an invisible pressure from above.
The bodies of sleeping Chloe and sleeping Daphnis in the illustrations for Longus
are similarly exposed to nature's influence. Chloe's pose (fig.8) is exactly identical to the
man's in ―The Stroller's Rest‖ except that in her sleep she is more relaxed. The butterfly-
net by him in the ground is replaced by her pipes. The vacant pipes, as in the ―Vignette‖
discussed above reinforce the meaning of passivity and the lack of symbolic control over
nature. Daphnis's sleeping in the Nymphs' Cave (fig.9) is defenseless in his sleep in
front of three Nymphs. The pose is canonized as that of Endymion, the lover of the
Moon who attends him in a sleep. The female domination figures rising over the sleeper
convey a strong sense of domination, mitigated, however, by the tender and fragile
features of the trio. The control and beneficial agency of the Nymphs are in balance. In
the true pastoral of the illustrations, along the lines of Merezhkovskii's essay, the
characters are safe and protected by nature's agencies. In Chloe's case this benign
agency is suggested by her sheep grazing nearby.

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Figure 8: Konstantin Somov. Illustration for ―Daphnis and Chloe.‖

Whereas the presence of nature's active agency turns integration with the nature into a
neurotic experience of anxiety, the image of the brotherhood with animals also suggests
a neurotic symbolism as it emphasizes the guilt for animal sacrifice. This theme is
distinct in Merezhkovskii's essay about ―Daphnis and Chloe‖ and its late echo, the novel
Tutankhamon na Krite [Tutankhamon in Crete, 1925] from the cycle Rozhdenie bogov
(―The Birth of Gods‖).

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Figure 9: Konstantin Somov. Illustration for ―Daphnis and Chloe.‖

4.4 The Theme of Brotherhood with Animals in the Fin de Siecle

4.4.1 Brotherhood with Animals in Merezhkovskii
As was pointed up above, Merezhkovskii's essay about Longus's novel and his
translation of it had a power of canonizing this text in the Russian fin de siecle.
Merezhkovskii's interpretation is set in the framework of what Olga Matich calls ―erotic

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utopia‖ of the fin de siecle. The symbolist constructions of utopian Eros, as Matich
points out, often contain in themselves a subversion of the sexual practices which are
taken for granted. The interest to this subversion underpins Merezhkovskii's
interpretation of the novel as he tends to read it in terms of gender utopia. In
Merezhkovskii's reading, the male character is androgynous: he is deprived of traits of
masculinity and is similar to his beloved in gender behavior. Merezhkovskii states:
Daphnis is a man only by the body but not by the soul (…) by the character, he is as girl
as Chloe. In his words, as well as in the whole novel, there not even one trait of
masculinity [muzhestvo] (Merezhkovskii's Italic; Merezhkovskii 1973, p. 207)
Merezhkovskii emphasizes traits of ―feminine‖ behavior in Daphnis: he is afraid of
danger, that he hides and runs away of; he ―cries, bursts in tears, as a girl, out of love,
gore, and joy;‖ (ibid.) out of exaltation of nerves, he ―almost faints‖ and can ―barely stand
still‖ (ibid.)
The complications and neurotic aspects of the decadent psyche are especially
obvious in the epiphany of the unity with animals in the finale of the essay. First
Merezhkovskii speaks about a ―return to nature from hypocrisy, lies and conventions of
culture.‖ (ibid., p. 220) His discourse echoes the still popular in this era tolstovstvo
(Tolstoyanism) as he laments that ―[t]he people of big cities, as they moved away from
nature, lose the eternal meaning of life.‖ (ibid., p. 219) This meaning can be re-obtained
through erotic passion which causes ―an eternal return of a human being to nature‖ (ibid.,
p. 220) Daphnis's and Chloe's unified with nature in their ―natural‖ life style and through
Eros absolutely integrated with it (―they are one with it‖ (ibid). This unity is

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characterized, in particular, by a common emotional rhythm and intimate emotional
connectivity with their animals,
Goats and sheep who the shepherd lovers take tender care of, who they are ready
to die for, take part in the poem's story not less than people. Goats and sheep skip
in excitement when Daphnis and Chloe are happy, stand still their heads down
and do not graze when they are sad; they listen to their music and as if
understand rational life. Here one can already feel a new brotherhood between

the man and the animal which receives such a great meaning in medieval legends.
(ibid., p.221)

In this passage Merezhkovskii emphasizes pastoral intimate sense of brotherly with
animals. However, he traces it back not to the classics but to the Christian era of Late
Antiquity. In the essay, Merezhkovskii insists that ―Daphnis and Chloe‖ was written by a
lover of all things classical at the court of Julian the Apostate
38
* where modern mind and
pagan awareness of the body existed in a synthesis. According to Merezhkovskii,
whereas pre-Christian eras are characterized by anthropocentrism; in Longus, ―ancient
biblical and ancient Greek pride which put the man beyond the world of animals to the
height as a lonely prince of nature and semi-god, is overcome.‖ (ibid., p. 221) It is
obvious, however, that the Christianity in these passages is a metaphor of modern fin de
siecle mind, and in the passage quoted above, for example, the Medieval Christian
outlook is further referred as ―the new excessive and sickly-exquisite sensibility
(boleznenno-utonchennaia chuvtvitel'nost'). (ibid) The basis of the new attitude to
animals in Merezhkovskii is an egalitarian revelation of the same nature with the
animals, echoing both Rousseau and Nietzsche, ―The man [in Longus] does not despise

38
according to Klement'eva, the essay about Longus should be considered a commentary to the novel
―Julian the Apostate‖; Klement'eva 2006, p. 77).

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the animal any more because he remembers that they both are children of the same
mother‖ (ibid).
Merezhkovskii freely projects the symbol of Christian paradise on the pastoral in
the finale of the essay as he writes that ―[i]n essence, Daphnis and Chloe, are new Adam
and Eve in the ancient, eternally virginal paradise of nature.‖ (ibid., p.219) The passage
continues with a statement of character‘s primordial innocence, ―They are as much
innocent and ignorant of the sin as out biblical ancestors‖ (ibid). However, earlier in the
essay, Merezhkovskii points out that innocence encloses sin insofar as the notion of sin
and temptation is inherent in Eros (ibid., p. 205). The decadent psyche, according to
Merezhkovskii, features a ―miraculous combination of vicious with chaste‖ (ibid).
Similarly, in Longus, ―a clumsy gracefulness of innocence, flexibility and fragility of too
thin and too delicate stems, which avidly stretch to the Sun; virginal thinness of almost
yet childish but already passionate body...‖ (ibid., p.209). In other words, the paradise
vision of harmony with nature is underlined with viciousness and sin, which makes the
ultimate embodiment of the paradise in the brotherhood with nature questionable and
ambiguous. As was pointed out earlier, Merzhkovskii returns to the themes of this essay
in Tutankhamon na Krite. In this novel the notion of guilt for animal sacrifice is explicit.
The theme of animal sacrifice in the novel is connected with both ancient religions
and the Christian context of ‗God's sacrifice‘. The mystic symbolism of the story is set
within a triangle of love and jealousy through the relationships of Eoiia (the newly
appointed main priestess of the Cretan Great Goddess) her female lover Dio (also the
Goddess's priestess), and the Babylonian merchant Tammuzadad (Thammuzadad who is

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in Merezhkovskii, a hypostasis of the dying god Thammuz. The cult of the Great
Goddess is connected to the cult of the god-bull, and the love relationships are
complemented with the symbolic marriage between the main priestess and the bull, which
is called an endearing and distinctly feminine name Penochka (―a little milk foam‖).
Tammuzadad (Tamu in the novel) arrives to Crete and falls in love with Dio, an
androgynous boy who he meets during a wild bull hunt. The bulls the Cretans catch in
nets for ritual games are described as ―...monstrously beautiful perventsy of creation‖ (p.
8). The theme of animal sacrifice starts at the very beginning as Tamu is attacked by a
wild boar, accidentally frightened by the hounds, and kills him.
Tamu who believes that the Great Priestess enchanted Dio into loving herself
through witchcraft, orders for her murder. The murderer poisons the sacred bull with a
drag that induces madness and the animal tears her to pieces when she is performing a
ritual dance with a bull. In revenge for the beloved, Dio kills the bull despite that she
understands that the animal is innocent. When she is imprisoned and awaits crucifixion,
Tamu saves her and gives himself for crucifixion instead of her while she is sent with his
friend Tutankhamon, a pharaoh to become, to Egypt. Both Dio and Tamu found the true
god through the tragedy of guilt, love, and redemption in self-sacrifice.
In this novel, the emotions of love and the intimate bond with animals created in
the framework of Christian symbolism are intertwined with the ancient myth. Before
murdering the bull, Dio envisions himself as a creature of ―Mother-earth,‖ which is ―the
home of beasts, birds and fish‖ (Merezhkovskii 2003, p. 144). As she blesses them with a
cross, the bull becomes ―not the cruel god Bull, Minotaur but a meek sacrificial Calf,

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immolated from the creation of the world, the Son‖ (ibid.). The hypostasis of the ancient
myth in the bull image is especially strong when Dio dances astride him ready to kill him.
At this point, he appears as the animal that carried Europe through the sea, ―beautiful, as
that divine bull that came out of the sea with the white foam of roaring billows, -
Pasiphae's lover‖ (ibid., p. 147).
In Merezhkovskii's novel, guilt for animal sacrifice is thought of in the context of
sexuality and Eros. As Eoiia impersonates the Goddess, identified as the Moon-Pasiphae,
she becomes the bride of the Sacred Bull. In order to consummate her marriage with the
bull, similarly to Pasiphae, she enters a wooden dummy of a cow (Chapter III Pazifaiia
[Pasiphae]). Inside the cypress-made dummy, which is compared with a coffin, she feels
a motherly tenderness and pity for the bull:
...Eoiia gazed through the little hole of the eye and saw the bull's muzzle so close
that it seemed that he breathed straight to her face. But she did not have fear and
did not laugh but only smiled: ―He is so big but smells milk like a little calf! Dear
little white, poor [baby]‖ (ibid., p. 64).

The sentiment is immediately accompanied by guilt for animal sacrifice and a mystic
revelation of God:
For some reason she remembered death look of stabbed sacrifices and a familiar
pain of irredeemable guilt and insatiable pity penetrated her heart; and together
with the pain, a quiet rapture as a quiet light of the All-Lighting [Goddess]: she
knew that the God is in the sacrifice. (ibid. )
In building the theme of pastoral brotherhood with animals, Merezhkovskii
touches upon neurotic experiences of sexuality and guilt in connections with the ancient
ritual. Other tensions embodied in the animal theme originate in both Nietzsche's
Dionysian religion and the entire myth of ―Twilight of the gods.‖ In these frameworks,

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the unity with nature is often understood as a common animal element in human nature,
impregnated with both eroticism and repulsion from its common violent and sexual
aspects.

4.4.2. Animal Nature and Animal Imagery in the Russian Fin de Siecle
Pastoral
The quintessential image of this theme is presented by Léon Bakst's drawing
―Vision of Antiquity‖ (1906). It shows two satyrs–an older satyr and a satyr boy–who
stand by the edge of the forest at the top of a wall or fortification, looking down at the
naked goddess running by the wall in an energetic flight. The goddess is a beauty of
elongated proportions and emphasized feminine forms. Although she is naked, her hair is
carefully styled and the body is ―dressed‖ in bracelets in the arms and right and a
designed belt around her waist. The satyrs look at her in amazement mixed with fear and
perplexity, which is probably inspired by the power of her supreme beauty. However,
what the satyrs cannot see is a small goat who follows her run along the wall. Its black
color and disheveled looks not only play off the goddess's marble-like skin and beauty but
also suggest her connection with the dark forces of animal nature.
The combination of Merezhkovskii inspired theme of the sacrifice combined with
other tensions about animal nature is a feature of the novel Satiressa [The Satyress, 1905-
1906] by Kondrat'ev. This novel is a direct reception of ―Daphnis and Chloe,‖ but
represents an inversion of this love story, an inversion that turns it into a bloodshed.
Kondrat'ev's interpretation of ―Daphnis and Chloe‖ story sacrifices the image of the

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pastoral peaceful world for the sake of Dionysian ecstatic sexuality and violence,
sufferings, distress and irrationality.
As was pointed out above, Kondrat'ev (1876-1967) was a student of Annenskii's at
St. Petersburg classical gymnasium #8, and Annenskii's influence is behind Kondrat'ev's
decision to break with the lawyer's career chosen for him by his parents, and to become a
man of letters. Similarly to his teacher and other representatives of the fin de siecle
―classical renaissance,‖ Kondrat'ev was interested in both classical antiquity and Russian
paganism.
Kondrat'ev was relatively well known in the St. Petersburg modernist circle and
extensively published in Vesy, Apollon, Pereval, Satiricon and other magazines. He was
close to Merezhkovskii and Zinaida Gippius, whose public image was rumored to inspire
some traits of the protagonist in The Satyress ( see Kondrat'ev, Alexander 1999). In late
1900s-early 1910s, besides The Satyress, he wrote poetry and prose on the material of
ancient Greek, Egyptian and Middle Eastern myths. The theme of pastoral gods and the
echoes of the classical pastoral play an important part both in The Satyress and in the
short-story collection ―Belyi Kozel‖ ([The White Goat]; 1908). Kondrat'ev also
translated into Russian ―The Songs of Bilitis‖ by Pierre Louÿs. As erotic frivolousness
and homosexuality are explicit themes throughout the entire collection, same themes are
present in Kondrat'ev's novel but they are invested with remorse, guilt, despair, and
violence and result in the inversion of the pastoral code.
The novel depicts fantastic and tragic incidents in the forest of the ―twilight of the
gods‖ inhabited by satyrs, nymphs, fauns and centaurs. Kondrat'ev's focus is on the

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ecstatic and violent aspects associated with pagan sexuality. In The Satyress, the pastoral
forest is a location of cruel and blood-spilling conflicts and destructive passions, rapes,
and abductions. The protagonists of the love story in The Satyress are a shepherd boy
Antem (from the Greek anthos - ―flower‖), a young naiad Nape, and a white Satyress
Aglaura, the daughter of Artemis and Pan.
The novel starts when Antem is seven years old and he meets Nape, and they fall
in love. Soon they part as the boy's mother prohibits him to make friends with a
―mermaid,‖ and the naid'd family leaves the river. Antem becomes a shepherd and makes
friends with a young satyr Gianes. Gianes introduces him to the life of semi-gods - satyrs
and nymphs - and their relationships are based on sex and violence: satyrs chase nymphs
and rape them, whereas nymphs, according to Gianes, only pretend they are reluctant to
the satyrs' love but secretly desire it. When Antem is 12 he wanders in the mountains in
search of a lost kid, and a mature nymph Likiska (Lykiske) abducts and seduces him. The
name of the nymph evokes the name of Longus's character Lycaenion (Likenion in
Russian transliteration; both names originating from the Greek lykos – wolf.) The details
of the episode echo the episode in the end of Longus's Book 3 where Lycaenion, a
frivolous married woman, decoys Daphnis in the depths of the forest pretending that she
lost a kid, and gives him a love lesson. However, Kondrat'ev makes this episode more
dramatic and controversial than it is presented in Longus. In Longus, Lycaenion offers to
teach Daphnis how to make sexual love and he willingly agrees since he hopes that it
helps his relationship with Chloe. In contrast to Longus's novel, the sexual lesson that
Likiska gives Antem is traumatic. This episode is viewed as Antem's symbolic downfall,

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which foreshadows the tragic denouement of his story. The new sexual knowledge
obtained from Likiska changes Antem's behavior and he joins Satyrs in their hunt for
sexual prey. Soon after this episode, he meets Nape and they fall in love again. While
their relationship first remains virgin, as in Longus's prototype, Antem becomes a subject
of ridicule of the forest community, and his friend Giannes tries to convince him that
Nape is secretly unhappy with Antem's lack of decisiveness. On the day Antem turns 13,
overwhelmed by humiliation and misled by these recommendations, he tries to rape Nape.
Aglaura, who has been long in love with the naiad, hears her cry and rushes to save her.
She strangles Antem to death, and cruelly tramples on his face with her hoofs. Although
Nape, who was unconscious throughout the fight, is frightened, she becomes the
Satyress's lover. The subject of the final part of the novel is Aglaura's tragic passion for
Nape. In the end, Nape is betrothed to a sea centaurus who, on the secret agreement with
her ―petit bourgeois‖ relatives, abducts her and takes her on his back through the sea, the
image clearly referring to Europe on the bull's back. Aglaura inconsolably mourns the
loss of the beloved, and Gianes follows her in attempts to revenge for his dead friend.
However, the revenge proves to be unfeasible since Gianes has long been in love with the
Satyress. In the finale, Aglaura runs at the gang of centaurs who violently beats and rapes
her to revenge her for murdering a centaur in the past; and she dies of injuries. Gianes
who arrives at her cry for help, finds the dead body. Gianes's last words in the novel state
that he ―won't go away from [his] proud beauty without taking from her the kisses which
[he] has been desiring for so long and with heart's torture,‖ (Here and further translations
from Kondrat'ev are mine; Kondrat'ev. The Satyress. 2003, p.396) and there follows a line

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of dots. This finale suggests that Gianes commits the final act of love and violence in the
story as he rapes the dead body.
The reader realizes that pastoral schema was deceptive and tragedy is the real
trigger of the plot when Antem tries to rape Nape. Similarly to the tragic myth, this rape
is a response to the preceding crime of Lykiska towards Antem. As the pastoral
relationship based on Longus is being deconstructed, Antem's violence and sexuality
which set him close to satyrs and other semi-animal creatures, cause a sequence of tragic
and indecent crimes.
Wound and injury in Kondrat'ev are recurrent motifs emphasizing the connection
between sexuality and deadly violence. They occur in the climatic scene where Aglaura
tramples on Antem's face, in the scene where Aglaura kills another satyress Pirsotrikha,
who tries to abduct Nape, and in the finale scene of Aglaura's rape and murder.
Simultaneously, the injured body is also a representative state of animal nature and the
body's vulnerability is common for the animals, mythic creatures and people. The kinship
between anthropomorphic creatures and animals through the body that can be injured is
especially distinct in the short-story ―The White Goat‖ connected to ―The Satyress‖ as a
prequel. The story that explains Aglaura's ancestry is created along the lines of the myths
about divine lovers in animal disguise.
In the story, Pan conceives of a practical joke to revenge Artemis for killing wild
animals and for boasting her chastity. When she falls asleep in the forest after elk hunt,
he sends her a nightmare. She dreams a terrifying monster that simultaneously resembles
a bull, a snake, and a human. As the monster is about to kill her, there appears a white

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goat who bumps the monster with his horns and saves her life. After she wakes up in
horror, she sees a white goat, who is, as reader understands, Pan in disguise inviting him
to lie by her side just in case the dream comes true. When she falls asleep again she
dreams that she marries a goat-legged satyr who rapes her. As she wakes up, she realizes
that the dream took place in reality whereas Pan spreads the rumor about his joke among
the gods.
In the story's opening scene, Artemis hunts an elk, and kills it with her spear. The
image of the elk's murder emphasizes the wound which, given the distinct sexual
symbolism of this murder, has a transparent interpretation as the image of rape,
The spear which did not know how to miss the target passed by it [elk] with a
whistle, and the beast fell on his knees. The dogs pushed it down, and the Purple
blood flowing from the wound dyed their ferocious muzzles (Kondrat'ev. ―Belyi
kozel. 2003, p. 397).
The similarity between Artemis and the animal is articulate as, ―covered with a
cold sweat, pale, with loosened hair‖ (ibid., p. 402) upon waking up, she immediately
sees the dead elk: ―the corpse of the killed elk motionlessly froze in a dozen of steps.
Bathed in the bright rays of the Sun, the swarms of golden flies were already ringing over
it‖ (ibid). The comparison with the elk's corpse that is motionlessly frozen continues
further: when Artemis becomes aware of the reality of the incident she freezes and
becomes ―motionless like a statue.‖ (ibid., p. 402)
Besides the drives, challenges, and effects of animal body, Kondrat'ev approaches
the genuine pastoral content in depicting actual pastoral animals, their behavior, and the
people's relationship with them, as for example, the goats' love for music or the play of
kids in ―The Satyress‖:

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―Charopus was a good player of the nine-stall, skillfully framed into yellow copper reed-
pipes; and the boy has been amazed for a long time at how the keen she-goats listen to the
melodic sounds. They were even able to understand what the shepherd wanted, and
gathered into heap, or laid down, or fiercely ran at his call, as if escaped from an invisible
peril. And one of them could even dance‖ (Kondrat'ev. ―The Satyress‖ 2003, 314-315).
Most of all, Tem [Antem] liked little white, yellow and brown kids. It was a gay,
sportive and fervent tribe. They were small, and since they did not have horns
yet, they butted each other all the time and bumped their foreheads. (ibid. p. 315).

The settings and action of this scene are different in theme and mood from the rest of the
novel. The descriptions of the goats, kids and dogs sporting in the pastoral meadow
evoke not the ―twilight of the gods‖ context, but that of the genuine classical pastoral of
shepherds.

4.5 The pastoral and Life-Creationist Myths
As was discussed in the Chapter 3, the essential pastoral theme of the shepherds
peaceful life and bonds with their herds is foreign to the Russian pastoral, whose settings
are associated with aristocratic park and free of animal presence. As a result, in the
Russian context, the introduction of the theme of the shepherd's life routine is
impregnated with a sense of psychological and ideological. This inversion has a meaning
of a political utopia as the introduction of the shepherds in the aristocratic space entails
democratic and anti-hierarchical symbolism. This motif, peaceful on the surface, is
endowed with a utopian energy, and harbors conflicts and contradictions. The life-

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creationist myths of the fin de siecle feature psychological unrest and interest in the
subversion of codes.
The following two sections of my dissertation discuss the role of the pastoral
themes in constructing personal-life creationist myths in which the transgression of
ideological and social stereotypes is visible. I focus on Somov, a prolific author of the
pastoral, not only in art but also in the biographical myth. Within his artistic career,
Somov performs a transformation of the traditional pastoral space associated with
aristocratic park and mansion, and constructs the aesthetics of rural environment
populated with animals.

4.5.1.Somov and Pastoral Animals
Somov's watercolor ―Peizazh s radugoi‖ (A Landscape with a Rainbow 1915), in
which the use of the animal imagery is emphatic, can illustrate the transgression the
aristocratic space in the pastoral. The watercolor presents a view of the country-side in
the rain and juxtaposes two spaces separated by the ivy decorated fence: the actual garden
and the meadow with two lying cows. The garden is a designed park with the paths of
orange gravel and two beds of flowers of colorful and contrasting shades. One flower
bed is planted with light orange to intense orange flowers, and the other is planted with
the flowers of dark pink and purple colors. A woman and a girl dressed in the cold
shades of light pink, light yellow and light purple enter the garden. Both the exquisite
colors and the style of their attires–elegant and sophisticated–emphasize aristocratic

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presence. The two cows
39
in the meadow, one lying and one standing, can be seen
through the opening of the fence. Their full, massive bodies create a contrast to the
elegance of the women in the park.
The slightly ironic parallelism between two elegant female images and two
animals probably indebted to Heine's ―Vignette‖ which was published in the World of Art
(##21-22 1899). Heine's ―Vignette‖juxtaposes two smartly dressed ladies, helpless in the
new to them environment, and a bull who they try to lead by a rope.
Somov's image also has a direct reference to Denis's ―Sacred Grove‖ (1897)
discussed above. In Denis, not immediately recognizable against the background trees,
there are two immobile animals–two deers or possibly cows. One stands another lies on
the ground. The animal figures are arrested in their stillness and eliminated from the
common rhythm of everything else. Somov's painting repeats Denis in the juxtaposition
of women and animals in visibly separated spaces, and in the poses of the animals.
However, whereas in Denis', the animals hidden in the back look unnatural in their
stillness; in Somov, they are vivid and relaxed. Shiny in the sunlight which lights their
skins, they are probably suggestive of the beauty of a sacrificial animal and make the
center of the picture.
The garden space and the space of the animal pastoral in this Somov's watercolor
are transparent to each other. The garden fence represents a light screen typical for
Somov's garden scenes, with vertical strings supporting the twining plants. It organizes
the spaces within the garden rather than establishes its border. The garden's orange gravel

39
According to Evgenii Mikhailov, Somov's nephew, the artist considered drawing animals a difficult task,
and he often repeated an old successful sketch of a lying cow. (Mikhailov 1979, p. 502). Both cow images
in this painting can be also found in Somov's ―Letnee utro‖ (Summer Morning 1920s) at the background.

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continues beyond the fence into the meadow, and as a result, there is no distinct
separation of the meadow from the garden. Simultaneously, the position of the two
female figures emphasizes the connection of spaces. They are shown entering the garden
from outside of the fence. As a result the aristocratic territory of the garden is open to the
democratic space of the meadow. Simultaneously, the presentation of the two cows in the
close vicinity of the elegant and urban garden emphatically violates the aristocratic space
of the Russian idyll.
Somov's interest in creating a true pastoral space, an image of harmony with the
animal world, is probably inspired by his fascination with the Barbizon artists, especially
with Millet. Benois lists the Barbizon and Millet in particular, among major artistic
authorities of young Somov (Somov 1979, p. 482). Somov's love for this school is also
witnessed by his letters and notebooks. Somov's biographical materials evidence his
inclination to look for the experience of patriarchal country-side, similar to Barbizon in
the real life.
When Somov moves to France and settles with Mefodii Lukianov at a small farm
in the village of Grandvilliers in 2½ hours from Paris, he is especially interested in the
French patriarchal country-side, and it might have inspired the associations with the
Barbizon arists and their pastoral themes. The association with the pastoral appears in
Somov's letters as he describes the place as an idyllic corner with charming nature and
patriarchal life-styles. Naïve emotions appear in mentioning the animals that he calls an
endearing diminutive ―zverushki‖ (―dear little animals‖): ―Mnogo sluzhebnykh postroek,
raznykh saraev dlia zverushek.‖ [There is a lot of subsidiary constructions, various barns

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for the animals.] He describes how he grazes a she-goat and a kid (ibid., p. 279), and the
importance of the animal‘s presence as companions is felt later when in three years
Somov and Luk'ainov move to Paris and sell the animals. Somov writes half playfully
and half seriously: ―Vse kazhetsia zapushchennym i grustnym iz-za otsutstviia zverei.
Sidia na nizen'kom stul'chike okolo doma, ia napominaiu kartinu 'vse v proshlom'‖ (ibid.,
p. 335) [Everything looks … because of the absence of animals. Sitting on a low little
chair by the house, I resemble a picture: ―all is in the past.‖].
The Grandvilliers experience with animals has a direct connection to Somov's
pastoral. In 1931 Somov painted a watercolor on the themes of his illustrations to
Daphnis and Chloe. The prototypes of the animals on this work are the goats from the
Grandvilliers farm:
I made a small fantasy on the subject of Daphnes and Cloe, without their
participation. A Greek landscape (...) in the morning: away from the sea with a
barely apparent horizon (...). The earth is descending down the hill, and in the
height, in the foreground, among a few trees, we can see three tiny figures of
naked shepherds. One of them plays a reed-pipe, another lies down, leaning at the
first one‘s back, and the third one is playing with a baby goat on his knees. There
is a herd near them, twelve goats in various positions and two baby goats are
butting each other, (like I saw baby goats do when we had live goats living in
Grandvillier). There are also two figures, the one in the foreground being a puppy.
Everything here is sunny and maybe a little cheesy, but I think it‘s okay, because
it‘s Greece. (Letter to A.A.Mikhailova; March 10th 1931, Somov 1979).

[Я cделал маленькую фантазию на тему Дафниса и Хлои без их участия.
Греческии пейзаж (...) утром: вдали море с едва заметным горизонтом (…)
Земля от зрителя идет вниз, а на высоте уже на первом плане cреди
немногих деревьев, на траве, три малюсенькие фигуки пастухов,
обнаженных. Один играет на свирели, другой лежит раскарякой,
облокотившись на спину первого, а третий играет у себя на коленях с
козленком. Около них стадо - 12 коз в разных позах и два козленка
бодаются лбами ( как это я видел,когда у нас в Гранвилье жили живые
козлики). Тут же две ―зубачки,‖ из которых одна щенок, на первом плане.

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Солнечно все и немного слащаво, но я думаю это ничего, так как
это Греция (…).]

This description renders the same naïve love for animals as in the description of the farm.
Besides a direct reference to the Grandvillier animals, the use of endearing diminutives
typical for Russian pastoral, bridges the watercolor with Somov's account of the farm
quoted above. The watercolor is noticeably influenced by Millet's painting ―Daphnis and
Chloe‖. In particular, the composition of the right-hand side of the painting seems to be
based on Millet, i.e. the sitting boy with a little animal on his lap corresponds to sitting
Daphnis; a basket at the foreground is placed where the straw hat with yellow flowers is
located in Millet's painting; the sea in both images is shown at the same angle to the
respective sitting boy; and the both images show goats in left-hand part of the image.
However, in contrast to Millet's balanced image of being with nature through harmony
and aggression, Somov's image is emphatically utopian in that it has no conflict. The
watercolor reflects a utopian pastoral paradigm in the most clear view: it is set in
Mediterranean environments, and represents pastoral music and pastoral game. Somov's
remark about that the image is ―a little cheesy‖ but it might be okay because the image
represents Greece, which probably reflects his awareness of the utopia creating.
Nevertheless, the conflict is subliminally enclosed in the two inversions inherent in this
work: in the theme of the people's bond with the animals per se and representing
homosexual aesthetics. Somov's pastoral utopia in this example is set in the homoerotic
experience and aesthetics. The tactile contact between the boys and between the boys and

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kids, as well as the kids' butting all make the homoerotic element in this work articulate,
and the attraction between the boys and their bond with the animals echo each other.
The connection between Somov's creation of the pastoral and his thinking of
homosexuality and its aesthetics is especially distinct in his work on the illustrations for
―Daphnis and Chloe.‖

4.5.2. Daphnis and Somov
In 1929 Somov was commissioned by the Trianon Publishing House (Letter to A.
Mikhailova, December 16, 1929, Somov 1979) to produce a set of illustrations for a book
of his choice. He proposed Daphnis and Chloe, which had long been on his mind,
possibly not without a sense of competition with Bakst, who had designed the Daphnis
and Chloe sets and costumes for the Ballets Russes production of 1912. By turning to
Longus‘s Daphnis and Chloe Somov was joining in on the tradition of luxury editions of
this book, quite popular throughout the twentieth century. Pierre Bonnard was asked to
produce illustrations by the publisher Francois Vollard for a 1902 edition; Aristide
Maillol created illustrations for the Cranach Press edition in London in 1937; and Marc
Chagall‘s illustrations were published in a 1961 French edition by Tériade (Stratis
Eleftheriades). In contrast to the common twentieth-century tendency to illustrate Longus
in an experimental manner detached from its classical context. Somov‘s illustrations do
not aim either to modernize the historical settings or to place the scenes in a different
geography. Although Somov‘s artistic manner is modernist, he follows classical art in the
proportions of the human figures he depicts, in contrast to all three of the illustrators

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mentioned above. On the other hand, while Somov probably remained within framework
of the story more than any other illustrator, he nevertheless reinterpreted the story in the
framework of his life creationist approach and hence projected his living human model
onto Daphnis.
Somov's previous work in the area of illustration was a luxury edition of Manon
Lescaut, also for Trianon, which was ordered through Benois, who also worked for
Trianon. Constrained by time, he worked without a model. The lack of a model made the
work less engaging and less serious in Somov's eyes:
I think I can get free from my work only by the 1
st
of October and this is if I work
about 12 or 10 hours daily. It‘s too boring. The work could have been engaging if
I worked free of deadline, and, most importantly, if I was up to the mark. But I
can‘t do that. I draw out of the […]. Had I had more time, it would have been
possible to find some Manon in reality, and a De Grieux as well, to make
drawings from them in various poses, etc. Would be better. But I am so
unenterprising and so slow! (Somov 1979)

[Я думаю освободиться от своей работы только к 1-му октября и то при
работе часов 12 или 10 в день. Это очень скучно. Работа могла бы быть
увлекательной, если бы был неопределенный срок и, главное, если бы я был
на высоте. Но это для меня недостижимо. Делаю отсебятину. […] Было бы
больше времени, можно было бы найти какую-нибудь Манон в жизни, тоже
и Де Грие, сделать с них рисунки в разных позах и т.д. Было бы лучше. Но я
такой непредприимчивый и такой медленный!]

The case of his Daphnis and Chloe illustrations, on which he worked with a model,
demonstrates that having a model not only gave the artist the advantage of
choreographing and staging the story, but also engendered a similarity between his
approach to illustration and to portraiture. Somov‘s relationship with his model was
important for his interpretation of the character and for the aesthetics of the work.

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Somov started his work on the illustrations by hiring a model, a young boxer
named Boris Snezhkovskii, in whose body and features he saw the baroque-like ideal of
eroticised beauty which he sought in the male rather than the female body. In accordance
with this aesthetic focus, the whole story in the illustrations is bound to Daphnis and not
to the couple, as it is in the other illustrations of Longus. Somov complemented the novel
with a new storyline, developed around Daphnis‘s sexuality and transition to adulthood.
In basing his vision on Snezhkovskii, Somov unfolds the story from Daphnis‘s point of
view and complements it with a psychological reading of the young man‘s complicated
sexual attachments. The presentation of Snezhkovskii in the illustrations provides an
insight into the aesthetic and emotional spectrum of Somov‘s vision of the pastoral.
The creation of this second narrative belonging only to Daphnis himself has an
emblematic analogy in Somov‘s shift to using a specific notation when referring to
Snezhkovskii in his notebooks. Somov never refers to Snezhkovskii by his first or last
name. He starts out by using the abbreviation ДиХ
40
(D&Ch for Daphnis and Chloe).
Somov describes Snezhkovskii‘s appearance in a diary entry on the day when he
first meets him:
He is a young, nineteen-year-old, very fresh and rosy. First, he seemed to me a
mug?? [meaning: too simple, not elegant] but when he took off his glasses his face
became very attractive – dark-blue eyes with long eyelashes, dark beautifully
delineated eyebrows, beautiful straight nose, and bright-red plump mouth. He is
dark blond. And when he undressed I saw his magnificent constitution and
proportions, something like Michelangelo's David or the young Hercules. He is all
very seductive….His name is ДиХ [DiCh for Daphnis and Chloe; might be also
BiS for his initials]. He is very talkative, even too much for my concentrated
work, and we talked a lot…[unreadable] he is very smart, nice and well-bred. He‘s
read a lot, and is very interested in literature. We talked about the beauty of the

40
there is a possibility that it could be read as БиС (B&S), and in this case the letters stand for Boris
Snezhkobvskii; Somov‘s handwriting is quite difficult to read], but soon switches to Д (D for Daphnis).

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human body, and he agrees with me that the male body is more beautiful and more
slender than the female body. For my order from Trianon he will be useful for me
although he is not at all like Longus‘s Daphnis.

[Молодой 19-летний, очень свежий, розовый. Сначала он показался мне
мордальоном, но когда он снял очки, лицо его стало очень привлекательным
– темно-голубые глаза с длинными темными ресницами, темные красиво
очерченные брови, красивый прямой нос, ярко-красный пухлый рот. Он
темный блондин. Когда же он разделся, я увидел великолепное его сложение
и пропорции – нечто вроде Давида Микельанджело или молодого Геркулеса.
Весь он очень соблазнительный. (...)
Зовут его Д.И.Х. [? БиС] Очень cловоохотлив, даже слишком для
сосредоточенной моей работы, и мы разговаривали много. (? unreadable) он
умный, славный и воспитанный. Он много читал, и очень интересуется
литературой. Говорили и о красоте человеческого тела, и он со мной
согласен, что мужское гораздо красивее и стойнее тела женского.(...)
Для заказа мне от (? Трианона) он будет очень полезен, хотя он совершенно
не похож на Лонгусовского Дафниса. (ОР ГРМ, Ф 133, ед.х. 451; December
10 1929)]

This entry encloses the entire Daphnis and Chloe project in a compressed form.
Somov's artististic preference for the male body as the ideal of beauty is seen in his
choice of a model with an attractive face and a classical body and with, in his eyes, a
baroque emphasis on sexual appeal. The model is also intellectually and culturally
acceptable, interested in literature, and shares the same aesthetic perspective on art and
the body which he, in his own body, represents. This ideal image outweighs the
incongruence with the original, and Somov anticipates that the young model can be very
helpful in his work on the illustrations for Daphnis and Chloe. It is possible to surmise
that Somov‘s vision of Longus‘s Daphnis was shaped by Merezhkovskii‘s essay which,
as was pointed out above, had a strong impact on his generation and inspired artistic
responses. Snezhkovskii‘s athletic looks were the opposite of Merezhkovskii‘s
presentation of Daphnis as an emasculated child. Snezhkovskii playing the role of

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Daphnis represents a polar contrast to Merezhkovskii‘s Daphnis, but Snezhkovskii‘s body
helps Somov to introduce his own vision of pastoralism (as shaped in his landscapes) into
a Merezhkovskii-biased paradigm of the pastoral. Working with Snezhkovskii, Somov
moved away from Merezhkovskii‘s reading and created the Daphnis theme in a different
way. Of course, in some of the illustrations he tries to de-emphasize his muscles and to
make him look younger, but not in all of the illustrations. For example, in the last
illustration representing the wedding night, the athletic anatomy of the character is
distinctly on show.
Somov seems to have followed Merezhkovskii‘s lead in representing Chloe, both
in his depiction of her thinness and snow-white skin as an image of coldness, while
simultaneously emphasizing her sensuality. The combination of the two may be a
transparent way to represent, in her, the ―spiritual temptation‖ about which
Merezhkovskii muses.
Besides being influenced by Merezhkovskii in his illustrations, Somov was also
influenced by the academic style illustrations of Collin (French editions of 1890 and
1895). Thus, the characters‘ poses and the composition of the illustration in which
Daphnis stands by the tree playing the flute and Chloe [as discussed above, published in
Podkopaeva but not in the book, Fig.6], standing by his side, reclines her head on his
shoulder, is similar to Collin‘s illustration of the couple standing near the tree (Fig.10).
The settings, in particular the design of the bed, and partly the composition of the
wedding night scene [Fig.11, 12] in both Somov and Collin resemble each other. Chloe‘s
fur tunic also seems to be borrowed from Collin, where Daphnis is shown in a tunic of

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this kind. As in Somov, Collin‘s illustrations are portraits of the characters in various
poses and landscapes. A comparison with Collin can underline Somov‘s specific
qualities. The bodies in Collin‘s academic illustrations are classically and erotically
attractive, but it is the female body that is shown naked and exposed to the viewer,
whereas Daphnis wears a tunic in the majority of the illustrations. These roles are
reversed in Somov, where it is Daphnis‘s body that is exposed.

Figure: 10. Raphael Collin. Illustration for Daphnsi and Chloe‖

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Figure 11: Raphael Collin. Illustration for ―Daphnis and Chloe‖

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Figure 12: Konstantin Somov. Illustration for ―Daphnsi and Chloe‖

Somov shapes the Daphnis theme as a portrayal of an erotic and vital figure in an
embellished and sunny landscape. His image of nature is in sharp contrast to
Merezhkovskii‘s vision of a twilight landscape ―lit by the soft light of the evening Sun,
fanned by the pre-mortal fragrance of the Autumn flowers‖ (Merezhkovskii 2003, p. ).
Somov‘s midday landscapes are, on the contrary, full of sunlight and warmth.

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In his illustrations Somov creates a pastoral image not only through
Snezhkovskii‘s looks but also through his personality. During their frequent sessions,
Snezhkovskii spoke a great deal with Somov; an especially frequent theme were his love
affairs, his endless problems with women and his lack of money. He had a tense
relationship with his very authoritarian father and controlling mother, with whom he was
then living. His father was cold, humiliated him and was opposed to the idea of
supporting his son financially, whereas Boris, as a boxer, did not have a stable income. It
was, in particular, his father who sought a model‘s job for his son, and it turned out to be
a symbolic act since Somov soon became a father figure for Snezhkovskii. Somov was
closely involved in Boris‘s life, met his parents, and tried to allay his tensions with them.
On one occasion he even gave Boris his old tuxedo and offered to pay for alterations to it
in order to facilitate Boris's introduction into society. In his turn, the young boxer
considered the artist‘s opinions and tastes the most valuable and authoritative. In his
notebooks, Somov records the words of Snezhkovskii‘s mother, whom he ―consoled‖ as
she complained about her son: ―She told me that now, as far as D. is concerned, I am the
only authority, that [the words] ‗Somov said,‘ - is everything‖ (ibid., June 15 1930).
Those who met Snezhkovskii in his later years acknowledge that Somov was a lifelong
authority for him and had an immeasurable influence on him. Somov tried to improve
Snezhkovskii‘s artistic and literary tastes, showed him his works and the works of other
artists, read with him and went to the cinema with him, advised him in his relationships
and tried to introduce Snezhkovskii to his friends. This endeavor on Somov‘s part was not
simply an effort to be kind to his protégé: he sincerely wanted to educate him. At one

200
point Somov recounts an episode with Snezhkovskii, when he criticized a short story
Snezhkovskii was writing:
He read me the beginning of his short story. [Written] poorly. I started to criticize
it, his language and everything about it (?). He probably does not have any talent
for prose at all. I voiced my opinion in a very mild manner. (ibid., April 16, 1930)

Nevertheless, Somov did not try to bring homosexuality into their personal
relationship. For Boris‘s parents he played the role of an older friend, and he invited
them to his studio to see Snezhkovskii‘s portrait, which he completed after he had
finished the illustrations in August 1930; for Snezhkovskii's girlfriends he took the role of
the celebrity patron; and for Daphnis himself he chose the role of no more than a close
friend and mentor. Somov considered this limited role a silent agreement between him
and his younger friend. For example, he mentions a party where he and Snezhkovskii ran
into some of his acquaintances, and how he and Snezhkovskii might have been taken by
them to be a homosexual couple: ―Samoilenki approached me. I introduced them to D.
What did they think – this is likely to start rumors. D. and I laughed about it‖ (ibid.,
November 4, 1930). But in fact Somov and Snezhkovskii‘s relationship was interpreted
variously, and rumors of their romance long outlived Somov. As far as Somov's closest
circle is concerned, Luk‘ianov believed in this romance and was jealous of Somov, as
Somov often mentions with bitterness but not without humor in his notebooks:
Around 4 D. arrived unexpectedly for a sitting session….He talked a lot about
philosophy – about Kant, Leibniz, Descartes, Spinoza, Plato, Aristotle, Condillac,
Schopenhauer, and Einstein (?). Some of them he looked up in my Petit Larousse.
He talked in a muddled way and, for me, it was rather boring….I inserted words
here and there with indifference…because I do not have any clear idea about
philosophy. Since D. totally lacks a sense of time he stayed until after nine
o‘clock. After he left Mef. [Lukianov] made a big scene. He started to scold D.,
said that I was an old fool to converse with such an idiot, that he would throw him

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out of house. He got so infuriated that when I started to respond he rushed at me
and beat me quite painfully with his fists. (ibid., December 17, 1929)

Regardless of what the reality was, in the notebook‘s narrative his relationship
with Snezhkovskii during the work on the illustrations comes across as a collaboration
and at times a romance, at least on Somov‘s part. The prototype of these two dimensions
can be found in the literary treatment of Greek homosexuality. In particular, a relationship
between an older and wiser man and his young disciple in Plato‘s dialogs is the main
source of this theme. Somov‘s work on the illustrations coincides with his reading of a
biography of Alcibiades, who is famous not only for his political role but also for being
Socrates‘ beloved and admirer.
In a notebook entry from August 2, 1930, Somov writes that he has read The Life
of Alcibiades. The title in this entry is in English, which might refer to an English
translation of one of the extant lives (by Plutarch or Cornelius Nepos), but since Somov
lived in France and was much more proficient in French, one might surmise that he read a
book in English entitled The Life of Alcibiades (and not a translation of Plutarch or
Nepos – which he would have preferred to read in French). This book might very well be
the one by E. F. Benson, which was published in London in 1928 by Ernest Benn.
In Benson‘s Life of Alcibiades Greek homosexuality is a significant topic and is
discussed in connection with Alcibiades‘ relationship with Socrates. Benson aims at
―dissipat[ing] the erroneous view of Athenian love which is current‖ (Benson 1928, 60),
and tries to refute negative stereotypes through an excursus into cultural history and

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psychology (without acknowledging, however, homosexuality to be a norm in modern
times).
After the passage on The Life of Alcibiades there are five lines in the notebooks
written in code and crossed out (most likely, later). Clearly Somov used the code when
confidential issues – both his own or other people‘s – were at stake, since most likely he
was concerned that other people might have access to his notebooks. On the other hand,
the entries crossed out in the notebooks most likely concern his thoughts on sexuality,
which his heirs might find compromising. On these grounds, one can assume that these
five lines contain Somov‘s reactions to the topic of homosexuality as it was treated in
book he had just read. For example, he might agree with the following statement, ―as
psychologists have shown, both boys and girls usually manifest their first strong affection
towards one of their own sex‖ (ibid., 61), or react in some way to Benson‘s tendency to
view only Greek but not modern homosexuality as a norm. These lines might also refer to
Snezhkovskii, since the conversation with him is recorded in the same day‘s entry.
Without knowing the contents of these five lines, it is still possible to use them as
evidence of Somov‘s interest in the classical, and very likely, Platonic context of
homosexuality.
I argue that homosexuality is an important context for viewing the pastoral in
Somov, and that in the Daphnis and Chloe illustrations he consciously establishes a
homosexual aesthetic, which is marginalized in modern culture but was fully embraced in
classical art. The illustrations establish this link: although Somov considered his own
homosexuality to be perfectly acceptable according to the ideas of the Silver Age, many

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of his friends marginalized it – even those who claimed to accept it. Thus, for example,
although Benois emphasizes his own tolerance every time he mentions Somov‘s
homosexuality in his memoirs, he addresses it as a reprehensible and pernicious passion
or behavior, and sometimes speaks about it as the result of someone else‘s bad influence
(for example, Nuvel‘s). In Somov‘s illustrations, conventional sexuality becomes a
standing for of homosexuality. In approaching the pastoral in this way, Somov resembles
Marcel Proust, one of the authors he read while in France and deeply admired. An
analogy can be drawn between Proust‘s presentation of female characters in In Search of
Lost Time, whose ―male‖ names (Gilberte, Andrée and Albertine) point to relationships
with men, and Somov‘s similar use of a heterosexual framework. Somov places his
model, who in real life symbolizes a homosexual aesthetic for him, into scenes of one of
the master texts of heterosexual eroticism. In the framework of the novel, Somov shows
Daphnis as an erotic object of another kind.
Somov‘s vision of pastoral aesthetics, with its inclusion of the theme of
homosexuality, lays bare common ground with André Gide‘s work Corydon. Indeed,
Somov‘s notebooks from the period in which he was working on his illustrations suggest
that Gide‘s text directly influenced Somov‘s constructing of the pastoral.
Titled Corydon in reference to Virgil‘s Eclogue 2 about the love of the shepherd
Corydon for a beautiful boy Alexis, Gide‘s four Platonic dialogs present an argument
against the social and moral stigmatizing of homosexuality. Corydon, a man who does not
conceal his homosexual identity, argues against the narrator‘s position that homosexuality
is ―contra naturam.‖ The narrator represents the voice of society‘s rejection of

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homosexuality and appeals to stereotypes which label homosexuality as the abomination
of an individual psyche and a deviation from nature, destructive towards social order and
morals. Trying to refute this point of view, Corydon, a medical doctor by profession,
draws on data from zoology, evolution and physiology, on the one hand, as well as
appealing, on the other hand, to the authority of classical (mostly Greek) authors. He uses
their historical evidence and literary texts to prove the second part of his argument, that
homosexuality does not represent a threat to culture but, on the contrary, lies at its very
foundation – both in the sphere of art and in the sphere of morals. Drawing on historical
syllogisms and literary interpretations, Corydon points out that, in biological terms,
sexual desire and reproduction are separated by nature, whereas homosexual desire is a
natural norm. In fact, he takes his interpretation of zoological data to a more polarized
conclusion by stating that only homosexual desire is a natural desire for pleasure, whereas
heterosexual desire is a deception whose real evolutionary goal is reproduction. In
humans, he argues, love is not bound to gender and free of desire, whereas desire is
naturally homosexual.
As in this context Corydon draws on Goethe‘s reported opinion on ―pederasty as a
very naïve and spontaneous instinct‖ (ibid., 93), the discussion arrives at the classical
pastoral. Corydon‘s opponent makes a sarcastic remark that Goethe's opinion ―will
doubtless provide an excuse for the fact that the inspiration for Greek and Latin bucolic
poetry is so often homosexual – didn‘t such poetry claim to revive the naïve behavior of
Arcady?‖ (ibid). Corydon accepts it in pointing out that ―bucolic poetry began being
artificial the day the poet stopped being in love with the shepherd‖ (ibid).

205
The close identification of homosexuality with the pastoral is no accident in a
work whose eponymous protagonist‘s name, as well as the name Alexis, the youth who
commits suicide after being rejected by Corydon, come from Virgil‘s Eclogue 2. Corydon
has found it unacceptable to return Alexis‘s love, which suggests to the boy the erroneous
idea that his love for Corydon is against nature. This story belongs to the period in
Corydon‘s life when he did not admit his homosexuality and planned to marry Alexis‘s
sister. The predicament of Corydon and Alexis in Gide thus reverses the situation in
Virgil‘s eclogue, where it is Alexis who rejects Corydon, but Corydon who eventually
claims that he will find another Alexis. The contrast between the two stories emphasizes
that the ―naïve‖ and not artificial version (in Virgil) is based on homosexuality, whereas
the rejection of homosexuality transforms a pastoral story into a tragedy.
In Gide‘s interpretation, Daphnis and Chloe is a naïve pastoral whose story also
deals with homosexuality, although indirectly. As the discussion of homosexuality
continues, Corydon makes a transparent reference to Longus‘s novel,
The more deeply a man is in love, the more awkward he will be as a lover; yes,
the more closely his desire is accompanied by genuine love; yes, as soon as his
desire is not exclusively selfish, he will be afraid of hurting the being he loves.
And so long as he is not taught by some example, perhaps that of animals or
perhaps by some lesson or preliminary initiation, perhaps, ultimately by the
beloved herself (ibid., 94).

The narrator objects that ―the lover‘s desire‖ will find ―a sufficient compliment in
the reciprocal desire of the beloved‖ (ibid.). Corydon answers: ―I‘m no more convinced
of that than Longus was. Remember all of Daphnis‘s hesitations and mistakes? Doesn‘t
this great clumsy lover need a courtesan to instruct him?‖ (ibid.). Corydon calls the novel

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―an exemplary natural history‖ (ibid., 95), and considers it to be a ―simple commentary
on Goethe‘s words‖ (ibid.).
Gide‘s argument for the genderless nature of sexual desire closely approaches the
Freudian (which Gide became familiar with only in 1921 after the publication of full
Corydon) On the other hand, he not only denies the desire for the female sex as a priority
and norm, but eventually presents it as somehow an abnormal desire, since according to
him, heterosexual sex is an evolutionary requirement. He makes the misogynist point that
women‘s duty is to reproduce, and that all the distractions of culture as well as
unreproductive heterosexual sex are destructive to society:
The shameless stimulation of our popular imagery, theaters, music halls, and a
host of publications serves only to lure woman away from her duties; to make her
into a perpetual mistress, who no longer consents to maternity. I tell you that this
is quite as dangerous for the state as the very excess of the other kind of

debauchery – and that this other kind of debauchery necessarily involves less
waste and fewer excesses (ibid., 118).

How is it possible that women awake desire? Corydon‘s position is that women attract
men by using artificial adornments. He blames society‘s hypocrisy for supporting
women‘s deceptive behavior, which allows them to win the competition with men.
Corydon appeals to the authority of Greek art to prove that without adornments the male
body is more likely to awake desire. He exclaims rhetorically,
And perhaps it's an ―individual sentiment‖ in Greek sculpture, to which we must
return whenever we speak of beauty, that shows me man naked and woman
veiled? Yes, in this almost constant predilection of Greek art for the body of the
boy and the young man, in this insistence on veiling the woman‘s body, instead of
acknowledging purely aesthetic reasons, you prefer to see ―the product of the most
distressing sexual aberration‖?

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And his final point, which explains the privileging of male bodies, is also based on the
romantic approach to Greek sculpture as the best of arts. His opponent draws on the
example of Giorgione's ―Concert Champêtre‖ which represents ―gathered together in the
park, two naked women and two fully clothed young musicians‖ (ibid., 88). Corydon
remarks,
From a plastic or at least from a literary point of view, no one would dare claim
that the bodies of these women are beautiful; too fat, as Stevenson says; but what
radiant substance! what deep, soft, harmonious luminosity! Couldn‘t we say that if
masculine beauty triumphs in sculpture, on the other hand woman‘s flesh lends
itself best to the play of colors? Here, I thought, in front of this picture, here is the
very antithesis of ancient art: the young men dressed, the women naked; doubtless
the land where this masterpiece could be created must remain quite poor in
sculpture. (ibid.)

Gide published the complete collection of four dialogs in 1921, but in an unsigned private
edition of 21 copies. At that time Somov had not yet left Russia and it is unlikely that he
could have had access to it. However, a new signed commercial edition was produced in
1925, the year when Somov moved from the United States to France, and it is likely that
this edition attracted his attention. There may be references to Gide in Somov‘s
conversations with Daphnis since ―sodomy‖ and ―pederasty‖ are their recurrent topics.
However, the content of these conversations is lost since these passages were later erased
from Somov‘s notebooks by the inheritors of his archive. Nevertheless we know at least
that the beauty of the male athletic body was one of these topics.
Somov‘s visual interpretation of Longus‘s pastoral as well as of the relationship
with Snezhkovskii fits quite nicely into Gide‘s context. First, this visual interpretation of
Daphnis and Chloe emphasizes the centrality of Daphnis, where the emphasis, as in

208
Gide‘s ideal of the pastoral, is shifted from the story of a heterosexual couple to that of
the aesthetics of male sexuality. Second, it is clear that Somov - although this is not
necessarily represented in his illustrations – clarifies for himself in his diary entries his
attitudes to homosexuality and to the aesthetics of male beauty. As a result the common
ground he shares with Gide becomes apparent.
The presentation of Somov's relationship with Daphnis as presented in Somov‘s
diary has two dimensions. The factual dimension is quite extraordinary: Somov, when he
made entries, recorded them with great precision. He meticulously wrote down
summaries of all events that occurred during the day, as well as of the important
conversations that he had. The other dimension is how he constructs the diary narrative in
interpreting these conversations.
In this second dimension, Somov‘s narrative construction of Daphnis‘s attitude is based
to a greater degree on the literary Platonic ideal than was the case in reality.
Whether intentionally or not, Somov establishes a parallel in his Daphnis narrative
with Proust‘s novel The Guermantes Way, where a similar relationship of engaged
mentorship and admiration exists between Baron de Charlus, an aristocratic dandy with
refined artistic tastes, and Marcel, the protagonist narrator, a young man aspiring to be a
writer. The relationship is suddenly interrupted when Charlus asks Marcel to consider a
love relationship. Before this happens, however, Charlus acts as Marcel‘s admirer,
whereas the latter feels a great respect for Charlus: he is attracted to him, to his
knowledge of art, as well as to his aura of aristocratic connections and flawless taste, and

209
is proud to be the object of his attention until the homosexual subtext is made explicit. It
is this pattern that shows through in Somov‘s friendship with Snezhkovskii.
In constructing a mythic relationship with Snezhkovskii, Somov in his diary
notices those situations where it turns out that Snezhkovskii‘s relationships with women
are less important than their own friendship. Thus, he emphasizes Daphnis‘s intellectual
and spiritual engagement in their friendship as opposed to his relationships with women,
whom he uses and who also use him. The narration proceeds in such a way as to
emphasize the unacknowledged homosexual feelings. The entire episode of Somov‘s
criticism of Snezhkovskii‘s short story quoted above can be viewed in this perspective.
After Snezhkovskii hears Somov‘s opinion he invites Somov to go with him to the
cinema. Somov remembers that they saw a film ―from South-African life‖:
beautiful black people, animals, landscapes. ―‗Regarding monkeys, I asked D.: I love
monkeys very much, and you?‘ And he: ‗I love them and…you too.‘ It was said with a
playful and a slightly defiant smile (s shutlivoi i derzkovatoi ulybkoi), but one could feel
in these words that this is true‖ [ibid., April 16 1930].
Somov's concern about Daphnis‘s reaction might have been due to the fact that he
was afraid that his criticisms had wounded Daphnis‘s feelings. However, given the
situation of their friendship, this episode also emphasizes that Snezhkovskii is not afraid
of the feelings that he might elicit in Somov.
In his reflections on Snezhkovskii‘s behavior towards him in the presence of one
of his girlfriends, Somov is even more articulate about Daphnis‘s hidden emotions
towards him: ―I was happy [mne bylo radostno] that D. kept talking to me and for my

210
benefit (?radi menia), looking in my face, not hers. The blonde told me that … every
other word from his mouth is about me, and that he loves me very much‖ (ibid., July 5
1930). In other words, Somov tends to present Daphnis as a person open enough to accept
homosexuality as a dimension of art, and to concede that his own body is about to
become part of this art. This presentation of Daphnis is part of Somov's idea that their
work is a collaboration.
Somov was deeply engaged in the work on the illustrations. He avidly and
attentively reads Daphnis and Chloe: ―At 10:30 was at Kostritskii's. [He] made me wait
for about 50 minutes but I was reading Daphnis and Chloe, and did not notice them‖
(ibid., December 12 1929). ―I read this novel [Daphnis and Chloe] and I see what a
difficult task is it [to create the illustrations]‖ (Letter to A.Mikhailova, December 16,
1929). While engaged in his own reading, he recommends that his sister read the novel
and tells her where she can find it in his library in Leningrad (Letter to Mikhailova,
December 16, 1929. Ф 133 ед. хр. 168).
In the early days of the sitting sessions Somov was happy to see that Snezhkovskii
was ready to be engaged in the work on Longus. He writes in his notebooks: ―He
[Snezhkovskii] asked me to lend him Longus to read; he‘s interested in him since I use
[risuiu] him for the illustrations of this book‖ (ibid., December 13, 1929). He repeats this
passage in a letter to his sister: ―And my model…turns out to be very intelligent, educated
and nice (slavnyi). [He is] so interested in his sitting and my purpose that he asked me to
lend him Longus‘s novel‖ (Letter to A.Mikhailova, December 16, 1929).

211
Both the conversations with Snezhkovskii about the beauty of the male body
(quoted above) and his opinions are important since Snezhkovskii‘s education consists in
sculpting Daphnis out of his own body and character. ―D. is very interested in my work
and tries to help me. One of his poses was very seductive: for the illustrations of Daphnis
[his back turned to the viewer – crossed out by Somov] lies [not readable; in crying?]
with Chloe. (ibid., December 14, 1929). Somov introduces Snezhkovskii to the erotic
presentation of the male body in art and shows him the drawings of athletes, nudes and
his own erotic works (which he calls my obscenities – moia pokhabshchina). Somov‘s
sessions also seem to help Snezhkovskii to appreciate his own beauty. Thus, Somov
writes down a remark which he probably made at Daphnis‘s presence in some form: ―As
far as his face is concerned, he believes it is nothing remarkable. How [can –
reconstructed by general sense] he: it is beautiful, expressive (vyrazitel'no), enchanting
(prelestno).‖ As this entry continues, Somov almost verbally repeats the description of
Snezhkovskii‘s body made after their first meeting (quoted above), which emphasizes the
beautiful shapes and contrasting colors of Snezhkovskii‘s features. He continues:
―[his] head is not big, well-proportioned (stroinaia) on a beautiful finely-molded neck,
passing [perekhodiashchei] into the slanting but wide shoulders. He knows the beauty of
his body but it surprises me how he can not understand that his face is also very
beautiful‖ [ibid., January 30, 1930].
Somov sculpts the Daphnis of the illustrations on the basis of Snezhkovskii‘s body
and character. Somov uses not only Snezhkovskii‘s body, but also creates Daphnis‘s
personality on the basis of his character. He emphasizes those aspects of his personality

212
and biography which can show that heterosexual relationships are forced on him. Thus,
he mentions Daphnis‘s affair as a teenager with a ―corrupted‖ (razvrashchennaia as
Somov defines her – ibid., December 21, 1929) older woman of 46. The lack of choice in
these forced heterosexual relationships forms a link between Somov‘s vision of them and
Gide's ideas as expressed in Corydon. Somov also describes Snezhkovskii‘s present
relationships with women as lacking any aesthetic or intellectual engagement. These
affairs are presented strictly in terms of sexual gratification, which Somov implies is the
main reason to start them.
Somov‘s constructing of Snezhkovskii/Daphnis as a victim of a superimposed
heterosexual role creates the crucial theme of the illustrations. The psychological
motivation for Daphnis‘s poses in the illustrations is his desire to approach women and
the fear that they inspire in him because their charms are violent. This can be seen in the
scene when he looks at the sleeping Chloe and in the scene with Lykainion where he is
ready to embrace her. In both scenes there is a contrast between a dark male body whose
color is close to that of real skin and white female bodies that look doll-like. In both
scenes, Daphnis‘s movement is toward the women but simultaneously the tension in his
muscles expresses a force of resistance and implies that some power is issuing from
Chloe and Lykainion (fig.13). In the author‘s reprise of the former scene in a separate
watercolor, the energy of attraction and resistance can be seen as well. As was discussed
above, in the scene where three nymphs appear before the sleeping Daphnis, his
Endymion-like figure, as he lies on his back with his hand stretched along his body

213
(fig.9), suggests submission to female erotic domination and the powerlessness and
passivity of the male figure.
Somov saw the basis of his work connected with Greek classical culture in the
representation of nude bodies. As he complains to his sister, the girl whom he found as a
model for Chloe would hardly agree to pose naked – in the meantime she agrees to pose
only in a swimming suit (Letter to A.Mikhailova, June 8, 1930 Somov 1979). It is
obvious from the presentation of female figures (most likely, all made from the one
model) that she never agreed to do so. However, Somov did not try to find a different
model which lays bare the fact that the story in his interpretation has become the Daphnis
story as opposed to that of a couple. The illustrations are focused on the erotic
presentation of the male body alone.

Figure 13: Konstantin Somov. Illustration for ―Daphnis and Chloe.‖

214
How is Longus‘s pastoral necessary and meaningful for Somov‘s work or should
it be considered merely as a frame and pretext to depict beautiful bodies and landscapes?
There are two ways in which the connection between the text and the illustration is
palpable. First, the erotic perception of the male body in Longus is represented in a much
stronger degree than in modern paradigm of art. For example, Daphnis‘s beauty is
presented through Chloe‘s eyes when she falls in love with him on seeing him bathing in
the spring:
He went with Chloe to the Nymphs' shrine, and gave her his shirt and bag to look
after, while he stood by the spring and washed his hair and all of his body. His
hair was black and thick, and his body sun-tanned: one might have supposed its
color came from the shadow of his hair. As Chloe watched, she found Daphnis
beautiful….And as she washed his back, his flesh was soft and yielding to her
touch, so that when he was not looking, she kept feeling herself, testing to see
whether he was nicer to touch than she was. (1.13.1–2)

The motif of Daphnis‘s beauty and Chloe‘s looking at his body is recurrent in the novel
and is somehow embodied in Somov's visual narrative as well, as if the artist is seeing
through the heroine‘s eyes.
Another connection between Longus and Somov is established through the
meaning of pastoral as an ideal of pleasure. In working on the Longus illustrations,
Somov collects and recollects what he personally associates with comfort and pleasure:
beautiful bodies and enjoyable nature.
In creating the pastoral image of Lesbos in his illustrations for Daphnis and Chloe,
he greatly draws on the environment of Sillamäe, a small resort on the Baltic near Narva
(now in Estonia) where he lived in the summer of 1900. In the environs of the Baltic sea

215
climate, he found an ideal of Arcadian aesthetics. In one of his letters, Somov applies to
the nature he sees at Sillamäe the term almost ―Arcadian
41
‖
Про себя сказать могу Вам вот что: никогда лето у меня не было так
испорчено, как нынешнее. На днях я еду в город для отбывания ненвистной
мне службы. О, рабство! Не принадлежишь себе! Быть вещью на
подлейшее из подлых дел!(...) Как бы нарочно и по контрасту, природа здесь
прелестна, почти аркадийская.
The vision of Sillamäe as an image of pastoral nature is reinforced by literary
associations, in particular with Merezhkovskii‘s essay on Daphnis and Chloe. In one of
his letters, Somov makes a list of the natural landmarks of the place in connection to
Daphnis and Chloe
There is a big diversity of landscapes here, the sea,…nice groves very close by the
sea; although there is little sand on the beach and lot of rocks, it is nevertheless
very pretty here and it is possible to walk along the sea on a big strip of grass (…)
the air here is incredible but also a strong wind still blows often and it is cold, but
this is OK because all are in good health and do not cough and the children have
already got tanned….I forgot to tell you in my description that there are a lot of
fields here which one can survey from a bird‘s eye view, with herds of cows and
sheep, which caresses the eye and lulls; there is also a small black winding river
with banks grown with willows. (My translation; letter to A. P. Ostroumova, May
26, 1900)

[Тебе бы очень понравились Силламяги, ты ведь любишь и понимаешь
природу, здесь большое разнообразие пейзажа, море, обрывы, зелень
лиственная, славные рощи у самого моря; песку на пляже хоть и мало и
много камней, зато очень красиво и можно идти вдоль моря по большой
полосе травы (...) воздух здесь необычайный, но еще часто дует сильный
ветер и холодно, но это ничего, потому что все здровы, не кашляют и дети
загорели уже (...) Забыл тебе сказать, описывая, что здесь много еще полей,
которые обозреваешь с птичьего полета, со стадами коров и баранов, что
очень ласкает взор и баюкает; есть еще черная извилистая речка, с
берегами, поросшими ветлами.]

41
About myself, I can tell you the following: no summer has ever been spoiled for me as the current one.
These days, I am going to the city for my military service that I hate so much. Oh, slavery! Not to belong to
one‘s own self! To become a thing for the vilest of vile businesses….As if on purpose and by contrast,
nature here is enchanting, almost Arcadian.‖ (My translation; letter to O. A. Ostorumova, August 10)

216
In this passage, the sight of the herds ―caresses the eye and lulls [baiukaet],‖ which is
similar to the effect that the pastoral poet intends to have on his readers in
Merezhkovskii's essay: ―as if he lulls us to sleep [ubaiukivaet]…and like a sorcerer
entices us still deeper and deeper into the magic circle of pastoral poetry, sweet and light
as a dream‖ (Merezhkovskii 1973, 200).
Simultaneously, the principle of the list and the emphasis on distant perspectives calls to
mind Goethe‘s reference to Longus‘s landscape in Conversations with Eckermann:
―Then the landscape,‖ said Goethe, —―how clearly is it given with a few touches!
We can see, rising behind the persons, vineyards, fields, and orchards; below, the
meadow and the stream; and, in the distance, the broad sea. Then there is not a
trace of gloomy days, of mists, clouds, and damp, but always the clearest bluest
sky, a charming air and the driest soil, so that one would readily stretch one's
naked limbs anywhere.‖

Sillamäe was for Somov a prototype of the pastoral nature he symbolically evokes
throughout his career. In the landscape ―Summer. Evening Shadows,‖ dating from the
summer he spent in the place (1900) and representing a rustic motif with cows returning
home from pasture, he uses the Virgilian theme of long evening shadows*. [Cf. Eclogue
1: ―Even now the housetops yonder are smoking and longer shadows fall from the
mountain heights‖; and Eclogue 2: ―See, the bullocks drag home by the yoke the hanging
plough, and the retiring sun doubles the lengthening shadows.‖]
The Lesbos landscapes in Daphnis and Chloe illustrations are reminiscent of
Sillamäe not only in the general profile (patches of various landscapes, distant
perspectives) but also in concrete features drawn from his memories. Two of the
illustrations (fig.13, 14) show a waterfall which, although a typical feature of

217
Mediterranean landscapes, is not mentioned in the text. The water source in Longus‘s
novel is a spring in the Nymphs‘ cave, a typical feature of a locus amoenus. But a
waterfall is Sillamäe‘s natural landmark (fig.15) and this image in the illustrations can be
explained as one more association with this Baltic place. The use of Sillamäe as a
prototype suggests that the image of nature in the illustrations is a synthesis of the
pleasures and aesthetic appeal which Somov collected throughout his life.

Figure 14: Konstantin Somov. Illustration for ―Daphnis and Chloe.‖

With a tint of irony and estrangement, Nina Berberova, whose account of Somov is loyal
overall, speaks about his attachments to the models whom he painted while living in the
United States:

218
He lived alone, modestly and moderately, had a passion for the beauty of red-
cheeked, curly-haired young boys [whom he painted] with open collars and long-
fingered pale hands in cheerful oil colors. When I visited him, he was always
surrounded by them. (Berberova 1969, p. 295, translation modified).

In this account, we can recognize not only a pattern for the Snezhkovskii story but also
the potential for this pattern to develop into a personal idyll.

Figure 15: The waterfall in Sillamäe.

Pastoral thus acquires in Somov‘s personal history the meaning of a personal
homoerotic utopia legitimized by the classical prototype. After finishing the illustrations,
Somov continues working with Snezhkovskii, who remained his model for numerous
paintings and drawings. However, the aura of the pastoral seemed to help in idealizing
him as Daphnis. This idealizing in the presentation of Snezhkovskii ends when the

219
illustrations are finished. The passage quoted above, where Somov ironically remarks on
Snezhkovskii‘s boring conversation about philosophy, exemplifies it.
The story of the making of those illustrations can be viewed as Somov‘s creation
of a personal Golden Age in connection with Longus‘s pastoral.

220
Conclusion
Кем воспета радость лета:
Роща, радуга, ракета,
На лужайке смех и крик?
В пестроте огней и света
Под мотивы менуэта
Стройный фавн главой поник.

Что белеет у фонтана
В серой нежности тумана?
Чей там шепот, чей там вздох?
Сердца раны лишь обманы,
Лишь на вечер те тюрбаны -
И искусствен в гроте мох.

Mikhail Kuzmin. ―Maskarad‖ (―Masquerade‖)

The present study discussed various aspects of the revival of the pastoral theme in the
Russian fin de siècle with a special focus on the prehistory of this phenomenon in Greek-
Roman antiquity and in the immediately preceding period in Russian cultural history (
late eighteenth early nineteenth century). The running theme of this research has been the
view of the pastoral as a symbol and medium of human integration with nature conveyed
through the aesthetics of idyllic landscapes and animal imagery. The study has
demonstrated that Russian modernist pastoral draws on the western influences, but
emphasizes different aspects of integration with nature than the Western Style Moderne
stylizations of the pastoral. Whereas these stylizations project a subject controlling the
nature, the Russian pastoral features nature as an active agency and depicts the passivity
of the pastoral subject.
The relationship with nature in the Russian pastoral was discussed in the
connection to life styles, cultural practices, and prevailing intellectual fashions. One such

221
trend was the increasing interest in classical studies and classical philology in the fin de
siècle Russia. This new ―classicism‖ was crucial in incorporating the pastoral theme into
contemporary modernist culture in that it inspired artists and writers to turn to the subjects
of classical mythology and literature as material for aesthetic experimentation and life art.
This study has shown that though the instances of direct reception of the classical material
in the fin de siècle pastoral are few, they embrace the whole range of the conflicts and
tensions that are inherent in the classical pastoral myth.
In this study I focused on the cultural translation of the topos of the Mediterranean
pastoral ―oasis‖ (the constant setting of the classical pastoral) into different environments
and the aesthetic and psychological aspects of this translation. In the typical pastoral
setting, the conventional ―oasis‖ stands out against the background of neighboring
environments. Its leafy tree, green grass and clear bubbling spring provide a contrast
with the yellow shades of vegetation burnt out by summer heat. To translate this topos
into new natural realities is not a trivial task. Indeed, in the conditions of Eastern Europe,
including European Russia, such landscapes are not existent or not naturally highlighted;
the far colder climate does is not conductive to pastoral settings and even in the summer
the abundance of trees and shades of green does not provide a contrastive background for
such ―oasis‖.
Since the resources of vegetation were not picturesque enough and the climate was
too harsh, to satisfy the need for a national Arcadian topos, Russian culture had to
construct artificial replicas, and these Russian oases took the form of parks. In these new

222
environments, the continuity of the pastoral topos is achieved not so much through
aesthetic affinity as through similarities in social and bodily practices.
In this dissertation I mainly focused on the mimetic aspect of the pastoral, that is
on how the pastoral recreates nature: through the medium of other natural setting (as in
translating the Arcadian topos into Russian reality) or through the medium of art, so that
the nature becomes an active agency, rather than passive agency (as in the Style Moderne
stylizations).
In future research, I would like to move from the mimetic to the semiotic aspect of
the pastoral and concentrate on the role of the pastoral as a medium of the control over
nature, an instrument the poets and artists who are urban dwellers used to ―domesticate‖
the countryside. Peculiarly, the pastoral, whose subject dealt primarily with the
countryside, first appeared in the megapolis where it served as an instrument of symbolic
control over nature inside and out of the city.
The main focus of this dissertation was on the reception and interpretation of the
pastoral in the Silver Age. In my future research I plan to follow the history of the genre
into the early soviet period and Stalinist Russia. In particular, the Stalinist pastoralism is,
in my opinion, an overlooked but promising field of study. Stalin‘s ideologues used the
structure, imagery, and aesthetics of the pastoral in order to create the appearance of
peaceful harmony and imbue the sense of immutable optimism into the minds of soviet
citizenry. Besides the obvious ideological effectiveness of the pastoral as a brainwashing
tool, Stalinists had more philosophical reasons for recreating the genre. After all, the basis

223
of Marxist ideology was the union of workers and peasants. In socialist-realist aesthetics,
the pastoralist descriptions of the peasant life corresponded to the descriptions of
workers‘ factory life in ―industrial novels‖. In addition, the theme of the Golden Age,
prominent in the pastoral throughout the centuries, coincided with the utopian expectation
of the communist future underlying Marxist ideologies. Thus, the pastoral under Stalin
served as an instrument of ideological propaganda and control as well as a reminder of
the coming communist Golden Age. As distinct from the Silver Age, where pastoral
existed in painting, literature, and theater, the Stalinist pastoral branched out into the new
media, such as murals (as seen in the Moscow metro) and cinema (i.e Svinarka I Pastuh,
Veselye Rebiata, Padenie Berlina).
To conclude, this dissertation has given a panoramic view of the history of the
pastoral, from its origin to its unlikely flourishing in the silver age. I realize that the sheer
amount of material, and the diversity of media and art forms under investigation may
have made my research somewhat digressive. However, I didn‘t set out to create a
sequential narrative of the history of the genre: that would be too ambitious a task.
Rather, my goal was to present a mosaic of interpretations and case studies that
cumulatively reflect the most important transhistorical trends in the development of the
pastoral, one of the most ancient literary genres that has managed to stay wonderfully
alive well into the 20
th
century and hopefully beyond. A genre, that shall remain, in midst
of other woe than ours, a friend to man.

224
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Abstract (if available)

Abstract This dissertation discusses the intuitions of the ancient forms of mimesis connected to the revival of the pastoral theme in the art and literature of the Russian Silver age. The context of this study is Walter Benjamin's ideas about the non-semiotic nature of ancient mimesis and about the possibility of non-semiotic languages. In particular, as Benjamin suggests, in contrast to the semiotic sign, the mimetic sign involves material objects - the human body and the objects of nature - as signifiers. Using Benjamin's notion of the mimetic this study analyzes key episodes in the history of pastoral leading up to Silver Age Russia. Specifically, it examines the mimetic aspects of the representation of pastoral theme in the Silver age artistic and literary legacy and compare them to the Greek and Roman classical pastoral: Virgil's "Bucolics," Longus's "Daphnis and Chloe ," and Pompeian wall painting

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Asset Metadata

Creator Nazyrova, Jamilya (author)

Core Title The theme of the pastorale and the Russian Silver Age

School College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Slavic Languages

Publication Date 08/17/2010

Defense Date 05/13/2010

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag art moderne,Daphnis and Chloe,OAI-PMH Harvest,pastoral,Silver Age,Somov,Virgil

Place Name Russia (countries)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Bowlt, John E. (committee chair), Habinek, Thomas (committee member), Seifrid, Thomas N. (committee member)

Creator Email nazyrova@gmail.com,nazyrova@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-m3405

Unique identifier UC191656

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Legacy Identifier etd-Nazyrova-3981.pdf

Dmrecord 392467

Document Type Dissertation

Rights Nazyrova, Jamilya

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Repository Name Libraries, University of Southern California

Repository Location Los Angeles, California

Repository Email cisadmin@lib.usc.edu