The vanishing dead body and the rising lyric persona in early modern east Slavic poetry

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THE VANISHING DEAD BODY AND THE RISING LYRIC PERSONA
IN EARLY MODERN EAST SLAVIC POETRY

by

Erica Camisa Morale

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

May 2022

Copyright 2022 Erica Camisa Morale
ii
Acknowledgments

Writing this dissertation has been an incredible and stimulating life experience. In
conducting this research project, I could verify through direct experience that intellectual
research is necessarily a human adventure as well. Because of this, my gratitude toward everyone
who supported me in this adventure goes beyond the academic field and, through these
acknowledgments, I mean to thank the valuable guides and companions during this experience.
First and foremost, I am thankful to the members of my dissertation committee—they all
have played a crucial role in my growth as a scholar, and our exchanges throughout the years
have been enriching and enlightening. Sally Pratt has followed me every step of the way. She
taught the first course I ever attended in the US, helping me understand how the American
academic system works. Her course on Russian nineteenth-century poetry has refined my skills
in poetic analysis in ways that I could not imagine. Roumyana Pancheva has been key in
nurturing my diverse scholarly interests, and her enthusiasm continues to inspire me. Through
our conversations, Natania Meeker taught me the importance of intellectual exchange and love
for the unknown, which she showed when she accepted to support me in a project that initially
sounded ventured.
A very special thank you goes to Kelsey Rubin-Detlev, who has been much more than a
dissertation advisor. Since the beginning, she has welcomed with great enthusiasm my request to
work together and upheld my endeavors, being generous in encouraging me to pursue new
research paths and available to discuss openly and productively my work. My research project
has grown thanks to her sharp comments, which grasped its strengths and weaknesses and were
always stimulating and inspiring.
iii
A heartfelt thank you goes to all the professors at USC, who have welcomed me as soon
as I arrived in the US for the first time and who have communicated their passion for Slavic
studies and shared their methodologies of enquiry with me—John Bowlt, Greta Matzner-Gore,
Colleen McQuillen, and Lada Panova. I would like to thank especially Tom Seifrid, who has
encouraged me to pursue my secondary research interests. Both Tom Seifrid and Alexander
Zholkovsky are always available for intellectual exchanges and firm reference points for
academic questions. Two professors have been fundamental for this dissertation—Maria Cristina
Bragone, whose course on the history of Church Slavonic I attended in 2013, when I had the first
idea for this project; and Marcus Levitt, who taught a course on Medieval Russian literature that
strengthened my interest for the early modern period and who encouraged me to pursue this
research path ever since I arrived at USC in 2015.
I am also thankful for the many exchanges that I had with other scholars, including Maria
Grazia Bartolini, Marina Ciccarini, Maria Grazia Di Salvo, Ol’ga Meerson, Francesca Romoli,
Lidiia Sazonova, Alexey and Elena Shmelevy, Olga Strakhov, and Michela Venditti. The
members of the Working Group “Books, Texts, and Images” have accompanied me through the
various steps of dissertation writing during the pandemic—Lisa Pon, Malachai Bandy, Erin
Maynes, Veronica Peselman, Siyu Shen, and Sophia Nuñez.
Thank you to Susan Kechekian, who has been an essential presence in my life at so many
levels. Thank you to all USC workers and to the librarians, who are crucial for any scholar,
especially during a pandemic. I would also like to thank Universities as valuable institutions of
culture—and particularly USC, which has welcomed and supported me through the years.
Finally, thank you to my dearest friends—Natasha, Arianna, Giorgio, Melek, and Mary
Anne—and, above all, Giorgio, Nives, and Mattia—I would not be who I am today without you.
iv
Table of Contents

Acknowledgments………………………………………………………………………………...ii
Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………………...iv
Introduction: The Adventurous History of Lyric Poetry in the East Slavic Territories…………...1
The Self and Death: From Gilgamesh to Barthes…………………………………………4
Lyric Poetry: Who is Afraid of Varietas?…………………………………………………8
Lyric Poetry: The Common Denominator is the Subjective Dimension………………...12
Lyric Poetry: The Effect of Presence and Linguistic Density…………………………...16
The East Slavic Path to Lyric Poetry: Open Text, Variety, and Hybridism……………..20
The Russian Path to Lyric Poetry: Poetry Is “Fire, Passion, Feeling”…………………...25
Methodology and Structure………………………………………………………………33
Chapter One: The Mystery of Death and the Spark of the “I” in Seventeenth-Century East
Slavic Lyrics……………………………………………………………………………………..38
A Controversial Presence: Lyric Poetry in Early Modern Russia……………………….44
Where There Is a “You,” There Is an “I”………………………………………………...49
The Staging of the “I”……………………………………………………………………57
When the “I” Speaks Through Someone Else’s Words: Translation and Imitation……..62
A Thematic Clue that Opens the Door to the “I”………………………………………...68
Between Divine and Human Words: Eruditio…………………………………………...74
From Dialogue to Soliloquy, From Admonition to Reflection………………………….82
Conclusions………………………………………………………………………………91
Chapter Two: When Death Is No Longer Frightening…………………………………………..94
First Comes the King…………………………………………………………………...101
The Trinity of Wisdom: God, Poet, and Sovereign…………………………………….108
Court Life Leaves No Space to the Lyric Persona……………………………………...115
The Lyric Personae Wink at the Epic…………………………………………………..123
The Lyric Personae Celebrate Themselves Without Talking about Themselves………129
The Lyric Personae among Baronesses, Princesses, and Countesses…………………..136
Lyric Personae as Witnesses: Heroic Actions and Everyday Life Qualities…………...146
Conclusions……………………………………………………………………………..152
Chapter Three: When Their Worlds Fall Apart, the Personae Come Out in the Open…………155
Voices of Mourning, Voices of Change………………………………………………..160
At the Threshold of the Text Are an “I” and a “You”………………………………….165
A Name for Those Who Die and an “I” for Those Who Speak………………………...167
The Death of a Dear One Leaves the “I” Speechless…………………………………...175
The Death of the Other is the “End of the World”……………………………………..183
From Absence to a New Presence……………………………………………………...189
An Inconsolable “I” Celebrates an Irreplaceable “You”……………………………….194
The “I” Mourning between Protest and Dream………………………………………...203
v
Conclusions……………………………………………………………………………..209
Chapter Four: The Trauma of Death and the Longing for Immortality: the Personal “I” in
Gavrila Derzhavin’s Lyrics……………………………………………………………………..212
The Dining Table and the Coffin……………………………………………………….220
The Persona and the Universe…………………………………………………………..225
Between the Heart and Reason…………………………………………………………231
The Poet-Prophet……………………………………………………………………….235
The Mighty Ones and Death……………………………………………………………244
The Wise Man and Death………………………………………………………………250
The Persona and Death in Everyday Life………………………………………………254
Poetry and Immortality…………………………………………………………………258
Elevation………………………………………………………………………………..265
Conclusions……………………………………………………………………………..269

Conclusions……………………………………………………………………………………..272
The Path of the “I”……………………………………………………………………...275
New Answers Generate New Questions………………………………………………..280
Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………………....283

vi
Abstract

My dissertation deals with a fundamental theme for lyric poetry, namely the emergence and
evolution of the lyric “I” in poems on death written in the East Slavic territories in the
seventeenth century and in Russia in the eighteenth. Treasuring the main discovery by historians,
anthropologists, and philosophers such as Philippe Ariès, Paul Landsberg, Edgar Morin,
Vladimir Jankélévitch, Emanuel Lèvinas, and Jacques Derrida, who argue that self-
consciousness originate in awareness of death, I show that trauma of death prompts the self to
develop self-awareness and the lyric persona to emerge in poetic texts. The self’s need to define
its ethical behavior and become responsible for its own actions before the Last Judgment stems
from consciousness of death and one’s own self. I identify the presence of the lyric persona in
the texts analyzed through a multidisciplinary approach that combines stylistics, linguistics, and
philosophy and prove that conceptions of death, notions of the self, and appearance of the lyric
persona are permanently interwoven. I trace the development of the lyric voice from their
appearance as a universal “I” to their establishment as a public “I,” from delineating their inner
characteristics as a private “I” to individualizing themself as a personal “I.” Meanwhile, I
correlate these instances of the lyric voice with the death of the everyman, of sovereigns and
prominent people, of dear ones, and of one’s own death. The process unfolds over the course of
one and a half centuries, a lesser-known but crucial period for East Slavic literature. This is the
time when Russian culture opens to the West, merging heterogeneous cultural traditions and
experiencing unprecedented experimentations. So, I demonstrate the original contributions of
East Slavic seventeenth-century and Russian eighteenth-century poetry to debated issues among
comparativists—the definition of the lyrics as a genre and the evolution of the lyric persona.
1
Introduction:
The Adventurous History of Lyric Poetry in the East Slavic Territories

Death poetry: when I say that my dissertation focuses on this topic, my interlocutors are
puzzled, to say the least. As Adriana Teodorescu and Michael Jacobsen have written, literature
and the arts continue to feature the subject of death and the media spectacularizes it.
1
Yet in
contemporary Western societies that enjoy high levels of wealth, speaking directly about
illnesses and suffering, and especially about the event of death has become a stronger taboo than
sex, as Geoffrey Gorer has observed in his article, “The Pornography of Death.”
2
An
unavoidable and permanent event, death constitutes a shocking experience for all human beings:
“Death enters a crisis in the second half of the nineteenth century,” Edgar Morin observed in
1970, while Philippe Ariès in 1967 pointed to the “rejection of mourning” in Western societies.
3

The removal of death from public discourse has paradoxically achieved a new peak during the
current Covid-19 pandemic; as hospitals remove the management of the illness and of death from
sight, death is characterized today more than ever as an abnormal process that takes place out of
sight: the patient leaves for the hospital and never comes back. With my study, I would instead
like to demonstrate how, by acquiring awareness about the event of death, human beings begin to
develop self-consciousness and lyric personae start to manifest and define themselves within
poetic texts. Such awareness causes a shock, as well as precipitates vital impulses to search for

1
Adriana Teodorescu, Michael H. Jacobsen, eds. Death in Contemporary Popular Culture (New York: Routledge,
2020), 1-6.
2
Geoffrey Gorer, “The Pornography of Death,” in Death, Grief and Mourning, eds. Geoffrey Gorer, Doubleday
(New York: Garden City, 1965), 49-53.
3
“A partir de la deuxième moitié du XIX
e
siècle, une crise de mort commence.” Edgar Morin, L’homme et la mort
(Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1970), 299. “refus du deuil.” Philippe Ariès, “La mort inversée: Le changement
des attitudes devant la mort dans les sociétés occidentale,” in Archives européennes de sociologie, 8(2),
1967, 171.
2
meaning and satisfy the need for self-expression. I show this through a close reading of lyric
texts on death that were composed in the East Slavic territories in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries—the decisive period when a lyric voice emerged and defined itself in East Slavic
poetry while meditating on death.
Research on death in literature has developed rapidly in the past decades. Various
explorations have contributed to this body of work, from Jahan Ramazani’s and Diana Fuss’
research on death poetry and Adriana Teodorescu’s studies on the representational mechanisms
of death in works composed between the seventeenth century and today in Europe, Asia, and the
Americas to Daniel K. Jernigan’s, Walter Wadiak’s, and W. Michelle Want’s works on the
impossibility for literature to narrate and represent the experience of death.
4
Yet, these studies
rarely include East Slavic or Russian literature. Victor Brombert’s Musings on Mortality: from
Tolstoy to Primo Levi, which focuses on nineteenth- and twentieth-century prose, provides a
notable counterexample.
5
East Slavic scholars have also studied the theme of death in literature.
For example, R.L. Krasil’nikov’s book on thanatology in literature considers its chronological
development, its themes and representational tools, and the philosophical movements connected
with it.
6
Krasil’nikov’s work, however, does not comprise an in-depth analysis of early modern
East Slavic and Russian poetry. While comparative studies usually overlook this type of poetry, I
argue that it is rich in theories and experimentations that are worth the attention of scholars and

4
Jahan Ramazani, Yeats and the Poetry of Death: Elegy, Self-Elegy, and the Sublime (New Haven, London: Yale
University Press, 1990). Poetry of Mourning. The Modern Elegy from Hardy to Heaney (Chicago, London:
University of Chicago Press, 1994). Diana Fuss, Dying Modern: A Meditation on Elegy (Durham: Duke
University Press, 2013). Marius Rotar, Adriana Teodorescu, Dying and Death in 18th-21st Century
Europe, vol. 2 (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publisher, 2011). Adriana Teodorescu, ed.,
Death Representations in Literature: Forms and Theories (Cambridge Scholars Publisher, 2015).
Teodorescu and Jacobsen, Death in Contemporary Popular Culture. D.K. Jernigan, W. Wadiak, and W.M.
Wang, eds., Narrating Death: The Limit of Literature, 1
st
ed. (New York: Routledge: 2018).
5
Victor Brombert, Musings on Mortality: from Tolstoy to Primo Levi (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014).
6
R.L. Krasil’nikov, Tanatologicheskie motivy v khudozhestvennoi literature (Moscow: Iazyki slav-koi kul’tury,
2015).
3
that it can contribute to contemporary discussions on lyric poetry: Is it a literary genre? What
defines it as such? What is the lyric persona?
My approach also differs from these studies in that I take as my starting point the main
discovery made by the historical, anthropological, and philosophical works of Philippe Ariès,
Vladimir Jankélévitch, Edgar Morin, Paul-Louis Landsberg, Emmanuel Lévinas, and Jacques
Derrida that consciousness of one’s own identity is linked to awareness of the event of death.
7

Without consciousness of death, awareness of one’s own or someone else’s individuality is also
missing: “Blindness before one’s own death means blindness before one’s own individuality,
which nevertheless exists; blindness before someone else’s death means blindness before
someone else’s individuality, which also exists.”
8
In effect, as Ariès writes, there is “a permanent
relationship between one’s idea of death and one’s idea of self.”
9
Paul-Louis Landsberg confers
upon this relationship an exact law: “We may… observe a historical phenomenon which is so
general that it may be adduced as a law: an awareness of death goes hand in hand with human
individualisation, the constitution of the person.”
10

This phenomenon occurs because death is an event that individuals must face entirely
alone and that involves their whole being. Vladimir Jankélévitch defines it as a solitary
experience for the “I” that always preserves an intimate, personal character.
11
The loneliness of

7
Philippe Ariès, Western Attitudes towards Death (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press: 1975). Jacques
Derrida, Mémoires pour Paul de Man (Paris: Editions Galilée, 1988). The Work of Mourning, ed. Pascale-
Anne Brault, Michael Naas (Chicago, London: The University of Chicago Press, 2001). Vladimir
Jankélévitch, La mort (Paris: Flammarion Editeur, 1966). Paul-Louis Landsberg, The Experience of Death,
transl. Cynthia Rowland, forw. Fr. Martin Jarrett-Kerr, C.R. (New York: Philosophical Library, 1953).
Emmanuel Lévinas, God, Death, and Time, transl. Bettina Bergo (Stanford: Stanford University Press,
2000). Morin, L’homme et la mort.
8
“La cécité à sa propre mort est la cécité à sa propre individualité, qui pourtant existe; la cécité à la mort d’autrui est
la cécité à l’individualité d’autrui, qui elle aussi existe.” Morin, L’homme et la mort, 69.
9
Ariès, Western Attitudes towards Death, 106.
10
Landsberg, The Experience of Death, 7.
11
Jankélévitch, La mort, 25.
4
the dying, about which Norbert Elias writes, does not only concern modern societies; already in
the seventeenth century Martin Opitz stated: “I will have fun with others / Even if I must die
alone,” and Blaise Pascal affirmed: “we shall die alone.”
12
Consciousness of death, thus, causes a
tear in the individual’s relationship with the surrounding world and the outbreak of one’s own
ontological consciousness. “As long as I live,” Georges Bataille notes in Inner Experience,
I am content with a coming and going, with a compromise. No matter what I say,
I know myself to be the member of a species and I remain in harmony, roughly
speaking, with a common reality; I take part in what, by all necessity, exists–in
what nothing can withdraw. The self-that-dies abandons this harmony; it truly
perceives what surrounds it to be a void and itself to be a challenge to this void.
13

Death acts on our consciousness like Viktor Shklovskii’s estrangement effect, which
makes us experience something familiar—a natural process of life—as if it were for the first
time. Yet “[in] the halo of death and there alone, the self founds its empire. There the purity of a
hopeless requirement comes to light; there the hope of the self-that-dies is realized.”
14
When we
realize that death involves our whole being, we develop our own perception of the world, which
distinguishes each individual from the rest of humankind and brings one’s self to the fore.

The Self and Death: From Gilgamesh to Barthes
The relationship between the individual’s self-awareness and the experience of death is
so authentic and indissoluble that it runs throughout human history. We can find it even in one of
the oldest poems, the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh (2,600-2,500 BCE). In it we read: “I see the
bodies floating on the river, and that will be my lot also.”
15
And, faced with the death of his

12
Norbert Elias, Über die Einsamkeit der Sternbenden in unseren Tegen (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp 1982). “Will mit
andern lustig seyn / Wann ich gleich allein muss sterben.” Erich Tunz, Christine Eisner, “Oden oder
Gesange XVIII,” in Weltlitche Poemata 1644 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1975), 78. Pascal, Blaise, Pascal’s
Pensées, (New York: E.P. Dutton & Co, Inc., 1958), 63.
13
Georges Bataille, Michael Richardson, Georges Bataille: Essential Writings (London: Sage, 1998), 204.
14
Ibidem.
15
Nancy K. Sandars, The Epic of Gilgamesh (London: Penguin Classics, 1960), 6.
5
friend Enkidu, Gilgamesh says: “Because of my brother I am afraid of death… His fate lies
heavy upon me… He is dust and I shall die also and be laid in the earth for ever.”
16
The trauma
of death makes Gilgamesh aware of his own being and, consequently, determines the beginning
of his spiritual life, of his self-discovery, and of his identity as projected beyond death: “I will set
up my name in the place where the names of famous men are written,” Gilgamesh says.
17

Death generates the same self-awareness in more contemporary times. After his mother’s
death, and much like Gilgamesh, Roland Barthes “see[s] each individual [as] ineluctably having-
to-die” and realizes that “[t]o think, to know that maman is dead forever, completely… is to
think, letter by letter… that I too will die forever and completely.”
18
In turn, he decides to write a
book about her, “so that, printed, her memory will last at least the time of my own notoriety.”
19

By saying this, Barthes expresses a tension with his previous work, The Death of the Author
(1968). There, he wrote that “writing is the destruction of every voice, of every point of origin…
the negative where all identity is lost.”
20
He also maintained that “it is language which speaks,
not the author; to write is, through a prerequisite impersonality…, to reach that point where only
language acts, ‘performs,’ and not ‘me.’”
21
Hence, this earlier text of Barthes rejects the notion
of authorship and the idea that writing can act on reality and express the author’s secrets, because
“the inner ‘thing’… is itself only a ready-formed dictionary.”
22
By contrast, in Mourning Diary,
a journal about his mother’s passing, Barthes affirms the concepts of selfhood, the author, inner
life, and writing as mechanisms that create memory. In it, he defines mourning as “the

16
Ibidem.
17
Ibidem.
18
Ibid., 118.
19
Roland Barthes, Mourning Diary, October 26, 1977-September 15, 1979, transl. Richard Howard (New York: Hill
and Wang, 2010), 51. Camera Lucida. Reflections of Photography, transl. Richard Howard (New York:
Hill and Wang, 1981), 63.
20
Roland Barthes, “The Death of the Author,” in Authorship (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1995), 125.
21
Ibid., 126.
22
Ibid., 125-126, 128-129.
6
fulfillment of absolute internalization.”
23
When recalling his childhood with his mother, Barthes
states: “I am here. The self never ages.”
24
Together with the “I,” Barthes thus confirms the
meaning of writing for the individual: mourning is, for him, “accomplished only in and by
writing.”
25
It is the means for him to be “recognized” as a writer and “to make maman
recognized” by realizing the “[n]ecessity of the ‘Monument.’ Remember that she lived.”
26
In
talking about his grief, Barthes is afraid that he “mak[es] literature out of it… although as a
matter of fact literature originates within these truths.”
27
Thus, by talking about the event most
central to his inner life, Barthes manifests another aspect of his philosophy, namely that writing
allows us to metaphorically keep alive those who passed away.
Before death, Jacques Derrida experiences something similar to Barthes. His texts about
the death of dear ones, like those in The Work of Mourning, likewise express a tension with his
critique against the referentiality of language.
28
In the text he dedicated to Barthes’ death, for
instance, Derrida struggles to accept the loss of his friend: “And yet Barthes himself is no longer
there.”
29
Derrida admits that it is difficult for him to talk about his grief (“what I am awkwardly
trying to say here”).
30
He wonders: “To keep alive, within oneself [one’s dear one]: is this the
best sign of fidelity?” and desires “faithfully to represent him.”
31
What is most important to
Derrida is that his deceased friend becomes “the Referent that, in its very image, I can no longer
suspend, even though its ‘presence’ forever escapes me,” so much so that “[w]hen I say Roland

23
Barthes, Mourning Diary, 154.
24
Ibid., 111.
25
Ibid., 131.
26
Ibid., 132, 112.
27
Ibid., 22.
28
Jacques Derrida, The Work of Mourning, eds. Pascale-Anne Brault, Michael Naas (Chicago, London: University
of Chicago Press, 2001).
29
Ibid., 35.
30
Ibid., 57.
31
Ibid., 36, 38.
7
Barthes it is certainly him whom I name.”
32
This position represents a distinct phase in Derrida’s
criticism of the principle of referentiality, which characterizes all of Western philosophy from
Thomas of Aquinas’ idea of the “correspondence of mind and reality,” from the thirteenth
century up until Ferdinand de Saussure’s Course of General Linguistics (1916). This principle
establishes the close, indissoluble correspondence between signifier and signified that, according
to Derrida, is the result of the logocentric and phonocentric foundations of Western philosophy.
In some writings, however, Derrida affirms that the event of death reveals the indissoluble link
between people and their names: “death reveals all the strength of the name so long as it
continues to name, to call them whom we call the bearers of the name and who can no longer
respond to their names or of their names.”
33
In order to explain the particular link between
funerary speeches and their referents, Derrida refers to the importance that Barthes has attributed
to photography in Camera Lucida: “the referent is noticeably absent… but the reference to this
referent… implies the ‘return of the dead’ in the very structure of both its image and the
phenomenon of its image.”
34
These instances of Barthes’ and Derrida’s reactions to mourning
demonstrate how death has always contributed to the “deconstruction” of ideological systems.
When confronted with death, we rediscover the word’s ability to express the individual’s
uniqueness and to convey a self.
Upon realizing the finite nature of human life, personae thus become aware of their own
and of someone else’s identity and singularity. In turn, investigating lyrics about death can tell us
more about these speaking subjects and how these voices manifest themselves.

32
Ibid., 39, 46.
33
“La mort révèle toute la force du nom dans la mesure même où celui-ci continue de nommer, voire d’appeler ce
qu’on appelle le porteur du nom et qui ne peut plus répondre à son nom ou répondre de son nom.” Jacques
Derrida, Mémoires pour Paul de Man (Paris: Editions Galilée, 1988), 63.
34
Derrida, The Work of Mourning, 53.
8
Lyric Poetry: Who is Afraid of Varietas?
Not only the theme of death, but also the very notion of lyric poetry is controversial
nowadays. However, certain literary critics affirm the “pure” nature of lyrics, referring to an
interpretive tradition that dates to the late nineteenth-century poetics of “art for art’s sake” and of
the Symbolists. Based on recent studies and on the genre’s characteristics, I argue that lyric
poetry’s variety, its subjective dimension, and its expressive density distinguish it from other
literary genres. In this section, I focus on variety—a characteristic of lyrics that incites debate,
generates misconceptions, and even precludes lyric poetry from constituting a genre.
One of the notions of lyric poetry that has gained popularity in the twentieth century
brings Mallarmé’s notion of “pure poetry” to an extreme. Mallarmé’s Crise de vers asserts the
“elocutionary disappearance of the poet” from the composition of a text.
35
Later, literary critic
Hugo Friedrich considered this the only definition of modern lyric poetry, which he characterizes
by “the removal of the heart from the ‘I’ of poetry… deobjectification… aversion… to everyday
sentiment” and which he understands as “an autonomous, self-signifying entity.”
36
In Mallarmé’s
and Friedrich’s understandings, pure poetry removes any relationship with the outer world and
presents itself as a creation in which the person of the author is absent. It also implies excluding
traces of the narrative, descriptive, didactic, or argumentative styles, which are considered
impure. Yet in his essay, “Lyrics and Modernity,” Paul de Man shows how an absolute rupture
from representation and from the presence of the “I” in poetry is difficult to achieve, even for
Mallarmé himself.
37
Moreover, literary practice contradicts such a conception of lyric poetry.

35
“disparition élocutoire du poète.” Stéphane Mallarmé, “Crise de vers,” in Oeuvres completes (Paris: Bibliothèque
de la Pléiade, 1956), 336.
36
Hugo Friedrich, The Structure of Modern Poetry: From the Mid-Nineteenth to the Mid-Twentieth Century
(Northwestern University Press, 1974), 38, 109.
37
Paul de Man, “Lyric and Modernity,” in Blindness and Vision, introd. Wlad Godzich (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1983), 175-182.
9
Indeed, this understanding of lyric poetry does not include most of the lyrics composed from
Mallarmé’s time up to the current day, like those of Vladimir Maiakovskii and Marina
Tsvetaeva, Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, and Ol’ga Sedakova and Louise Glück—all of
which present clear communicative intentions, ethical messages, and a close relationship with
surrounding reality.
In this study, I consider seventeenth- and eighteenth-century East Slavic and Russian
lyrics. By East Slavic I mean the set of territories that, in the pre-modern and early modern
periods, followed a similar path in the evolution of written culture and that, often, were unified
by similar political, social, and cultural development. These territories roughly correspond to
modern-day Russia, Ukraine, Belarus’, the East area of the Baltic countries, and the East region
of Poland. After the establishment of the Russian Empire in 1721, the culture and literature
created within the territories of the Empire are defined as Russian.
The seventeenth- and eighteenth-century East Slavic and Russian lyrics that I analyze in
the current study are hybrid. They originate from sermons and prayers and maintain a tight
connection with religious, didactic, and political writings. Their hybrid nature is not confined to
the early modern period, as Jahan Ramazani’s recent study, Poetry and Its Others, has shown. In
his work, Ramazani maintains that lyric poetry is not a closed verbal system but, rather, an open
system that interacts with other genres and discourses—narrative and philosophical texts,
newspapers, prayers, and songs—which transform it and create new expressive possibilities.
38

This is what occurs in the eighteenth century’s first decades when lyric, didactic, liturgic,
panegyric, and eulogistic poetic forms were still interwoven in East Slavic texts. For instance,
lines from a liturgic song are included in Simeon Polotskii’s lyric that I analyze in the first

38
Jahan Ramazani, Poetry and Its Others: News, Prayer, Song, and the Dialogue of Genres (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2014).
10
chapter, while Antiokh Kantemir’s and Petr Buslaev’s poems, which I consider in the second
chapter, are defined as “descriptions” and present descriptive expressive modalities together with
lyric passages. Moreover, in his renowned essay, “The Ode as an Oratory Genre,” Iurii Tynianov
demonstrates that, in the eighteenth-century ode, the “‘oratory action’ can and should be looked
at… as an original constructive principle, a dominant.”
39
At the eighteenth century’s end, lyrics
by Gavriila Derzhavin and Ivan Dolgorukov look like philosophical arguments in verses,
prayers, or narrative compositions. By considering the specific characteristics of seventeenth-
and eighteenth-century East Slavic and Russian lyrics, I do not argue that the hybrid character of
the lyric is exceptional to this literary culture; rather, it is intimately interrelated with the nature
of lyric poetry and uniquely represents the idea of lyrics as variety, a notion that dates back to
classical times.
The concept of variety has long produced difficulties in establishing the nature of lyrics.
In Poetics, Aristotle does not examine lyrics because, unlike epic and dramatic poetry, he cannot
inscribe them within the principle of poetry as mimesis. Aristotle mentions compositions that are
neither epic nor dramatic and acknowledges his difficulty in defining them: “… we haven’t in
fact even got a common term to cover the mimes of… trimeters, elegiacs, or some other such
verse-form.”
40
He also mentions other compositions that we, today, include within the lyric
genre—hymns, praises, and invectives—but that he, again, cannot attribute them to any specific
kind of poetry.
41
In listing compositions that he cannot locate within a specific poetic genre,
Aristotle actually introduces the idea of lyric poetry’s variety, a recurring topic of Western

39
“… ‘ораторское действие’ и может и должно быть рассматриваемо… как своеобразный принцип
конструкции, доминанта…” Iurii N. Tynianov, “Oda kak oratorskii zhanr,” in Istoriia literatury. Kino
(Moscow: Nauka), 228.
40
Aristotle, Aristotle’s Poetics: Translated and Commented by George Whalley, ed. John Baxter (Montreal, Buffalo:
McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1997), 49.
41
Ibid., 59.
11
debate on lyrics. We can find the issue of variety in Horace’s Ars poetica, in which he names the
key themes characterizing lyric poetry: “To the lyre the Muse granted tales of gods and children
of gods, of the victor in boxing, of the horse first in the race, of the loves of swains, and of
freedom over wine.”
42
The notion of variety reappears in the eight book of Isidore of Seville’s
Etymologiae, in the chapter, “About Poets”: “Lyric (lyricus) poets are named after the Greek
term lirēin (lit. “speak trifles”) that is, from the variety of their songs. Hence also the lyre (lyra)
is named.”
43
Notwithstanding the mistaken etymology, Isidore expresses an idea that became
highly influential during the Middle Ages, namely that thematic and expressive variety define
lyric poetry.
During the Italian sixteenth century, after Aristotle’s Poetics was translated first into
Latin (1498) and then into Italian (1548), Pompeo Torelli expressed the difficulty of
reconducting lyric poems to a unique principle in his Treatise on Lyric Poetry (1594). In this
treatise, Torelli refers to the same notion of thematic variety theorized by Horace: “What unified
objective could a form of art characterized by such a diverse subject matter show? And what goal
can have he who sings praises to the Gods? And what can he share with people singing the
incidents of the drunkards? Or what can he who celebrates the victories of the horse race share
with him who complains about Love?”
44
The idea of variety is also key in Friedrich W. Hegel’s
definition of lyric poetry in Aesthetics, where he pinpoints how “contents may be of extreme

42
Horace and H. Rushton Fairclough, Satires, Epistles, The Art of Poetry (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1926), 457.
43
Isidore of Seville and Stephen A. Barney, The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press, 2006), 180.
44
Giorgio Valla’s translation of Aristotle’s Poetics into Latin was published in Venice in 1498 and constituted the
first step for the spread Aristotle’s ideas on poetics and rhetoric. In 1549, Bernardo Segni translated
Aristotle’s Poetics into Italian—specifically, the Florentine dialect—and, since then, it has become a
reference point when reflecting on theoretical and literary questions. “… che unità di fine potrà aver un’arte
con materia tanto diversa? E che fine pò avere chi canta le lodi dei dèi, che convenghi con chi canta i fatti
degl’ubriachi? o chi celebra le vittorie dei corsi dei cavalli, con chi si lamenta di Amore?” Pompeo Torelli,
Poesie, col Trattato della poesia lirica, ed. G. Genovese (Parma: Guanda, 2008), 595.
12
variety” in lyrics.
45
Variety continues to resurface in discussions about lyrics in the twentieth
century. Emil Staiger, for instance, claims that lyric poetry can include epic and dramatic poetry
as well.
46
Variety of style, language, meter, and content is not only one of the founding
characteristics of lyrics in general, but also a particular trait of early modern East Slavic and
Russian lyrics.
Overturning an idea popular among critics, I claim that we need to consider variety as a
treasure of lyric poetry. In doing so, I respond to an argument raised in the work of Jonathan
Culler, who observes that “[t]he more important the generic category, the more it may raise
questions about its subspecies.”
47
As René Wellek and Austin Warren have noticed, “[m]odern
genre theory… is interested… in finding the common denominator of a kind.”
48
In turn, I
examine the most meaningful moments in literary criticism on lyric poetry in order to find the
lyrics’ common denominator.

Lyric Poetry: The Common Denominator is the Subjective Dimension
In this section I show how, by analyzing the main theories of lyrics and identifying their
defining characteristics, we can understand the subjective dimension as lyric poetry’s common
denominator. This dimension allows for the genre’s stylistic and thematic variety and for its
being an “open text.” Lyric poetry “cannot afford to lose its contact with the changing language
of common intercourse” and therefore continues to evolve.
49
This is why lyric poetry is the genre

45
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Sir Thomas Malcolm Knox, Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art, vol. 2 (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2015), 1114.
46
Emil Staiger, Die Grundbegriffe der Poetik (Zurich: Atlantis Verlag, 1946).
47
Jonathan Culler, Theory of the Lyric (Cambridge, MA; London: Harvard University Press, 2015), 43.
48
René Wellek, Austin Warren, Theory of Literature (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1949), 245.
49
T.S. Eliot, “The Music of poetry,” in On Poetry and Poets (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2009), 21.
13
most suitable to give voice to the trauma of death and to express death’s ability to raise
individual awareness.
As we have seen in the previous section, variety excluded lyric poetry from Aristotle’s
Poetics because the Greek philosopher could not find an adequate place for such a diverse poetic
form in his aesthetic system. Torelli, instead, identifies a defining characteristic of lyrics: “[I]f
one were to ask why, among all of the poets, the lyricist uses such a variety of verses, I would
answer that this derives from the diversity of feelings.”
50
Similarly, Hegel has explained the
subjective dimension of lyric poetry as follows: “this principle of detailing, particularization, and
individuality… is inherent in lyric.”
51
This idea reaches its peak in William Wordsworth’s
famous statement in his 1800 Preface to the Lyrical Ballads: “poetry is the spontaneous overflow
of powerful feelings” and in Gavrila Derzhavin’s 1811-12 definition of the lyrics as “fire,
passion, and feeling.”
52
This vision of lyric poetry culminates in the nineteenth century with the
works of George Byron, Heinrich Heine, and Mikhail Lermontov, which Lidiia Ginzburg studied
in the twentieth century. In Ginzburg’s terms, “lyric poetry’s specific feature consists in the fact
that the person exists in it not only as the author, not only as the object of the representation, but
also as its subject.”
53
Hence, the lyric hero is the center around which the entire poem revolves.
The artist’s inner world occupies the lyric’s entire space, so that “in the lyrics [we observe] the

50
“[S]e alcuno mi ricercasse perché tra tutti gli altri poeti il lirico usasse questa diversità di versi, io risponderei che
ciò procede dalla diversità degli affetti.” Torelli, Poesie, 649.
51
Hegel, Aesthetics, 1114.
52
“However, telling the truth in this way means expressing the ideas of the soul and not imitating them:… I would
solve this imitation of Plato with the Peripatetic... expression” (Ma il dire il vero in questa maniera è lo
esprimere i concetti dell’animo e non l’imitargli:… io risolverei questa imitazione platonica nella...
espressione peripatetica). Filippo Sassetti, Lettere edite e inedite. Quoted from Guido Mazzoni, Sulla
poesia moderna (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2005), 64. William Wordsworth, Samuel Coleridge, Lyrical Ballads
(London: Routledge, 2005), 291. “Она не наука, но огнь, жар, чувство.” http://derzhavin.lit-
info.ru/derzhavin/proza/razsuzhdenie/razsuzhdenie.htm (Last access: 27 February 2021).
53
“Специфика лирики в том, что человек присутствует в ней не только как автор, не только как объект
изображения, но и как его субъект.” Lidiia Iak. Ginzburg, O lirike, 2
nd
ed. (Leningrad: Sov-kii pisatel’,
1974), 5.
14
embodiment of the author’s consciousness, which always includes traits of the social
consciousness of the epoch.”
54
So, in Ginzburg’s conception, the lyric hero is characterized by
biographic and psychological traits that build the author’s body of texts as a universe of its own.
Hence, critics consistently identify the subjective dimension as characteristic of lyric poetry.
Critics continue to characterize lyric poetry in these terms in the twentieth century, as
Roman Iakobson’s statement shows: “the lyric, oriented toward the first person, is intimately
linked with the emotive function.”
55
Throughout the twentieth century, scholars have focused on
the subjective nature of lyrics by stressing their anthropological dimension. Käte Hamburger, for
instance, has posited the pole of the subject at the basis of the lyrics, while Antonio Rodriguez
has theorized an “affective tone [due to] a subjective existential attitude” at the core of lyric
poetry.
56
These scholars’ anthropological perspective makes the meaning of the phrase “affective
tone,” which is usually attributed to lyrics, explicit. Lyric poetry is not limited to express feelings
but comprehends all the aspects of human life encompassing the subjective dimension—from the
affective and the intellectual, to the spiritual and the experiential.
Hence, we can understand lyric poetry as an open genre. Lyric poetry, in fact, is not
closed within itself, but relates to the various aspects of the subjective dimension and of the
reality that the individual experiences. On the contrary, Bakhtin has maintained that “[t]he
language of the poetic genre is a unitary and singular Ptolemaic world outside of which nothing

54
“воплощения в лирике авторского сознания, всегда обобщающего черты общественного сознания эпохи.”
Ibidem.
55
Roman Iakobson, “Linguistics and poetics,” in Language in Literature (Cambridge, MA; London: Harvard
University Press, 1987), 70.
56
Hamburger theorizes that lyric poetry is realized at the intersection of the objective and the subjective poles,
which she calls: “Polaritätverhältnis” and “Subjekt-Objekt-Polarität.” Käte Hamburger, Die Logik der
Dichtung, 4
th
ed (Stuttgart: Ernst Klett Verlag, 1994), 45-51. “tonalité affective... une attitude subjective
d’existence.” Antonio Rodriguez, Le pacte lyrique (Sprimont: Mardaga èditeur, 2003), 20.
15
else exists and nothing else is needed.”
57
This means that, for Bakhtin, plurilingualism cannot
find its place in poetry, that the poetic self is closed within itself, and that the historical and
social limitations of language are unknown to poetry. Bakhtin has conceived of the poetic “I” as
an abstract, static entity, whose direct expression is a poetic language that is authoritative,
dogmatic, and conservative. Instead, in juxtaposing lyrics and novels, he has claimed that a novel
has “no canon of its own. It is, by its very nature, not canonic. It is plasticity itself. It is a genre
that is ever questing, ever examining itself and subjecting its established forms to review. Such,
indeed, is the only possibility open to a genre that structures itself in a zone of direct contact with
developing reality.”
58
In contrast, I argue that variety and openness are typical not only of the
novel, but also of lyric poetry. I see the specificity of the lyrics in their thematic variety and in
their subjective dimension, which determine lyric language and style. They are dialogic because
lyric voices need to share their feelings and experiences with someone else; historically and
socially limited, because they are linked to the here and now; and dynamic, because they are in
constant evolution.
Such an understanding of lyric poetry defies a conception of literary genres as fixed,
unchangeable, and hierarchically ordered entities, which has characterized eighteenth- and
nineteenth-century poetics.
59
Contemporary critics tend to agree on a conception of literary
genres as evolving sets that are historically defined. The Structuralist Gérard Genette affirms that
no archigenre fully escapes its historical determination.
60
According to Jean-Marie Schaeffer,
who brings together structural analysis, cognitive sciences, and anthropological studies, literary

57
Mikhail M. Bakhtin, Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, ed. Michael Holquist (University of Texas Press, 1981),
286.
58
Ibid., 39.
59
Representative instances of this type of poetics are André Chénier’s poetics, quoted in: Wellek, Warren, Theory of
Literature, 244. Hegel’s Aesthetics; and Ferdinand Brunetière, L’evolution des genres dans l’histoire de la
littérature (Paris: Librairie Hachette, 1914).
60
Gérard Genette, The Architext (Berkeley: University of California Press: 1992).
16
genres are “classes [that] are the actual precipitate of an entire series of historical adjustments.”
61

The Deconstructionist Jonathan Culler has also observed that “[e]ssentialist concepts of genre
posit a set of qualities that every instance of a genre must possess: identifiable distinguishing
marks. Requirements of exactitude make such concepts difficult to formulate or sustain and pose
obstacles for reflecting on generic change.”
62
However, “[a]ny critical and evaluative… study
involves, in some form, the appeal to such structures,” as Wellek and Warren have pointed out.
63

I also refer to lyric poetry as a genre that is a dynamic, trans-historical set containing a number of
different textual compositions, and identify the “common denominator” as its subjective
dimension.

Lyric Poetry: The Effect of Presence and Linguistic Density
In this section I consider another key feature of lyrics—their linguistic density—which
highlights lyrics as a linguistic act that is supposed to take place in the presence of the speakers’
interlocutors. When culture is transmitted orally, this presence is the physical co-presence of
speakers, interlocutors, and spectators; when culture is transmitted mostly in written and printed
forms, such presence is fictional because the moment of enunciation is significantly deferred
from that of reception.
64
The poems that I consider in my study pertain to a transitional period
from the former to the latter. As a result, the speaking voice in lyric poetry combines linguistic
devices of in-presence communication with those of distance communication.

61
“classes étant le précipité actuel de toute une série de réaménagement historiques.” Jean-Marie Schaeffer, Qu’est-
ce qu’un genre littéraire? (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1989), 77.
62
Culler, Theory of the Lyric, 44.
63
Wellek, Warren, Theory of Literature, 235.
64
Paul Zumthor, La lettre et la voix. De la “littérature” médiévale (Paris: Seuil, 1987), 245-295.
17
Every in-presence enunciation implies certain characteristics that we find in lyric texts.
First, we have the source of the enunciation, which is the entity that says “I” in the text. The “Is”
then realize their enunciations as apostrophes to a “you.” Throughout my study, I use “they”
when referring to the lyric persona in general, whereas I write “he” or “she” when referring to a
specific occurrence of the lyric persona in a text. I call the source of the enunciation lyric “I,”
“voice,” “speaker,” or “persona” and use the term “subject” to refer exclusively to the
grammatical subject of the enunciation. The “I” and the “you” share the time and space within
the reality that creates the lyric composition. Linguistic signs typical of in-presence conversation
in lyric poetry to create the effect of presence include apostrophes; deictic terms, like pronouns,
temporal and spatial expressions, and verbal phrases; axiological or sensation adjectives, nouns,
adverbs, and verbs; and proper names.
65
We can see these signs, for instance, in Evfimii
Chudovskii’s poem, “Look, man, at this clock,” which I analyze in the first chapter. Specific
information about the context, the identity of the individuals, and the communicative goals may
be undetermined.
Lyric voices, moreover, employ other tools typical of lyric language to reproduce the
effect of presence, like syntactic and semantic devices, and rhetoric and metric ones, including
figures of speech and rhythm. Indeed, in lyric poetry, the syntactic constructions, the figures of
speech, the breaks and continuities in the rhythm do not merely convey the literal meaning of the
words. For instance, symmetric syntactic constructions, parallelisms, antitheses, and anaphorae
allow us to identify the unfolding of the speaker’s thoughts. While the voice communicates the

65
“… effet de la présence.” Rodriguez, Le pacte lyrique, 184. Earl Miner, Comparative Poetics: An Intercultural
Essay on Theories of Literature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990). On the subjectivity of
language, see Ann Banfield, Unspeakable Sentences: Narration and Representation in the Language of
Fiction (Oxfordshire, England: Routledge, 2015). Catherine Kerbrat-Orecchioni, L’énunciation, fourth ed.
(Paris: Armand Colin, 2014), 39-63, 79-94, 113-134. Pritty Patel-Grosz, Patrick Georg Grosz, and Sarah
Zobel, Pronouns in Embedded Contexts at the Syntax-Semantics Interface (Cham: Springer International
Publishing, 2018).
18
fullness or the fragmentation of its experience through the disposition of lines and stanzas, it
conveys the evolution of the action or emotion in time and space through the rhythm.
Onomatopoeias and other phonetic symbolisms bring to life the being that they signify—be it a
natural phenomenon, an animal, or an action. Through these and other linguistic devices the lyric
voice creates the expressive density that is unique to lyric poetry and that reproduces the effect of
presence in a written text.
When the in-presence text becomes a distance text that the voice pretends to utter in
presence, the lyric speaker employs semantic redundancy as well. This means that the “I” adds
details to ensure either that addressees, interlocutors, and readers share the same information
with the speaker or that communication is successful. A case in point is Derzhavin’s poem “On
the Death of Countess Rumiantseva” in which the voice addresses Princess Dashkova as follows:
Stop! and with an indifferent eye
Look at this cypress,
Which is on the high shore,
Hanging on the flowing Neva.
66

The lyric voice adds in the written text the presence of the cypress, which did not exist in reality,
and details its collocation to provide readers with a context that creates the impression of an oral
conversation. This technique increases communicative intensity if we consider the symbolic
meaning of the cypress, which in ancient Greece and Rome stands for death and mourning. This
type of information helps the speaker to shape the communicative situation and to share it with
interlocutors whose reception is deferred.
Because written lyric texts include linguistic devices that are typical of both in-presence
and distance communication, the temporal deferment of the text’s reception and the fictional

66
“Престань! и равнодушным оком / Воззри на оный кипарис, / Который на брегу высоком / На невские
струи навис.” Gavrila R. Derzhavin, Stikhotvoreniia (Leningrad: Sovetskii pisatel’, 1957), 118.
19
character of its in-presence enunciation have fostered controversies concerning the connection
between lyric poetry and the surrounding reality. Wellek and Warren, for instance, affirm that
lyric poetry is fictional in nature—and, therefore, such is the lyric persona: “in the subjective
lyric, the ‘I’ of the poet is a fictional, dramatic ‘I.’”
67
Hamburger, by contrast, claims that lyrics
are rooted in real experience because the interlocutor can perceive the subject of the utterance,
which is the lyric “I,” only as a real entity, even when the statement is fictional.
68
Culler also
maintains that lyric poetry offers “a distinctive vision of the world—not a fictional universe but
our world.”
69
Schaeffer concludes the controversy by stating that “the wide continent that we
classify under the label ‘lyric poetry’ realizes… all of the possible cases: real enunciator,
fictional enunciator, fake enunciator, serious enunciation, playful enunciation, and playful-
fictional enunciation.”
70
Yet, this does not rule out the possibility for the lyric persona to be
present in the text. As we shall see in the first chapter, the anonymous poem “O Death” presents
the speaker in the form of a dead body who is addressing death itself. In this case, both the
communicative situation and the speaker are fictional; the lyric “I” is a dead corpse expressing
his awareness of death’s destructive power over human life. Hence, in my opinion, the center of
the issue does not lie in the fictional or real essence of the speaker and the enunciation, because
this does not nullify lyric poetry’s common denominator, namely the subjective nature of the
utterance.
The subjective nature of lyric poetry does not require the explicit presence of a voice that
says “I.” Rather, the voice appears in ways that distinguish the essence of lyric language, such as

67
Wellek, Warren, Theory of Literature, 15.
68
Hamburger, The Logic of Literature, 272, 274.
69
Culler, Theory of the Lyric, 124.
70
“Le vaste continent qu’on regroupe sous le nom de ‘poésie lyrique’ réalise… tous les cas de figures possibile:
énonciateur réel, énonciateur fictif, énonciateur feint, énonciation sérieuse, énonciation ludique,
énonciation ludique-fictife.” Schaeffer, Qu’est-ce qu’un genre littéraire?, 77.
20
in the stylistic tools deployed. To identify the “I” in lyric texts, I analyze not only linguistic
devices and the emotional, social, historical, and philosophical traces of its presence, but also the
text’s expressive density. A good case in point is constituted by the following lines from Charles
Baudelaire’s “Spleen”: “When the cold heavy sky weighs like a lid / On spirits whom eternal
boredom grips.”
71
Here, although not speaking in the first person, the lyric voice expresses his
own feelings of oppression and anxiety through density of language achieved with specific
stylistic and rhetoric choices, such as similes, metaphors, the lines’ slow and momentous rhythm,
and the ways in which he overturns commonplaces. Something similar occurs in the poetics of
the “objective correlative,” like that of T.S. Eliot, in which the choice of the correlative
represents the speaker’s expressive choices and viewpoint.
72
By turning to narratology, we can
state that, in such cases, the lyric personae reveal themselves through their viewpoints and
voices.
73

If we look beyond the way in which lyric voices manifest themselves in the text, their
expressive choices can reveal their presence, identity, feelings, and philosophical worldviews,
which constitutes a defining feature of lyric poetry.

The East Slavic Path to Lyric Poetry: Open Text, Variety, and Hybridism
The origins, the crucial moments, and the characteristics of lyric poetry in the East Slavic
territories and in Russia during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries show specific traits that
are connected to the culture of the time and of the area. Nevertheless, some of the features that I

71
Roy Campbell, Poems of Baudelaire (New York: Pantheon Books, 1952), 55.
72
“The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an ‘objective correlative’; in other words, a
set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion.” T.S.
Eliot, “Hamlet and His Problems,” in The Sacred Wood; Essays on Poetry and Criticism (England:
Methuen & Co. ltd. 1920), 92.
73
The terminology is from Seymour B. Chatman, Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film
(Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press, 1978).
21
have observed about the evolution of the lyric in the West recur in East Slavic culture as well. In
the East Slavic context, the lyric persona is also the first spark from which lyric poetry generates,
and various expressive modalities, meters, and themes characterize both the voice and the genre.
What makes the East Slavic path to lyric poetry unique and consequently excluded it
from comparative studies and theories on lyrics is its cultural foundation. From its origins up
until the seventeenth century, East Slavic culture lacked movements like Humanism and the
Renaissance, as well as conversations with ancient Greek and Latin authors, which provided
models for literary practice in the West. In the seventeenth century, literary poetry in the East
Slavic territories was rooted in Church Slavonic culture, in which religious and literary texts
were one and the same thing and, therefore, there was not a genre system structured similarly to
that in the West, as the studies by Riccardo Picchio and Gail Lenhoff have demonstrated.
74

Scholars like Viktor Zhivov maintain that, up until the mid-seventeenth century, one could
classify written texts in the East Slavic written tradition depending on the language used. Texts
were grouped together that belonged to different genres on this basis (from the Saints Lives to
the sermons, to virshi), and each of which belonged to distinct cultural spheres (from the
religious, to the spiritual, to the ethical).
75
Other scholars, like M.L. Gasparov, have classified
these early written texts based on their function. Following this principle, one could group
together poetic texts, religious sermons, hagiographies, or narrative works if they shared the

74
Riccardo Picchio, Letteratura della Slavia ortodossa (Bari: edizioni Dedalo, 1991), 7-16, 23-28, 34-40, 52-54.
Gail Lenhoff, “Toward a Theory of Protogenres in Medieval Russian Letters,” in The Russian Review, vol.
43, n. 1 (Jan. 1984), 31-54.
75
“Virshi” are chains of rhymed distiches that spread in Poland, Belarus, and Ukraine between the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries and in Muscovite Rus’ between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Aleksandr
M. Panchenko, Russkaia stikhotvornaia kul’tura XVII veka (Leningrad: Sovetskii pisatel’, 1973), 6-21.
Viktor M. Zhivov, Language and Culture in Eighteenth-Century Culture, transl. Marcus C. Levitt (Boston:
Academic Studies Press, 2009), 16.
22
same communicative function.
76
Other scholars—from Picchio, to Simon Franklin, to Giovanna
Brogi-Bercoff—have agreed that one could judge these texts not according to aesthetic criteria,
but based on their deference to Christian spirituality and adherence to their didactic function.
77

Another key characteristic of Medieval literary culture, which continues to be present in
East Slavic culture up until the seventeenth century, is the open text, which carry significance not
because of the identity of the author who composed them but because of the messages that they
convey. As a result, it was common practice to bring together parts of pre-existing texts in order
to build new textual entities—a phenomenon that scholars like Zhivov, Boris Uspenskii, Leonid
Kasatkin, and Leonid Krysin investigate in their research.
78
From these practices stem two other
characteristics that play a pivotal role in the emergence of the lyric persona in the seventeenth
century: the message conveyed is usually not fictional, but communicates an irrefutable truth to
its interlocutors, and the speakers often appear as people who are recognized for their religious
and didactic functions. Because of the authority acquired, the “I’s” existence and trust within the
text are not questioned.
The situation started to change in the seventeenth century, when, in the East Slavic
territories, the first conscious attempts appeared to create a literary field that was distinct from
the religious one based on the literary experiences coming from the West Slavic territories and
from the late Humanistic and Renaissance traditions. Such a shift is clear in the manuals of

76
Mikhail L. Gasparov, “Oppozitsiia ‘stikh-proza’ i stanovlenie russkogo literaturnogo stikha,” in M.R. Mayenowa
(ed.), Semiotyka i struktura tekstu (Wroclaw: 1973), 327-328.
77
Giovanna Brogi Bercoff, ed., Il Barocco letterario nei Paesi slavi (Roma: La Nuova Italia Scientifica, 1996).
Simon Franklin, Writing, Society and Culture in Early Rus, c. 950-1300 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press, 2002). Picchio, Letteratura della Slavia ortodossa, 55-83.
78
Leonid Kasatkin, Leonid Krysin, Viktor Zhivov, Il russo (Firenze: La Nuova Italia, 1995). Lidiia I. Sazonova,
Literaturnaia kul’tura Rossii. Rannee Novoe vremia (Moscow: Iaziki sl-kikh kul’tur, 2006), 123-124. Boris
A. Uspenskii, “Raskol i kul’turnyi konflikt XVII-ogo veka,” in Izbrannye trudy, tom 1, Semiotika istorii.
Semiotika kul’tury (Petersburg: iaziky russkoi kul’tury, 1996), 477-520. Viktor M. Zhivov, Razyskaniia v
oblasti istorii i predystorii russkoi kul’tury (Moscow: Iazyki slavianskoi kul’tury, 2002). Zhivov, Language
and Culture in Eighteenth-Century Culture, 7-34.
23
rhetoric that the teachers of the Kiev-Mohyla Academy composed between the seventeenth and
the early eighteenth centuries. Giovanna Siedina shows how these manuals are built on the
division in literary genres derived from the Greek, Latin, and Renaissance traditions. In fact,
many of these manuals present the Aristotelian idea that poetry is imitation, the Horatian
classification of poetic genres, and the Renaissance tripartition of poetry. Most of the authors of
these texts named lyric poetry as one of the three main types of poems.
79

Authors like Simeon Polotskii, Karion Istomin, Andrei Belobotskii, and Feofan
Prokopovich—who studied at the Kiev-Mohyla Academy and who were pupils of pupils of the
Academy or had studied in Western Europe—show awareness of the genre system and of the
expressive tools available, which refer not only to sacred texts, but to classical and Renaissance
texts as well.
80
At the same time, their work is characterized by heterogeneity. A prime example
is Andrei’s “Pentateugum,” a literary poem situated at the intersection between translation,
adaptation, and original creation, as well as between epic, descriptive, religious, and lyric poetry.
We need to frame such heterogeneity within the specific nature of lyrics within East Slavic
culture and consider it a result of the indigenous writing tradition. At the same time, the hybridity
of the “Pentateugum” merges with the principle of variety that characterizes Western lyrics. The
interweaving of both aspects becomes evident when we consider the poetic practice of writers
like Evfimii Chudovskii and Petr Buslaev. Certain critics may reasonably maintain that these
poems are not lyric. Indeed, they combine different types of compositions—from lyrics,

79
To this issue Giovanna Siedina has dedicated her study: Horace in the Kyiv Mohylanian Poetics (17th-First Half
of the 18th Century). Poetic Theory, Metrics, Lyric Poetry (Firenze: Firenze University Press, 2017). On
the cultural shift occurring in the seventeenth century, see Picchio, “Osservazioni sulla nuova retorica e
sullla ‘prima occidentalizzazione’ delle lettere russe nel XVII secolo,” in Letteratura della Slavia
ortodossa, 449-460.
80
Sazonova, Literaturnaia kul’tura Rossii, 49-60, 73-84. Lidiia I. Sazonova, Poeziia russkogo Barokko (Moskva:
Nauka, 1991), 17. Feofan Prokopovich, Sochineniia, ed. I.P. Eremin (Moscow, Leningrad: Izd-tvo
Akademii Nauk SSSR, 1961), 3-19.
24
sermons, and songs to epics, satire, and occasional poetry—and, in them, lyric personae do not
manifest themselves directly. However, we can say that lyric voices appear in these texts when
they address their interlocutors, thus affirming their presence through apostrophes and deictics;
when they speak on behalf of their community; or when they shape the perspective from which
the events, the feelings, and the ideas are presented within the text.
The presence of the lyric persona within East Slavic compositions became more explicit
between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The expressions that Simeon Polotskii and
Feofan Prokopovich use to define the poet provide an instance of such a paradigm shift. As
Lidiia Sazonova shows, Simeon defined the poet as the “translator of the words and thoughts of
God.”
81
One may claim that this definition comes from previous similar statements and that it is
a way for the poet to define his role and celebrate his task. Nevertheless, this claim represents the
thinking typical of the second half of the seventeenth century, when the connection between the
religious and the literary spheres was still tight.
A few decades later, Feofan identified poets as those who express the “virtues of the
soul” in his De Arte Poetica (1705), a treatise composed to teach poetics at the Kiev-Mohyla
Academy.
82
The changed definition signifies a altered perspective: the figure of the poet is now
more individualized and the choice of the term “soul” as the receiver of the poet’s action implies
the central role attributed to the individual and their inner life. The innovative aspect of Feofan’s
De Arte Poetica, however, is not limited to this definition, since the treatise presents several
intuitions that are further developed throughout the eighteenth century and that make it much

81
“переводчик слов и мысл Бога.” Sazonova, Poeziia russkogo Barokko, 34.
82
“добродетели душе.” Prokopovich, Sochineniia, 344.
25
more than a manual of poetics. Rather, its goal was to create the rules of a literary tradition that
was establishing itself right then, as Zhivov observes about these turn-of-the-century manuals.
83

The Russian Path to Lyric Poetry: Poetry Is “Fire, Passion, Feeling”
From Feofan’s 1705 treatise to Derzhavin’s 1811-12 “Reflection,” we can trace the path
leading to the emergence of the lyric persona and of lyric poetry in Russia. This path corresponds
with attempts to define a genre that expresses human subjectivity and its various feelings.
In his De Arte Poetica, Feofan, who with his literary endeavors marks the transition from
East Slavic to Russian culture, considers poetry an autonomous form of artistic expression. In
addition, he states that poetry is connected to other disciplines—history, philology and, above
all, philosophy—thus reinterpreting the practice of the open text.
84
Poetry shares, Feofan
maintains, the description of actions in history and philology and the representation of ideas in
philosophy. Although Feofan is clearly referring to Aristotle’s definition of poetry as the
imitation of actions, he also introduces novel elements. Specifically, he affirms that the poet
composes when he is inspired and that the theme of poetry stems from the poet’s ideas and
imagination.
85
These concepts of imagination and inspiration would become central in mid-
eighteenth- and nineteenth-century theory of poetics. Feofan also classifies lyric poetry as a
lower poetic form vis-à-vis the epic and the tragic.
86
He stresses the relational nature of the
lyrics, in which an “I” interacts with a “you.”
87
Hence, Feofan, on the one hand, highlights
literary poetry’s shared features with open texts—which characterize pre-modern East Slavic

83
Zhivov, Razyskaniia v oblasti…, 89.
84
Prokopovich, Sochineniia, 346, 349.
85
Ibid., 349.
86
Ibid., 340.
87
Ibid., 441-442.
26
writings all the way up to Bakhtin’s theories—and, on the other, further individualizes the
figures of the poet and the speaker.
Vasilii Trediakovskii elaborates a different type of theorization in his treatise, New and
Brief Method for the Composition of Russian Verses with Definitions of the Relevant Terms
(1735).
88
The treatise testifies to the moment when, within Russian literature, men of letters
consciously decide to compose poems inspired by the Western European literary tradition. In the
introduction, Trediakovskii explains that “in poetry… two things ought to be noticed,” namely
the principle of “versification” (versifikatsiia) and that of “content” (materiia).
89
Throughout the
treatise, he tries to respect the proposed division. This project is successful in the first part of the
text, which is dedicated to the rules of versification. In the second part, however, Trediakovskii
does not respect the division between form and content and does not go in depth in his analysis.
He names lyric together with epic, dramatic, and bucolic poetry; proceeds to list elegiac and
epistolary poetry; and ends by mentioning satires and epigrams. He also lists Pindar, Anacreon,
Horace, Malherbe, and Monsieur de la Grange as models for lyric compositions. However,
Trediakovskii does not provide either a definition or a deep analysis of lyrics and limits his
discussion of the genre to a partial and incomplete list similar to other treatises that acknowledge
the intrinsic variety of lyric poetry without identifying its distinguishing characteristics. Despite
its appearance of scientific structure, with dutifully numbered “definitions,” “corollaries,” and
“additions,” and with theoretical statements followed by examples that provide supporting
evidence, Trediakovskii’s treatise lacks a sharp gaze into the question of lyric poetry’s nature.

88
The treatise was published in several versions. It was first published in 1735, while a revised version was
published in 1752 and other times throughout the eighteenth century. In the present study, I consider the
1735 version, the first one to be published. Vasilii K. Trediakovskii, “Novyi i kratkii sposob k slozheniiu
rossiiskikh stikhov s opredeleniiami do sego nadlezhashchikh zvanii,” in Izbrannye proizvedeniia
(Moscow, Leningrad: Sov-tkii pisatel’, 1963), 365–420.
89
“В поэзии… две вещи надлежит примечать.” Trediakovskii, “Novyi i kratkii sposob,” 366.
27
Mikhail Lomonosov’s activity as a literary critic is fundamental for the future evolution
of Russian literary poetry and, therefore, it can be surprising to notice that he did not develop a
definition of lyric poetry as did Feofan, Apollos, and Derzhavin. Nevertheless, Lomonosov uses
the term “lyric” when examining figures of speech and stylistic devices that characterize this
type of composition in the Short Guide to Rhetoric for the Lovers of Eloquence (1744), and in
the Short Guide to Oratory, which he published for the first time in 1748, revised in 1765, and
then published seven more times throughout the eighteenth century.
90
His guides reveal his
interpretation of lyric poetry on which his own lyric works rely.
Lomonosov’s notion of lyric poetry is rooted in the idea of amplification, which he
theorized in the Short Guide to Rhetoric and which we can understand as closely related to
variety. Variety also distinguishes Lomonosov’s lyric language and themes, which present “an
original combination of different words for their semantic and functional traits”; and his
versification, which alternates flat and truncated rhymes and, hence, verses of different length.
91

What unifies such variety of expressive modalities is the principle of inspiration or enthusiasm,
which appears in the “Ode on the Taking of Khotin” (1739): “A sudden rupture captivated the
mind.”
92
Harsha Ram has observed that the ode’s beginning “characterize[s] the sublime as a
purely lyric afflatus, the relationship of a poet to his art that initially appears prior to any
historical occasion or institutional affiliation.”
93
In so doing, Lomonosov refers to the conception

90
Mikhail V. Lomonosov, “Kratkoe rukovodstvo k krasnorechiiu” and “Kratkoe rukovodstvo k ritorike na pol’zu
liubitelei sladkorechiia,” in Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, t. 7, Trudy po filologii (Moscow, Leningrad: Izd-vo
AN SSSR, 1950—83), 89—378.
91
“… оригинального сочетания различных по смысловому и функциональному признакам слов.” A.I.
Efimov, M.V. Lomonosov i russkii iazyk (Moskva: Izd-vo Mosk-kogo un-teta, 1961), 21.
92
“Восторг внезапный ум пленил.” Mikhail V. Lomonosov, “Oda blazhennyi pamiati gosudaryne imperatritse
Anne Ioannovne na pobedu nad turkami i tatarami i na vzatie Khotina 1739 goda,” in Izbrannye
proizvedeniia (Leningrad: Sov-kii pisatel’, 1986), 61.
93
Harsha Ram, The Imperial Sublime. A Russian Poetics of Empire (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press),
65.
28
of poetic creation and inspiration that dates back to Pindar and Plato and is developed in
Longinus’ treatise On the Sublime—whose 1674 translation by Nicolas Boileau was certainly
familiar to Lomonosov.
94
K.Iu. Tver’ianovich and M.G. Sharikhina observe how Lomonosov
also develops Boileau’s idea according to which “the naturalness of the emotional state of the
hero is achieved… when he is embraced by various passions.”
95
With his practice of “lyric
disorder,” Lomonosov’s work “in its radicalism… certainly surpasses the models provided by
Boileau, Malherbe, and the German poet Günther.”
96
Lomonosov’s definition of stylistic
registers and literary genres, which follows the classical division of styles and genres, was
innovative within the Russian literary space. As Zhivov has written, concepts derived from
classical culture prompted the creation of stylistic categories that, before then, did not find
adequate space within the East Slavic tradition.
97
So, even if he does not define lyric poetry
explicitly, we can conclude that, for Lomonosov, lyrics originate from inner inspiration that leads
the poet to write on the page and to bring together feelings, ideas, and experiences that are
distant from one another.
Aleksandr Sumarokov also played a crucial role in the evolution of lyric poetry in
eighteenth-century Russia. In his well-known “Epistle on Poetry” (1748)—on which Boileau’s
influence is clear, as Joachim Klein observes—Sumarokov does not develop a definition of lyric
poetry because he is interested in defining linguistic registers, genres, and types of verses that are

94
I.M. Nakhov, “Vydaiushchiisia pamiatnik antichnoi estetiki (Traktat ‘O vozvyshennom’),” in Iz istorii
esteticheskoi mysli drevnosti i srednevekov’ia (Moscow: Izd-vo AN SSSR, 1961), 152. Zhivov, Language
and Culture, 188-189, 206-207, 216-217. Ram, The Imperial Sublime, 46-55.
95
“… естественность эмоционального состояния героя достигается…, когда он объят разнообразными
страстями.” K.Iu. Tver’ianovich, M.G. Sharikhina, “Ritoricheskie sochineniia M.V. Lomonosova i traktat
‘O vozvyshennom’ v perevode N. Bualo: opyt sopostavitel’nogo analiza,” in Ritorika M.V. Lomonosova,
P.E. Bukharkin, S.S. Volkov, E.M. Matveev, eds. (Petersburg: Nestor-istoriia, 2017), 603.
96
Zsuzsanna Bjørn Andersen, “The concept of ‘Lyric Disorder’,” in ScandoSlavica, 26:1 [1980]: 5-17. Kirill A.
Ospovat, “O ‘liricheskom besporiadke’ Lomonosova: (K postanovke problem),” in Lotmanovskii sbornik,
Moscow, 2004:3, 912–917. Ram, The Imperial Sublime, 65.
97
Zhivov, Language and Culture, 338.
29
appropriate for specific types of compositions.
98
Yet this kind of analysis is crucial to the
emergence of lyric poetry, as we have seen with Lomonosov. Sumarokov mentions several
lyricists as exemplary poets: Anacreon, Pindar, Horace, Malherbe, Lomonosov, and Jean-
Baptiste Rousseau. He also names the sonnet, the rondeau, and the ballad, which are three types
of compositions that French Classicist men of letters considered as representative of lyric poetry.
Hence, Sumarokov is interested in introducing into Russia certain terms and conceptions that are
mostly taken from Western poetics, as well as in substituting Russian practices for
recommendations from Boileau’s Ars poetica—but not in developing original insights or
definitions about them. Sumarokov’s importance for the establishment of lyric poetry in Russia
consists mostly in his poetic practice, which includes both his translation of Western lyrics and
his composition of original ones, as Andrew Kahn, Ronald Vroon, and Marcus Levitt have
observed.
99

The “Poetic Rules about Russian and Latin Poetry” (1774) by Apollos [Andrey
Baibakov], a bishop and theologian who taught poetics and rhetoric at the Moscow Slavic-

98
Aleksandr P. Sumarokov, “Epistola II,” in Izbrannye proizvedeniia (Leningrad: sov-kii pisatel’, 1957), 115—125.
Joachim Klein, “Sumarokov und Boileau. Die Epistel ‘Über die Verskunst’ in ihrem Verhältnis zur ‘Art
poétique’: Kontextwechsel als Kategorie der vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft,” in Zeitschrift für
slavische Philologie 50, no.2 (1990): 254–304.
99
Andrew Kahn underlined Sumarokov’s role in introducing into Russia classical poetic works and topoi—the cry
induced by the separation from one’s beloved or for the end of a romantic relationship. Ronald Vroon has
shown how Sumarokov’s goal with his Triumphal Odes and Love Elegies was to create a lyric cycle, thus
contributing to the introduction of lyric poetry into Russia. Marcus Levitt continues such a path, identifying
the precedents for Sumarokov’s lyric cycle in Pindar, Sappho, Anacreon, Horace, and Jean-Baptiste
Rousseau. Rousseau acknowledges Horace’s principle of variety as a defining trait of lyric poetry, and this
confirms once more that East Slavic lyrics are hybrid by nature because of both the East Slavic writing
tradition and the reception of Western poetics. Andrew Kahn, “Readings of Imperial Rome from
Lomonosov to Pushkin,” in Slavic Review 52, no. 4 (1993): 745–768. “Russian Elegists and Latin Lovers in
the Long Eighteenth Century,” in The Cambridge Companion to Latin Love Elegy (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2013), 336–347. Levitt, “Sumarokov and the Unified Poetry Book: His ‘Triumphal Odes’
and ‘Love Elegies’ Through the Prism of Tradition,” in Early Modern Russian Letters: Texts and Contexts
(Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2009), 219-239. Ronald Vroon, “Aleksandr Sumarokov’s ‘Ody
Torzestvennye’: Toward a History of the Russian Lyric Sequence in the Eighteenth Century,” in Zeitschrift
für slavische Philologie 55, no. 2 (1995): 223–263. “Aleksandr Sumarokov’s ‘Elegii Liubovnye’ and the
Development of Verse Narrative in the Eighteenth Century: Toward a History of the Russian Lyric
Sequence,” in Slavic Review 59, no. 3 (October 1, 2000): 521–546.
30
Greek-Latin Academy, shows how the conception of poetry, and especially of the lyrics,
transformed throughout the eighteenth century in Russia. The treatise’s declared goal, similar to
Feofan’s, is to instruct the young students at the Academy. After listing the technical features of
poetry, Apollos moves on to define the different kinds of poetry.
100
This includes lyric poetry,
which Apollos defines as the “art of writing celebratory verses, especially odes; invented in
honor and praise of the highest being. This type of poetry describes celebrations, joys, praises of
men…”
101
His definition builds on Horace’s Ars poetica, as the manuals of poetics composed for
courses at the Kiev-Mohyla Academy usually did. However, Apollos goes in depth to explain the
difference between odes and heroic poems. For him, lyrics are a high type of poetry—a key
difference from Feofan, who considered it a lower artistic form. Lyrics center on human
experiences, which can be actions or emotions and in which the person plays a central role as
either the author or the object of the celebration. Such conception is consistent with Apollos’
statements on the nature of the lyric voice, which clearly stem from Platonic philosophy. Apollos
maintains that, in lyrics, only the poet is speaking, although he later admits that, in a moment of
rupture, the poet can introduce someone else’s voice as well.
102
He also claims that lyrics are
thematically varied, ranging from eulogies, to celebrations, to heroic commemorations.
Moreover, he declares that some lyrics are short, while others are long, thus showing how the
eighteenth-century conception of lyric poetry differed from that elaborated in the twentieth and
twenty-first centuries, when lyrics would be defined by their short form.
103

100
Apollos titles this section: “о разных Поэзии видах” [On the Different Types of Poetry]. Apollos, Pravila
piiticheskie o stikhotvorenii rossiiskom i latinskom (Moscow: Tipografia Kompaniia Tipograficheskaia,
1790), 35.
101
“искусство писать похвальные стихи, особливо Оды; изобртена в честь и прославление верьхновнаго
существа. Описываются сим родом Поезии торжества, радости, похвалы мужей.” Ibid., 47.
102
Ibidem.
103
Ibidem.
31
In his treatise, “Reflection on Lyric Poetry or on the Ode,” the poet Gavrila Derzhavin
brings the principles of subjectivity and of variety to the apex of their expression in eighteenth-
century Russian culture.
104
The treatise was composed in 1811-12, a few years before the
author’s death in 1816, but in it Derzhavin clearly expresses eighteenth-century culture and
worldview. As the title already clarifies, Derzhavin maintains that the ode is the main type of
lyric poetry, although his definition is more specific: the ode is “not a science, but fire, passion,
feeling.”
105
In this statement, the centrality of feelings and, consequently, of the “I” who
experiences and expresses them in the lyrics, is evident. Derzhavin rejects the Aristotelian
principle of lyrics as imitation of nature and the Platonic claim that lyrics are a degraded copy of
the Ideas, and instead identifies inspiration as their distinctive trait.
106
Apollos also acknowledges
the poet’s “rapture” (voskhishchenie) when defining lyric poetry’s distinguishing features.
107

However, in Apollos’ conception, “rapture” is not necessary to create a work of art. Rather, it is
a moment in which artists are unable to control themselves and, therefore, can overcome the
boundaries characterizing their art altogether. In contrast, Derzhavin’s “Reflection” recalls
Feofan’s and Lomonosov’s understandings of lyrics, elaborating the idea that lyric poetry is the
inspiration and expression of feelings. In this sense, Derzhavin’s conception runs parallel to the
one that Western European lyric poets affirmed in the same years.
108

104
http://derzhavin.lit-info.ru/derzhavin/proza/razsuzhdenie/razsuzhdenie.htm (Last access: 27 February 2021).
105
“Она не наука, но огнь, жар, чувство.” http://derzhavin.lit-
info.ru/derzhavin/proza/razsuzhdenie/razsuzhdenie.htm (Last access: 27 February 2021).
106
“… она не есть, как некоторые думают, одно подражание природе, но и вдохновение оной, чем и
отличается от прочей поэзии.” http://derzhavin.lit-
info.ru/derzhavin/proza/razsuzhdenie/razsuzhdenie.htm (Last access: 27 February 2021).
107
Apollos, Pravila piiticheskie, 47.
108
On contemporary conceptions of the lyrics in Western Europe, see M.H. Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp:
Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1953), especially the
third, fourth, and fifth chapters.
32
Derzhavin maintains that inspiration is a “gift from Heaven, a ray from God” and that the
poet is a prophet (prorok)—a gifted person who is able to receive and sing the messages coming
from God.
109
Such a statement is reminiscent of Simeon’s definition of poets; in fact, this section
of “Reflection” brings together poetry, religion, and ethics in a way that recalls the East Slavic
tradition. So, in Derzhavin’s conception, lyric poetry occupies a privileged place both as a form
of art and as the expression of moral teachings. In turn, the lyricist, who is the poet par
excellence, comes to be the mediator between God and society: “We find this in all nations and
in all ages. [Lyric poems] contained a part of religion and moralizing. They were sung during
worship, they explained the oracles, proclaimed the laws, taught, before the invention of writing,
glorious deeds to posterity.”
110
Nevertheless, we cannot deny the novelty of Derzhavin’s text.
His focus on feelings as the trigger for artistic creation and on inspiration as located in the poet’s
heart links the Russian lyric tradition to the contemporary Western one.
These considerations allow me to highlight the continuity between the theory and practice
of lyrics by Simeon, Karion, and Andrei and those by Feofan, Apollos, Lomonosov, and
Derzhavin. Several scholars, including Ram in The Imperial Sublime, have emphasized the
rupture of eighteenth-century Russian literature from previous experiences. Notwithstanding
Ram’s mention of key figures for pre-imperial East Slavic literature such as Simeon Polotskii, he
affirms that “empire and modern verification were established almost simultaneously in
eighteenth-century Russia [and, hence,] Russian poetry began with and as a subject of empire,”
thereby locates the beginning of Russian poetry with the literary endeavors of Lomonosov.
111

109
“… дар Неба, луч Божества.” http://derzhavin.lit-info.ru/derzhavin/proza/razsuzhdenie/razsuzhdenie.htm (Last
access: 27 February 2021).
110
“Сие находим у всех народов и во всех веках. Гимны содержали в себе часть религии и нравоучения. Они
певались при богослужении, ими объясняемы были оракулы, возвещаемы законоположения,
преподаваемы, до изобретения письмен, славныя дела потомству…” http://derzhavin.lit-
info.ru/derzhavin/proza/razsuzhdenie/razsuzhdenie.htm (Last access: 27 February 2021).
111
Ram, The Imperial Sublime, 3-4.
33
However, Lotman notes that, “in the eighteenth century, the state regulation was least extended
to the sphere of spiritual culture… the eighteenth century did not know an official artistic
doctrine.”
112
Although it represents a crucial moment in the evolution of East Slavic culture, we
cannot consider Peter the Great’s Empire as a moment of absolute cultural discontinuity. The
same holds for the poetic practice of eighteenth-century poets like Lomonosov, whose
importance does not lie in serving as the first imperial poet but in contributing to the
establishment of an autonomous literary field.
Thus, in the Western European and East Slavic and Russian poetic traditions, we can find
important meeting points in the conception of lyric poetry. Notwithstanding their different
origins and paths, lyrics are always characterized by thematic and formal variety, which turns
them into open texts; by the lyric personae as their root and unity, who posit themselves as those
who speak and feel; and by linguistic density, which the voices achieve through their expressive
choices.

Methodology and Structure
My study focuses on the close reading of poetic texts centered on death and written
between the second half of the seventeenth and the end of the eighteenth centuries. The corpus
considered is far from exhaustive and could be significantly broadened—something that I plan to
do in the near future. Nevertheless, the chosen texts are appropriate to the present study, and I
selected them based on the opportunities they offer to illustrate the various phases in the
emergence and the evolution of the lyric persona. Some of these texts are little known, and I

112
“государственная регламентация менее всего распространялась в XVIII в. на сферу духовной культуры…
Официальной художественной доктрины XVIII в. не знал.” Iurii Lotman, “Problema ‘obucheniia
kul’ture’ kak ee tipologicheskaia kharakteristika,” in Semiosfera, Semiosphere (Petersburg: Iskusstvo,
2000), 423.
34
have consulted them in their original manuscript form during research that I conducted in
Moscow during the summers of 2017 and 2019 in the archives in GIM (State Historical
Museum), GARF (State Archive of the Russian Federation), RGADA (Russian State Archive of
Ancient Acts), and the Museum of Moscow.
My textual analysis benefits from a multidisciplinary approach that brings together the
historical context, the main philosophical movements of the time, Orthodox spirituality,
thanatology studies, literary history, and linguistic research. Twentieth-century historical,
anthropological, and philosophical studies have helped me to explain how self-awareness in the
human being and a lyric persona in lyric texts originate from the recognition of one’s own mortal
nature. The main works I used are by Philippe Ariès, Alberto Tenenti, Vladimir Jankélévitch,
Edgar Morin, Paul-Louis Landsberg, Emmanuel Lévinas, and Jacques Derrida. Within Slavic
studies, Tat’iana Artem’eva’s research on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Russian
philosophy, Tomáš Špidlík’s studies on Orthodox spirituality, and Daniel H. Kaiser’s and A.G.
Avdeev’s works on East Slavic early modern representations of death allow me to locate the
texts I study within the philosophical, spiritual, and cultural framework of their time. As for the
historical context, the works by Lindsay Hughes, Paul Bushkovitch, Isabel de Madariaga, James
Cracraft, and Richard Wortman have proven to be a helpful support for my research. To theorize
lyrics, studies by René Wellek and Austin Warren, Gérard Genette, Jonathan Culler, and Lidiia
Ginzburg have been helpful reference points. Ginzburg’s On Lyric Poetry is a reference text for
defining the lyric persona in nineteenth-century poetry. We cannot find a lyric hero in
Ginzburg’s analysis of East Slavic seventeenth-century literary poetry, since she herself roots
this type of persona in a specific historical milieu. We can, however, look for its antecedents by
examining how seventeenth- and eighteenth-century lyric speakers emerge and define
35
themselves. The literary studies by Iurii Lotman, Boris Uspenskii, Iurii Tynianov, and Riccardo
Picchio are always insightful; and research by Viktor Zhivov, Aleksandr Panchenko, Lidiia
Sazonova, Luba Golburt, Marcus Levitt, Marina Kiseleva, Irina Reyfman, and Harsha Ram have
been an essential guide in investigating the dynamics at work in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries. Finally, studies by Catherine Kerbrat-Orecchioni, Pritty Patel-Grosz, Regine Eckart,
and Ann Banfield on the subjectivity of language have helped me to identify the presence of the
lyric persona at the linguistic level. As I have delineated in the opening, my work is in
conversation with the studies on death in literature that developed in the twentieth-first century,
and especially those by Jahan Ramazani, Diana Fuss, and Adriana Teodorescu.
In my study, I maintain that an interrelation exists between consciousness of death and
self-awareness which allows us to observe the emergence and the evolution of the lyric persona
in poems on death. Lyric voices manifest themselves in a variety of ways depending on the self’s
involvement in the experience of death and on the cultural and social transformations that allow
for its expression. For these reasons, I consider the speakers in these works as relational because
they never appear withdrawn from the outside world and define their identity through their
relationships with others. In verifying this thesis, I have also identified the recurring
characteristics of the lyric persona that contribute to defining this literary genre relatively to the
principles of variety (varietas) and subjectivity, which can be fruitful for future developments.
My research is organized by both theme and chronology. In the texts of the first chapter,
the death of everyman illuminates the human being’s reaction to the trauma of death. Death
appears as an inevitable event that causes dread and consciousness of the human mortal nature,
although it does not involve the individual directly. The rising awareness of personal identity
leads human beings to commit to righteous behavior in order to deserve Salvation. In order to
36
illustrate this phenomenon, I consider poems composed between the end of the seventeenth and
the beginning of the eighteenth centuries by Simeon Polotskii, Evfimii Chudovskii, Feofan
Prokopovich, Andrei Belobotskii, Karion Istomin, and the anonymous poem “Oh Death.” These
poems express what I call a “universal lyric persona” because they originate in awareness of the
universal human condition of mortality. This acquired awareness brings the event of death to the
foreground in works written between the end of the seventeenth and the end of the eighteenth
centuries that were dedicated to the death of sovereigns and other prominent figures, whose
deaths were the first to be publicly commemorated. They are celebrated in the epitaphs analyzed
in the second chapter by Sil’vestr Medvedev, Karion Istomin, and Mikhail Lomonosov; in the
poems centered on the death of Peter the Great by Vasilii Trediakovskii and Antiokh Kantemir;
and in the odes on the death of socially relevant people by Petr Buslaev, Ivan Dolgorukov, and
Nikolai Karamzin. Even if some of these works were composed for the court, by
commemorating distinguished individuals, the lyric persona analyzes their biographies and,
through their relationship with the deceased, lets individualized traits emerge. However, the
prominent feature in these works is the persona’s public function, so I call this type of lyric voice
“public.” The “I” is ever more involved in the works of Feofan Prokopovich, Aleksandr
Sumarokov, Nikolai Karamzin, Aleksandr Radishchev, and Ivan Dolgorukov, who composed
throughout the eighteenth century and centered their work on the death of people dear to them,
which I examine in the third chapter. At this point in time, the loss of dear ones is perceived as
an inescapable event that cannot be avoided through the idea of Salvation; this leads the lyric
voices to fully come to the fore while seeking an appropriate language to articulate their personal
feelings and emotions. This has led me to define the lyric persona in these compositions as
“private.” Finally, in the fourth chapter, the lyric “I” takes on ever more specific traits and is ever
37
more layered in the poems by Gavrila Derzhavin, so I have called this lyric voice “personal.” In
this chapter, the lyric voice, moving from the discovery that death is the experience that defines
human nature, develops a philosophical notion of the self that merges Orthodox spirituality and
European Enlightenment. Building his own identity and singularity as a person and a poet on this
philosophical conception ultimately allows this voice to overcome the trauma of death.
Unifying the thematic and chronological perspectives helps me to consider the diverse
cultural and literary aspects that are at play in each historical phase defining the lyric persona in
East Slavic and Russian poetry. Moreover, alternating between chapters focused on specific
periods and authors (chapter one and four) and chapters focused on a specific topic (chapter two
and three), allows me to highlight the continuities and ruptures that intertwine over the course of
one and a half centuries. The path described is one of historical, literary, and human discovery,
which, through a close reading, comes to delineate the meaning of human earthly life that
develops in response to the event of death. I have defined the personae emerging from these
compositions as relational because they place themselves in conversation with their interlocutors,
thus realizing a balance between the self and society that we rarely observe in other time periods.
The relational self entered a crisis in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries but apply to the self
as it exists today, as Pierpaolo Donati, and Margaret Archer show.
113
In this sense, my research is
not only retrospective, but also prospective, since its discoveries allow us to define the self in
literature and society as it continues to evolve.

113
Pierpaolo Donati and Margaret Scotford Archer, The Relational Subject (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2015). Pierpaolo Donati, Transcending Modernity with Relational Thinking (London: Routledge,
2021).
38
Chapter One:
The Mystery of Death and the Spark of the “I” in Seventeenth-Century East Slavic Lyrics

In this chapter, I show the emergence of the lyric persona in East Slavic literary poetry
between the last decades of the seventeenth and the first decades of the eighteenth centuries
through a close reading of selected lyrics on death. To this end, I first clarify in what sense it is
possible to state that a lyric “I” exists in this period’s East Slavic poetry. Such clarification is
necessary because the predominant assumption in the field of Slavic studies is that a full lyric
persona appears at the turn of the nineteenth century. In contrast, I claim that an “I,” which we
may define as “lyric” exists in earlier poetic works of the turn of the eighteenth century. These
works stand at the intersection of prose and poetry, of the oral and the written traditions, and of
religious and lay literatures, and thereby constitute the first iteration of literary poetry in East
Slavic culture. Specifically, I argue that, since the subjective dimension lies at the core of lyric
poetry, lyric poetry and a lyric “I” appear simultaneously. We shall not misunderstand this lyric
“I” with the “lyric hero” that Lidiia Ginzburg has identified in Russian nineteenth-century lyrics
and which is defined by biographic and psychological traits. In this chapter, I look for the lyric
“I’s” antecedents by identifying the first indirect appearance of the lyric persona in East Slavic
poetry through linguistic traces and expressive modalities.
I start my study by considering poems on the death of the everyman specifically because
this universal human event triggers self-awareness, motivating the emergence of the lyric
persona. In contemplating their own departure from life, individuals reflect on human nature and
on the self’s destiny. Realizing the reality of death crashes individuals into a senseless universe;
only the fact that their mortal condition is shared with other human beings allows them to insert
39
their personal trauma within the relational sphere and to turn it into words. Connected to the
spiritual realm, the theme of death showcases the continuity between religious texts and literary
poems, which characterize East Slavic culture in early modernity. In these lyrics, the personae
first emerge as speakers who share the mortal condition of their interlocutors. They come to the
fore not as individuals with their biographical identities, but as individuals who partake in the
human experience—in turn, I call the voice in this chapter “universal.” They develop a
perspective that is both internal—oriented toward deepening their consciousness of death and
toward questioning their destiny—and external—oriented toward communicating this acquired
awareness to their counterparts.
In addressing their interlocutors, the lyric voices show different characteristics and
perform various roles, revealing the evolution that is occurring at the turn of the eighteenth
century. The personae sometimes take on the role of men of the Church who employ their poems
as sermons or other types of religious texts. In these religiously oriented poems, the personae
admonish their community of believers and instruct them about how to behave correctly on earth
in order to achieve eternal salvation in the afterlife. Other times, the voices take on the role of an
intellectual elite/erudite people who convey edifying messages from classical and Western lyrics,
both placing themselves within such traditions and contributing to their introduction and
codification in the East Slavic territories. In so doing, they embody the ongoing processes of
cultural Westernization and secularization. In some of these lyrics, a predilection for
theatricality—which stems from the oral literary tradition as well as reflects contemporaneous
Western European culture—leads the speakers to put on masks and present themselves either as
sinners who talk to their interlocutors or as dead men who ask death itself to explain its behavior.
Finally, lyric personae perceive death as an event that concerns them in the first person, which
40
motivates them to internalize their thoughts and feelings and reveal themselves in their texts in
the very moment at which they are carrying out a meditation on their own transitory existence.
Hence, throughout the chapter, I demonstrate that lyric personae exist in the East Slavic poetry
composed at the turn of the eighteenth century, although, at this time, lyric poetry is not yet fully
developed as a mode of expression that is autonomous from religious and oral literature. These
lyric voices demonstrate their relational nature; they reveal themselves while interacting with
their interlocutors.
The protagonists of this phase in the evolution of East Slavic lyrics are Simeon Polotskii
(1629-1680), Evfimii Chudovskii (ca. 1620-1705), Karion Istomin (1640-1718), Andrei
Belobotskii (second half of the seventeenth century-ca. 1720), and Feofan Prokopovich (1681-
1736). These authors are among the first writers of literary verses in Muscovite Russia, and their
creative activity constitutes a decisive turning point in the development of East Slavic literature.
They show the intrinsic heterogeneity of East Slavic early modern literature, when Polish,
Belarussian, Ukrainian, and Russian writers cooperated with one another in defining the lyric as
a genre notwithstanding their ideological differences. Their heterogeneity is not only ethnic and
cultural, but also linguistic, as the corpus of texts I will examine indicates. Viktor Zhivov
elaborates how, in the second half of the seventeenth century, a process of “hybridizing”
Slavonic took place, which brought the literary language closer to national dialects, namely those
of Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine. In this process, the Russian literary language came to define
itself through its privileging of the Moscow dialect, acquiring ever greater importance with the
establishment and the stabilization of the Russian Empire.
114
Belarusian by birth, Simeon
Polotskii became poet at the court of Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich and created a literary

114
Viktor M. Zhivov, Iazyk i kul’tura v Rossii XVIII veka (Moscow: Iazyki russkoi kul’tury, 1996), 381-387.
41
community that fostered artistic creation and exchange.
115
He introduced syllabic verses
following the Polish example and the stanzaic system into East Slavic literature and composed
the first collection of poetry in Russia, Vertograd mnogotsvetnyi (1676-80), which exerted a
remarkable influence on the following generation of poets.
116
Furthermore, with his translation of
the Psalter (1678), he inaugurated the tradition of spiritual poetry that became popular among
poets throughout the eighteenth century, similar to what Jan Kochanowski accomplished a
century earlier in Poland. Simeon Polotskii knew Evfimii Chudovskii, whose original works
mainly encompassed treatises on language, orations, and lyric poems.
117
Simeon and Evfimii
referenced one another in their works, even though they found themselves at opposite ends in the
cultural dispute of the time between Latinophiles—of whom Simeon was a representative—and
Grecophiles—of whom Evfimii was a representative.
118
In addition, both Simeon and Evfimii
were teachers of Karion Istomin. Karion succeeded Simeon Polotskii as court poet and composed
religious and didactic works, panegyrics, epitaphs, and occasionally poetry.
119
Andrei
Belobotskii, Polish by birth, introduced those elements of Western Slavic and Western European
culture into Russia with which he came into contact during his studies and his travels abroad.
120

Feofan Prokopovich, a Ukrainian expert in Western European culture and one of the major

115
Aleksandr M. Panchenko, Russkaia stikhotvornaia kul’tura XVII veka (Leningrad: Sovetskii pisatel’, 1973), 116.
116
Lidiia I. Sazonova, Poeziia russkogo Barokko (Moskva: Nauka, 1991), 14-16. Nadezhda. Iu. Alekseeva, Russkaia
oda: Razvitie odicheskoi formy v XVII-XVIII vekakh (St. Peterburg: Nauka, 2005), 36-37.
117
Sazonova, Poeziia russkogo Barokko, 17-21. Olga B. Strakhov, The Byzantine Culture in Muscovite Rus’. The
Case of Evfimii Chudovskii (1620-1705) (Köln, Weimar, Wien: Böhlau Verlag, 1998), 83-104.
118
On the polemics between Latinophiles and Grecophiles, see Strakhov, The Byzantine Culture in Muscovite Rus’,
43-55. Boris A. Uspenskii, Iazykovaia situatsiia Kievskoi Rusi i ee znachenie dlia istorii russkogo
literaturnogo iazyka (Moskva: Izd-stvo Moskovskogo universiteta, 1983), 65, 106. Viktor M. Zhivov,
Language and Culture in Eighteenth-Century Culture, transl. Marcus C. Levitt (Boston: Academic Studies
Press, 2009), 69-70.
119
Paola Cotta Ramusino, Un poeta alla corte degli zar. Karion Istomin e il panegirico imperiale (Alessandria:
Edizioni dell’Orso, 2002), 4-20.
120
Marina Ciccarini, Gli ultimi roghi. Fede e tolleranza alla fine del Seicento. Il caso di Andrej Christoforovič
Belobockij (Roma: Armando Editore, 2008), 57-67. Panchenko, Russkaia sillabicheskaia poeziia XVII-
XVIII vv., 216-217.
42
supporters of the reforms of Peter the Great, studied and taught rhetoric and poetics at the
renowned Kyiv-Mohyla Academy.
121
He represents a figure of transition from seventeenth-
century “knizhnost’,” wherein the religious and the literary spheres were not distinguished, and
early eighteenth-century literature, wherein a variety of genres and styles started developing
autonomously from the religious tradition.
122
To these writers we shall add the anonymous
author of the virshi “Oh Death.” “Virshi”—“verses”—spread in Poland, Belarus, and Ukraine
between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and in Russia between the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries and were often anonymous chains of rhymed distiches characterized first by
a tonic musicality and then by a syllabic one.
123
They presumably represent the first form of
written poetry distinct from oral poetry and thus demonstrate that, in seventeenth-century Rus’,
authorial poetry was taking its first steps at the same time as anonymous poetry.
124
Drawing upon
this selection of works allows me to portray the different lyric expressions in the seventeenth-
century East Slavic territories and to depict the East Slavic original path toward the definition of
the lyric persona.

121
Petr Morozov, Feofan Prokopovich kak pisatel’. Ocherk iz istorii russkoi literatury v epokhu preobrazovaniia
(St. Petersburg: Tipografiia V.S. Balasheva, 1880), 98-99, 128, 141-142. James Cracraft, “Feofan
Prokopovich,” in John G. Garrard, ed., The Eighteenth Century in Russia (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975),
86. Gary M. Hamburg, Russia’s Path toward Enlightenment. Faith, Politics, and Reason, 1500-1801 (New
Haven, London: Yale University Press, 2016), 246-253, 264-278, 281-282.
122
Marina Kiseleva, Intellektual’nyi vybor Rossii vtoroi poloviny XVII-nachala XVIII veka ot drevnerusskoi
knizhnosti k evropeiskoi uchenosti (Moskva: Progress-Traditsiia, 2011), 75-79, 90-91.
123
A brief overview of the complex transition from the tonic to the syllabic metric system is in Panchenko, Russkaia
sillabicheskaia poeziia XVII-XVIII vv., 6-21. Panchenko himself defines the anonymous poem as “virshi”:
Ibid., 397.
124
The practice of anonymity remained popular in the East Slavic territories until the seventeenth century and has
been studied by the scholar Riccardo Picchio. According to this principle, since every written word is the
direct expression of God’s wisdom, the message that a text conveys is more important than the
individuality of the author who composed it. The situation begins to change in the second half of the
seventeenth century, when the first writers with authorial consciousness started signing their works. The
most well-known instances of such phenomenon are Archbishop Avvakum, with Life (1672), and Simeon
Polotskii, who authored numerous collections of poems, like Vertograd mnogotsvetnyi (1676-80).
43
Scholars traditionally define the period that I consider in this chapter as the age of the
Baroque. Aleksandr Panchenko and Marina Kiseleva have pointed out how seventeenth-century
East Slavic art presents motifs that are traditionally considered Baroque—like memento mori,
danse macabre, and tempus fugit.
125
Viktor Zhivov writes of this period’s eclectic nature,
whereas Dmitrii Likhachev claims that the Baroque in seventeenth-century Russia carried out the
same role that the Renaissance did in Western Europe a century earlier. While Peter Davidson
defines the Baroque as a universal movement free from chronological delimitations, thereby
including Kievan Rus’, Lidiia Sazonova affirms that the Russian Baroque runs parallel to the
Western European one.
126
However, East Slavic culture did not experience the evolution from
the Classical movements to the Medieval, the Renaissance, and the Baroque ones, which
determined the cultural development in Western Europe. Hence, East Slavic literature is
embedded in such a different cultural situation that it is challenging to view it through the lens of
concepts developed to explain literary traditions elsewhere. Thus, in my study I do not employ
such labels as Baroque when referring to East Slavic culture.
In the present chapter, by analyzing death poems by Simeon Polotskii, Evfimii
Chudovskii, Karion Istomin, Andrei Belobotskii, Feofan Prokopovich, and an anonymous
author, I demonstrate the ways in which we can identify lyric personae in East Slavic
seventeenth- and eighteenth-century poetic compositions and their characteristics. I first show
these authors’ knowledge of lyric works and poets. Then, I pinpoint the tools by which a lyric
voice comes to the fore in their poems—mainly, dialogism, theatricality, imitation, translation,

125
Panchenko, Russkaia sillabicheskaia poeziia, 382-3. Kiseleva, Intellektual’nyi vybor Rossii, 112-124.
126
Viktor M. Zhivov, “K tipologii Barokko v russkoi literature XVII-nachala XVIII v.,” in Chelovek v kul’ture
russkogo Barokko: Cb. st. po materialam mezhdunar. konf. (Moskva: IF RAN, 2007), 1-14. Dmitrii S.
Likhachev, Razvitie russkoi literatury X-XVII vv. (Leningrad: Nauka, 1973). Lidiia I. Sazonova,
Literaturnaia kul’tura Rossii. Rannee novoe vremiia (Moskva: Iazyki slavianskikh kul’tur, 2006). Peter
Davidson, The Universal Baroque (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007), 171-177.
44
thematic clue, and erudition. In doing so, I delineate the roles that the lyric personae play in these
poems and the process by which they come to internalize their reflections on death—a process
which foretells how the lyric persona will continue to develop throughout the eighteenth century.

A Controversial Presence: Lyric Poetry in Early Modern Russia
Is it possible to talk about lyric poetry when considering the poems of the East Slavic
territories at the turn of the eighteenth century? Scholars have long neglected this question and
there remains no specific study on the matter. However, recent scholarship starts to locate the
beginning of the knowledge and practice of lyric poetry in the East Slavic territories in the
seventeenth century, when elites began attending academies, such as those in Vilnius and Kiev,
where lyric poetry was part of the curriculum. Building on this work, I demonstrate through
textual analysis that we can identify the first lyric works in seventeenth-century Russia.
We know that seventeenth-century writers showed deep familiarity with the major
classical authors of lyric poems and also created lyric works themselves. The programs on
poetics in the East Slavic Academies confirm this, since their curricula entailed not only the
theoretical study of lyric poetry, but also practical training in writing lyric compositions. Such
course structure built on the notion of art as “tekhnē,” which means “technique” in ancient Greek
and refers to the set of rules that one needs to study and practice in order to become expert in a
specific field.
127
At the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, one of the main academies in the East Slavic
territories, several lyricists participated in this program, including Simeon Polotskii and Feofan
Prokopovich. Giovanna Siedina analyzes the manuals of poetics that the students of the

127
Giovanna Siedina, Horace in the Kyiv Mohylanian Poetics (17th-First Half of the 18th Century). Poetic Theory,
Metrics, Lyric Poetry (Firenze: Firenze University Press, 2017), 186-188.
45
Academy used between 1671 and the mid-eighteenth century.
128
They show numerous references
to works of poetics, among which Horace’s Ars poetica plays a crucial role; to the lyrics of
classical authors like Alcaeus of Mytilene, Sappho, Horace, Ovid, and Pindar; and to lyrics of
Polish Renaissance and Baroque writers like Jan Kochanowski (1530-84), Maciej Kazimierz
Sarbiewski (1545-1640), and Samuil Twardowski (1600-61). In particular, the Polish authors
play the role of mediator between the East Slavic and the Western European poetic genres,
styles, and themes. More broadly, as Sazonova observes, seventeenth-century men of culture
showed an “understanding of the nature of poetry [that comes from] all of the previous tradition,
that is, the classical, Renaissance, and post-Renaissance theoretical tradition.”
129
Such an
understanding of poetry is linked to the fact that several poets active in early modern Russia had
Western Slavic origins—like Andrei Belobotskii, who was Polish by birth—or studied in
Western territories—like Simeon Polotskii, who studied at the Academy in Vilnius, and Feofan
Prokopovich, who completed his education in Rome. This means that they had direct access to
the works of rhetoric and poetics and to the lyric compositions of the major classical,
Renaissance, and Polish poets. Subsequently, we can affirm that East Slavic poets knew and
practiced lyric poetry in seventeenth-century Russia both because they studied it in their courses
of poetics and because they had become familiar with it during their travels abroad.

128
It is safe to imply that Simeon Polotskii, who was born in 1629, did not study these manuals and that, within
thirty years, the manuals’ characteristics and sources may have evolved. However, Siedina herself has
specified that these manuals did not significantly change in terms of their structure or sources. Her study
thus gives us an idea of the kind of education and sources to which the students at the Kyiv-Mohyla
Academy had access. Furthermore, the structure of the Academy was modeled on the Jesuit Academies
spread throughout Europe, where old manuals often inspired the new ones. For instance, Mytrofan
Dovhalev’skyj’s manual of poetics, whose composition dates to 1736, is based on a 1696 manual, which
the author owned. Siedina, Horace in the Kyiv-Mohylanian Academy, 21. Max J. Okenfuss has analyzed
the influence of Jesuit education on pre-Petrine and Petrine Russia in “The Jesuit Origins of Petrine
Education,” in John G. Garrard, ed., The Eighteenth Century in Russia (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973),
106-130.
129
“… понимание природы поэзии… исходило из всей предшествующей традиции, переосмысляя античное,
ренессансное и постренессансное теоретическое наследие…” Sazonova, Poeziia russkogo Barokko, 33.
46
To fully understand these poets’ works, we need to consider the specificities of their
notion of lyric poetry, which differs from our conception of it today. These poets considered
books from the Bible, like the Psalms, Ecclesiastes, and certain passages from Revelation as
lyrics.
130
They also included within the concept of lyric such works as Torquato Tasso’s
Jerusalem Delivered in Kochanowski’s Polish translation (1618); despite being classified as an
epic poem, this work features passages in which a lyric expressive mode prevails. Siedina notes
how certain East Slavic manuals in this period cite lyric poetry as one of the three main
categories in which all poetic works can be classified alongside the epic and the tragic, whereas
others mention lyric poetry as one of the many types of poems, including, but not limited to the
elegiac and bucolic ones. For instance, in Helicon Bivertex seu poesis bipartita solutae et ligatae
orationis (1689), poetry is divided into epic, elegiac, and lyric categories.
131
It seems that Feofan
Prokopovich, in his De Arte poetica (1705), was the first to acknowledge that the lyric is one of
the expressive modalities typical of poetry.
132
According to him, lyrics express emotions and are
characterized by “sweetness” (sladost’) and by stylistic embellishments.
133
His manual of poetics
was a model for the authors of manuals in the first half of the eighteenth century and was
influential for future classifications and definitions of lyrics. However, at the turn of the
eighteenth century, the idea of lyrics and its role within the system of poetic genres still held an
unstable place in East Slavic literature. It was only thanks to the experimentations carried out by
Simeon Polotskii and by the poets analyzed in this chapter, some of whom were his disciples,
that lyric poetry was eventually defined as a proper genre.

130
Ibid., 36.
131
Siedina, Horace in the Kyiv-Mohylanian Academy, 7-8, 13, 18-19.
132
Feofan Prokopovich, De arte rhetorica. Libri X. Kijoviae 1706, comm. Renate Lachmann, ed. Bernd Uhlenbruch
(Köln, Wien: Böhlau Verlag, 1982), XIX-XXX.
133
Feofan Prokopovich, Sochineniia, ed. I.P. Eremin (Moskva, Leningrad: Izd-stvo Akademii Nauk SSSR, 1961),
440-441.
47
The reasons behind lyric poetry’s circuitous path in the East Slavic and Russian
territories lie in the history of the writing tradition in ancient Rus’. As Harvey Goldblatt and
Riccardo Picchio note, pre-modern East Slavic literature is based on the practice of the open text,
according to which a text can be modified during its transmission from generation to generation
and certain sections within a text can be used autonomously from other sections.
134
It is
moreover widely acknowledged that the division into genres according to the criteria of Western
literary classification did not take place in the East Slavic territories until the seventeenth
century.
135
Before that, Zhivov maintains, written texts were classified depending not on their
genre, but on their bookishness. Bookish texts were characterized by a “logically ordered and
rhetorically organized syntax” and by the “use of markers of bookishness (for example, forms of
the imperfect or gerunds in agreement with their subjects).”
136
Based on these features, texts that
were considered “bookish” belonged to different genres—saints’ lives, sermons, and virshi—and
to different spheres—the religious, the spiritual, or the ethical. According to other scholars, like
Mikhail Gasparov, written texts were classified based on their function. For instance, one could
distinguish between texts sung in religious settings, texts performed by actors (skomorokhi),
folkloric texts sung and told in the “byliny,” and poetic texts included in hagiographic and
oratory works.
137
In pre-modern Rus’, there was no opposition between prose and poetry and
between oral and written texts, but the notion of open text prevailed and texts were distinct in
terms of register or function rather than genre. This explains why we can talk of a hybrid

134
Harvey Goldblatt and Riccardo Picchio, “Old Approaches and New Perspectives: Once Again on the Religious
Significance of the ‘Slovo o Polku Igorevě’,” in Harvard Ukrainian studies 28, no. 1/4 (January 1, 2006):
129–154.
135
Gail Lenhoff, “Toward a Theory of Protogenres in Medieval Russian Letters,” in The Russian Review, vol. 43,
no. 1 (Jan. 1984), 31-54.
136
Zhivov, Language and Culture in Eighteenth-Century Russia, 16.
137
Mikhail L. Gasparov, “Oppozitsiia ‘stikh-proza’ i stanovlenie russkogo literaturnogo stikha,” in Mayenowa M.R.,
ed., Semiotyka i struktura tekstu (Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich, 1973), 327-328.
48
speaking voice, in which the characteristics of the lyric persona sometimes interweave with those
of the epic, historical, or dramatic voice.
Although we can find instances of folkloric poetry during the Middle Ages in the East
Slavic territories, a form of literary poetry started developing only in the seventeenth century.
The emergence of Simeon Polotskii’s poetic work serves as a turning point at which authors
intentionally began composing literary verses, which aimed not only to communicate an ethical-
religious message, but also to express it in a refined way. The ways in which this transition
occurred remain a subject of scholarly debate. Zhivov identifies the shift in the distinction
between prose and poetry after the reforms of Nikon (1652-55)—one of the processes that led to
a differentiation between genres.
138
Picchio argues that it is more productive to trace the origin of
literary poetry not by stressing the opposition between prose and poetry, but by contextualizing it
within the history of “writing techniques.”
139
His theory is based on the fact that, in pre-modern
East Slavic literature, forms of rhythmic and rhymed discourse similar to poetry existed in
prosaic works as well. Following Picchio’s path, I let the elements of continuity and
discontinuity with the preceding cultural tradition emerge from the texts themselves so as to trace
the first spark of the lyric “I’s” presence in East Slavic early modern poetry.
Following Picchio, Sazonova, Siedina, and Zhivov, seventeenth-century East Slavic
culture was ready to host the composition of original lyrics. The resulting poems show traces of
poetic innovations that stem from both Western Europe and the East Slavic cultural traditions.

138
Viktor M. Zhivov, “Religioznaia reforma i individual’noe nachalo v russkoi literature XVII veka,” in Razyskaniia
v oblasti istorii i predystorii russkoi kul’tury (Moscow: Iazyki slavianskoi kul’tury, 2002), 323-324, 328,
332.
139
Riccardo Picchio, Letteratura della Slavia ortodossa (Bari: Edizioni Dedalo, 1991), 340.
49
Where There Is a “You,” There Is an “I”
Now that the presence of lyric poetry in seventeenth-century Russia is established, we
need to identify the lyric persona in these poems. In these poems, the spark, from which the
universal lyric “I” springs from is the exchange between the speaking voice and a generic
interlocutor who corresponds to the whole of humanity in which the former reminds the latter of
the mortality of human nature.
The speaker’s reminder illuminates the dialogic nature of these poems, which has its roots
not only in religious and spiritual texts, but also in oral poetry. As Paul Zumthor observes,
dialogism characterizes oral communication, “although, most of the time, only one of the
participants speaks.”
140
Oral communication is a word-action that originates in a concrete
situation and entails interaction between the human beings involved. It expresses a relationship
with a “you” through which the personae distinguish themselves and come to know themselves;
as Iurii Lotman writes, “[the] ‘I’ and the ‘other’ are two aspects of the same act of self-awareness
and cannot exist without one another.”
141
Moreover, dialogism is typical of lyric poetry, as
Northrop Frye notices: “The lyric poet normally pretends to be talking to himself or to someone
else.”
142
Yet we know from testimonies about the first poetic forms that this fictional
conversation is a real performance by the poet—be it the ancient Greek aoidos, the Hebraic
prophet, the Provençal troubadour, or the singers of spiritual verses in ancient Rus’ (kaliki).
Indeed, it is not by chance that the figures of speech that several scholars identify as typical of
lyric poetry also characterize dialogism (e.g., the apostrophe in Culler’s study and the

140
“même si, le plus souvent, un seul des participants a la parole.” Paul Zumthor, La lettre et la voix. De la
“littérature” médivale (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1987), 248.
141
“«Я» и «другой» - две стороны единого акта самосознания и невозможны друг без друга.” Iurii M. Lotman,
“Mir sobstvennykh imen,” in Kul’tura i vzryv (Moskva: Progress, 1992), 54.
142
Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957), 250.
50
exclamation for Philippe Hamon).
143
Hence, we can talk about a lyric persona in the poems
analyzed in this chapter because dialogism is a distinctive sign both of lyric poetry and of the
presence of the “I.”
Simeon Polotskii’s “Memento mori”—a syllabic poem consisting of three stanzas of
three, ten, and eighteen lines, respectively—is included in the cycle on death in the collection of
poems, Vertograd mnogotsvetnyi.
144
Already at the beginning, the speaking voice addresses and
admonishes his interlocutor about the constant threat of death in our lives: “When a great
happiness fills you / Remember that death kills man.”
145
A second-person pronoun and verb in
the imperative mood logically imply a first person, that of the sentence utterer. This is one of the
“subjectless imperatives,” which, in Ann Banfield’s terms, “contain a deep structure subject you”
and include the implicit expression of subjectivity.
146
Here, the speaker is characterized by a
wisdom that is superior to that of his interlocutor and, through it, peremptorily affirms his
presence by highlighting the sharp contrast between a joyful experience and the gloom of death,
thus making his presence ever more pronounced and menacing. In this lyric, the speaker and the
interlocutor are both undetermined as a universal “I” and “you,” defined exclusively by their
dialogic relationship and by their shared mortal condition.
Something similar occurs in Evfimii Chudovskii’s poem, which is part of a series
autographed by him and included in a manuscript from the Chudov monastery in the Moscow
Kremlin. It is almost certain that Evfimii never composed the manuscript for publication, but he

143
Culler, Theory of the Lyric, 211-246. Philippe Hamon, “Sujet lyrique et ironie,” in Dominique Rabaté, Joëlle de
Sermet, Yves Vadé, eds., Le sujet lyrique en question (Bordeaux: Presses Universitaires de Bordeaux,
1996), 21.
144
Simeon Polotskii, Vertograd mnogocvětnyj, eds. Anthony Hippisley and Lidiia I. Sazonova, vol. 3 (Köln,
Weimar, Wien: Böhlau Verlag, 1996), 151-152.
145
“Егда тя радость исполнит велика / Помни, яко смерть мертвит человѣка.” Ibid., 151.
146
Ann Banfield, Unspeakable Sentences. Narration and Representation in the Language of Fiction (Abingdon,
New York: Routledge, 2015), 113.
51
used it within the monastery. In fact, it includes a variety of texts in prose and verses by different
monks. The poem considered here is untitled and belongs to a section that is dated 1678-80.
147

Like Simeon’s “Memento mori,” the lyric speaker also appears in the first line of the poem,
exhorting his interlocutor to reflect on his transient nature with a verb in the imperative mood:
“Look, man, at this clock.”
148
The deictic “this” locates the allocution in a concrete situation, in
the very moment of the dialogue. In the second verse, a verb in the second person singular
recurs. This repetition confirms that the lyric speaker is talking to someone: “You will become
wiser than any theology.”
149
The couplet’s peremptory tone, which we also encounter in
Simeon’s poem, implies that the utterer has already acquired the wisdom that he wishes to impart
to his interlocutor. The initial allocution, “man,” plays with terminological ambiguity: it could
refer to a specific man, to the other monks who lived in the Chudov monastery and who had
access to the manuscript, to the believers to whom Evfimii probably read the composition, or to
the whole of humanity. Such ambiguity allows the speaker to make it clear that he directs his
message to humankind, thus suggesting that death is a universal experience.
150
The speaker
expresses this idea through the metaphor of the clock, which symbolizes the temporal and mortal
character of human life. Using concrete objects to express abstract concepts, a tool which
scholars like Theodor Elwert consider typical of Baroque art, strengthens the interlocutor’s

147
Lidiia I. Sazonova, “Evfimii Chudovskii—novoe imiia v russkoi poezii XVII v.,” in TODLR, t. 44 (1990), 300-
324.
148
“Зри, человече, на сей орологий.” Ibid., 322.
149
“умудришися паче теологии.” Ibidem.
150
I am drawing on the relational notion of the self as developed by scholars, including Annette Vaier, “Cartesian
Persons,” in Postures of the Mind: Essays on Mind and Moral Theory (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1985), 74-92. Susan J. Brison, “Relational Autonomy and Freedom of Expression,” in
Catriona Mackenzie and Natalie Stoljar, eds., Relational Autonomy: Feminist Perspectives on Agency and
the Social Self (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 280-299.
52
identity as a concrete individual standing in for the whole of humanity. The lyric “I” places his
address in a concrete situation and makes the threat of death more tangible.
151

Although he also addresses a “man,” the lyric persona in Feofan Prokopovich’s
composition distinguishes himself from that in Simeon and Evfimii’s works. Little is known of
this poem—only that Feofan likely composed it at the beginning of the eighteenth century, that it
is untitled, and that it was published in a 1769 collection of poems together with other spiritual
compositions by the same author.
152
In the poem’s opening line, the speaker in Feofan’s lyric
characterizes his interlocutor as a “vain man” and an “unworthy slave” to material goods rather
than someone who leads a righteous life.
153
On the one hand, the interlocutor could be a
particular individual—perhaps an arrogant nobleman whom Feofan met during his time in the
court of Peter the Great in the 1710s-1720s.
154
On the other hand, the interlocutor may stand for
humankind more broadly since the qualities attributed to him are typical of the human condition.
In the latter case, the initial address may even include the speaking “I,” who is a member of
humankind himself.
This “I,” however, distinguishes himself from his peers because of his newfound
awareness of his mortality—this awareness recalls that of the speakers in Simeon and Evfimii’s
poems. Nevertheless, in contrast to Simeon and Evfimii’s poems, the tone of the voice in
Feofan’s lyric is both blameful and mocking: “How far you wander with your dreams!”
155

Through this ironic yet moralistic exclamation, the speaker points out the recklessness with
which the “vain” and “slave” man pursues his dreams, which are unavoidably threatened by

151
W. Theodor Elwert, La poesia lirica italiana del Seicento: studio sullo stile barocco (Firenze: L. S. Olschki,
1967), 56.
152
Panchenko, Russkaia sillabicheskaia poeziia, 392.
153
“суетный человече.” “рабе неключимый.” Ibid., 285.
154
Hamburg, Russia’s Path toward Enlightenment, 264-265, 267, 272-275.
155
“Как то ты далеко бродиш мечтанми твоими!” Panchenko, Russkaia sillabicheskaia poeziia, 285.
53
death. Hence, this moralistic and ironic conversation with an unscrupulous “you” reminds the
latter of humankind’s mortality. It is through his consciousness of the inevitability of death that
the lyric speaker self-manifests.
A similar dialogic nature characterizes the speaker in “Oh Death,” anonymous virshi
composed no later than the end of the seventeenth century whose intended audience and purpose
remain unknown.
156
These virshi, organized in eleven ten-line stanzas apart from the seventh
twenty-line stanza, illustrate the dialogic nature that defines lyric poetry, but they are free of the
literary convention of physical co-presence that we have observed in the previous poems. In
other words, the lyric “I” does not address a real or imagined “you” as in Simeon, Evfimii, and
Feofan’s poems. The lyric speaker in “Oh Death” finds himself in a clearly unreal situation,
turning dialogism into a purely rhetorical device. In fact, the speaker is a dead person and the
interlocutor is death itself. Death, in Paul-Louis Landsberg’s words, “is an absent presence” for
human beings, for it is the “immanent future” of our lives.
157
The poem personifies death, giving
it a presence of its own, while prosopopoeia emphasizes the intensity of the communication
between death and the dead person. The apostrophe “Oh death” opens the first six and the last
stanzas, as well as reappears at the end of the seventh and the ninth stanzas. This repetition not
only reproduces the frequent addresses to interlocutors, which are typical of oral performances,
but also becomes the organizing principle of the composition—it interrupts the discourse at the
end of each stanza and relaunches it at the beginning of the next stanza. This way, the verses
follow the “psychodynamics of orality,” whereby aggregation prevails over analysis and

156
Ibid., 397.
157
Paul-Louis Landsberg, The Experience of Death. The Moral Problem of Suicide, transl. Cynthia Rowland (New
York: Philosophical Library, 1953), 5-6.
54
redundancy prevails over linearity.
158
Like the interlocutor, the speaker in this poem is also
unreal. In the first stanza, he reveals that he is a dead person: “Suddenly you put me… / …
among the stinking corpses.”
159
The voice attributes negative human qualities to death, like
“malevolent,” “angry,” “merciless.”
160
Such hatred expressed against death—that is, against his
own annihilation—paradoxically shows how conscious the human is of the unique value of his
individual life, despite being represented through universalizing characteristics. As Edgar Morin
writes, hatred against death is determined by “[a]wareness… of an emptiness, of a nothingness
that opens where once was individual fullness.”
161
Thus, in ascribing negative qualities to death,
the “I” manifests the emergence of self-awareness and defines the essence of the two
interlocutors. The imaginary situation is interrupted only in the last stanza, thus giving the
impression that this dialogue is occurring in reality between a man of the Church and the
believers: “Men of Christ.”
162
Since the apostrophe to his fellow Christians is followed by ethical
recommendations, everything that the lyric “I” has communicated to death so far becomes, in
retrospect, a word of advice and an admonition: we do not escape death, so we have to behave
righteously in order to make sure that we live a blessed eternal life.
We can still observe a dialogic approach in Andrei Belobotskii’s “Pentateugum,” an
eschatological long poem published multiple times between the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries. The poem is divided into five books of different length in syllabic verses organized in
octaves with alternating rhymes. Nevertheless, like in “Oh Death,” its dialogism becomes a

158
Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy: the Technologizing of the Word, ed. John Hartley, 3
rd
ed. (Hoboken: Taylor
and Francis, 2012), 31-76.
159
“В нечаяние… мя… / … между смрадными трупы положила.” Panchenko, Russkaia sillabicheskaia poeziia,
317.
160
“злосливая.” “гневливая.” “немилостивая.” Ibid., 316-317.
161
“Conscience… d’un vide, d’un néant, qui s’ouvre là où il y avait la plénitude individuelle...” Edgar Morin,
L’homme et la mort (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1970), 41.
162
“людие христоименитии.” Panchenko, Russkaia sillabicheskaia poeziia, 319.
55
literary convention because the interlocutors are sometimes imaginary. We can consider the first
book as an instance of implicit dialogism. In the first five stanzas, the “I” appears as he perceives
death approaching, while the presence of an unspecified “you” becomes explicit in the sixth to
the twenty-third stanzas. The interlocutor is only identified by second-person verbs and
pronouns. In this section, the lyric “I” carries out a long, detailed teaching on what it means to
die. The voice explains to the interlocutor the physical transformation that death will cause to the
latter’s body: “[Your] face will melt like wax, [your] clear eyes will be darkened” and “With
your stink you will chase everyone away, they will hold their noses and mouths.”
163
The persona
insists on the same motifs and devices, like verbs in the future perfective, in order to convey the
speaker’s solemn, peremptory tone: “… they will throw you in the dark grave.”
164
In the first
book’s last two stanzas, the utterer teaches his interlocutor how to accept death (“Virtue is the
crown to everything”), exhorting his listener to “… love the Creator, and do not sin.”
165
Here, the
rhetorical structure in Evfimii’s poem is overturned. Evfimii’s discourse carries out an
imperative function in the opening of the poem and utilizes the first person in its closing. In
contrast, the speaking subject in “Pentateugum” first conveys his own anxiety as death
approaches, then implicitly admonishes his interlocutor by listing the damages caused by death,
and finally admonishes his listener explicitly. Such structure proves that Andrei conceived
“Pentateugum” as a written text and that its traces of orality correspond to stylistic choices.
The “Pentateugum’s” refined dialogic structure reveals new qualities as the poem
proceeds. For instance, the second book exhibits a variety of poetic voices. It opens with an
address to the interlocutors, which is typical of oral communication, although the addressees are

163
“Лице что воск растопится, ясне очи помрачают.” “Смрадом своим всех отгонишь, заткнут нос и уста
себе.” Ibid., 219-220.
164
“в темну могилу тя кинут.” Ibid., 220.
165
“Добродетель всему венец.” “творца люби, а не греши.” Ibid., 222.
56
not present in the situation, but rather consist of groups of people, sometimes even imaginary
listeners like the dead people in the following invocation: “… sovereigns of this world. / … /
Tsars, princes, and noblemen, grand dignitaries and slaves, / Those who have died and those who
are alive here with us sojourners.”
166
From the twenty-fourth to the thirty-eighth stanzas, Christ
speaks in the first person as a judge. The interlocutors are the damned to whom Christ reminds
that the offenses against their needy neighbors are offenses against Christ himself: “I was
hungry, you were feasting, I asked you for alms / And you pushed me away.”
167
In this way, the
dialogic situation in “Pentateugum” is even more unusual because it is carried out by a variety of
speakers and interlocutors, who are both plausible and imaginary. We can grasp higher stylistic
sophistication here than in Simeon, Evfimii, and Feofan’s monologues and in the virshi. One
might also notice an effective way to express, through the first-person discourse, the emotional
and philosophical implications of the rising consciousness of death.
The poems by Simeon, Evfimii, and Feofan reveal traces of oral and religious
communication since their very openings and their dialogic nature allows us to grasp the
presence of the universal “I.” The voices in these lyrics reveal their presences through the stances
that they take while talking about death. In conveying thanatological messages, they are aware
that they are talking about one of the most universal and crucial experiences of human life,
assuming an authoritative role that conforms with the poetics of Medieval East Slavic literature,
which Picchio defines as “poetics of the truth.”
168
According to Picchio’s “poetics,” truth
coincides with ecclesiastical doctrine, as in the main models of seventeenth-century literary
culture. Indeed, the exhortative-sapiential character of this poetics recalls the Psalms with their

166
“монархове мира сего. / … / Цари, князи с болярами, вельможа купно с рабами, / Усопши и ту з нами
живущии изгнанцами.” Ibid., 223.
167
“Аз алках, вы пировали, просил у вас милостыни, / Вы же ми отказывали.” Ibid., 227.
168
Picchio, Letteratura della Slavia ortodossa, 38.
57
exhortative-sapiential character, as well as Patristic literature, sermons, and East Orthodox
literature. The lay literature of the seventeenth century also evokes “Horace’s diction, [which]
has a rhetorical orientation, often being addressed to a certain ‘you’ and taking the tone of an
admonition-exhortation.”
169
In the anonymous poem, as well as in Andrei’s, dialogism becomes
a literary convention, since it presents unreal speaking voices and communicative situations.
Nevertheless, through dialogism, these works also remind us that lyric poetry originates from
oral communication, as Jonathan Culler and many other scholars maintain.
170
In all these poems,
conversing on the unavoidable phenomenon of death allows the speaker to come to the fore and
present, albeit in a nascent state, the typical characteristics of the lyric persona.

The Staging of the “I”
Like every form of oral communication, dialogism in a poetic text is characterized by a
theatrical aspect that intensifies its agonistic nature and highlights the presence of the lyric “I” by
emphasizing the speaking voice. In fact, dialogues originate in lived experiences, which prevent
speakers from detaching themselves from narrated events; this inability determines the speaker’s
full emotional involvement in the communication. As a matter of fact, a focus on emotions and
the intensification of verbal expressions are defining features of lyric poetry, and of all the poems
analyzed in this chapter.
171
What further enhances their theatrical nature is their theme—the
event of death—which is so dramatic that it involves the entirety of the lyric persona: death
reveals the human condition’s true essence and eternal salvation as earthly life’s ultimate goal.

169
Siedina, Horace in the Kyiv-Mohylanian Academy, 187.
170
Jonathan Culler, Theory of the Lyric (Cambridge, MA, London: Harvard University Press, 2015), 34-35, 37.
171
Earl Miner, Comparative Poetics. An Intercultural Essay on Theories of Literature (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1990), 87-94. Cecile Chu—chin Sun, “Mimesis and Xing, Two Modes of Viewing
Reality: Comparing English and Chinese Poetry,” in Comparative literature studies (Urbana), 2006;43(3):
326-354.
58
These poems’ agonistic aspect is expressed at the linguistic level through rhetoric.
Rhetoric is “essentially antithetical, for the orator speaks in the face of at least implied
adversaries,” and, therefore, the speaker tries to persuade his listeners to share his same
viewpoint.
172
The opening of Evfimii’s poem, “Look, man, at this clock,” and of Feofan’s work,
“Oh vain man, unworthy slave,” include oppositional apostrophes. They convey the speakers’
involvement both through their engaged tones and through their pressing accumulations of
arguments.
173
Evfimii’s argument follows a logic reasoning, proceeds with a dramatic,
irreversible tone, and ends by presenting his interlocutor with a destiny of “dust” and “mud.”
174

Feofan, instead, is openly polemic and carries out a performance that inserts us into the middle of
a theatrical situation. He first stages before his interlocutor the sad conclusion of the latter’s
earthly life: “in that dark hour / You’ll go into the earthly hole / And return to your native
dust.”
175
After that, he voices his disapproval: “How will you appear before God, if you don’t see
Him?”
176
Finally, he stresses human mistakes: “Both beastly meanness / And limitless
arrogance,” and portrays the punishments in the afterlife with a cruel tone: “Oh most bitter time,
/ If only there was an end!”
177
These are signs of verbal combat, a key component of
theatricality, and through them the authors create the expressive intensification of emotions that
reveals the lyric persona. Agon allows the voice to express his criticism against the “vain man”
who is not aware of his human condition.

172
Ong, Orality and Literacy, 109.
173
“Зри, человече, на сей орологий.” Sazonova, “Evfimii Chudovskii,” 322. “О суетный человече, слабе
неключимый.” Panchenko, Russkaia sillabicheskaia poeziia, 285.
174
“прах.” “калу.” Sazonova, “Evfimii Chudovskii,” 322.
175
“в той час темный / Пойдеш в ров земный / И в прах твой наследный.” Panchenko, Russkaia sillabicheskaia
poeziia, 285.
176
“Как же то предстанеш Богу, не видевший Бога?” Ibidem.
177
“И злоба зверна / И спесь безмерна.” “О прегоркая година, / Еще ж бы была кончина!” Ibidem.
59
In these poems, the opposition generated by verbal combat leads the personae to
absolutize their positions as would happen in a theatrical role-play. In doing so, they take on a
specific role as if they were wearing a mask. Such opposition between speakers and interlocutors
is one of the elements that builds dialogism and that strengthens the theatricality of
communication, as the works by Karion Istomin, Simeon Polotskii, and Andrei Belobotskii
show. The speaker in Karion’s “Verses to Remember Death Pleasantly”—a 1696 lyric included
in the well-known “Bukvar’” and most likely composed for the royal family and the people at
court—takes on the mask of the adviser: “Thus, everyone should pay attention: Be moderate in
all things, / You will never be rejected by Heaven.”
178
The persona in Simeon’s “Memento
Mori” fearlessly threatens his interlocutors and foresees a divine verdict for sinners: “Go burn in
fire forever / And keep company with fierce demons.”
179
He also declares that his role is that of
the master in the moralizing distich that ends the lyric: “These things must be remembered / By
whoever wants to live in God’s grace.”
180
The “I” in Andrei’s “Pentateugum” addresses his
interlocutors to get their attention with an accumulation of imperatives and deictics, as would
happen in an oral performance: “Hurry, hurry here, sovereigns of this world. / Listen to my
songs, ecclesiastical powers.”
181
This way, a sort of role play takes place in the poems, whereby
the personae exhibit their identities and, more specifically, the personal traits they wish to
emphasize. Role play helps authors shape lyric personae who distinguish themselves from the
writers’ biographic identities and who are free to express their ideas within the situation staged in
the poem.

178
“Тем кождый смотри: будь во всем воздержен, / не будеши бо неба в век отвержен.” Ibid., 212.
179
“Идите во огнь во вѣки горѣти, / общество люто с демоны имѣти.” Polotskii, Vertograd mnogocvětnyj, vol.
3, 151.
180
“Сие же во памяти требѣ есть держати / хотящым во Божией жити благодати.” Ibid., 152.
181
“Сюды, сюды поспешайте, монархове мира сего. / Песней моих послушайте, власть чина церковнаго.”
Panchenko, Russkaia sillabicheskaia poeziia, 223.
60
The virshi “Oh Death” bring this technique to an extreme through prosopopoeia, a device
that allows dead or missing people to speak as if they were alive and present. “Oh Death” shows
a speaker whose mask is that of an imaginary person—a dead body who speaks to death. The
fact that the voice impersonates the subject matter of his discourse is a procedure typical of oral
communication and confers a spontaneous, vivid quality on his performance. Following a similar
structure to François Villon’s lyric, Epitaph in Form of a Ballad (1489), which also shows
features characteristic of oral poetry, taking on the mask of a dead person further enhances the
voice’s expressive nature.
182
In Villon’s ballad, after showing the physical status of the dead
bodies, the speaker’s exhortation acquires a deeper, more dramatic tone: “Be not ye therefore of
our fellowhead, / But pray to God that he forgive us all!”
183
Similarly, in “Oh Death” the
juxtaposition between the dead self and death emphasizes both of their essences. Both the dead
human’s anxiety and death’s indifference are intensified: “and you take away what I love,” “[you
are] pitiless for my crying and tears!” and “I weep and cry bitterly, and you don’t see.”
184
The
lyric persona, however, is not an individual rooted in a particular historical reality, but, on the
contrary, explicitly declares that he is a universal “I” speaking on behalf of the human species: “I
know that it didn’t start with me, / but your action has upset everyone deeply.”
185

In “Oh Death,” the voice dramatizes his message by exhibiting the consequences that
death causes on the dead body in order to admonish his interlocutors. We can imagine this
process taking place as a theatrical performance before a public audience, complete with tricks
and costumes. In the written text, this process is expressed by the recurring figure of speech of

182
François Villon, Ballads Done into English from the French of Francois Villon (Portland, Maine: T.B. Mosher,
1907), 29-30.
183
Ibid., 30.
184
“и любомое мое отимаеши.” “на плач мой и слезы не жалостливая!” “Горко рыдаю и плачу, а ты не
зриши.” Panchenko, Russkaia sillabicheskaia poeziia, 317.
185
“вем, яко не мною начало, / но всем дело твое зело огорчало.” Ibidem.
61
hypotyposis and by the verb in the present tense of the indicative mood, which creates an
impression of a performance in front of the interlocutor. As Earl Miner observes, the present
tense is one of the characteristics that contributes to building intensity in a lyric poem.
186
In turn,
the virshi realize one of the recurring topoi in classical theatre, which we encounter in
Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound and Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, and which exposes the hero’s
suffering body:
187
“In despair you bared me all / And laid me among the stinking corpses, / You,
motionless, appeared to me / And tied me with a belt that cannot be loosened.”
188
The dead
body’s self-representation includes concrete details: “… the worms devoured me there,” a
retrospective gaze on his own existence: “Yesterday were multitudes of slaves after me, / And
now there isn’t even one with me,” and regret: “Why did you kill me so early, / You created a
twofold marvel?”
189
This all leads to the final stanza when the “I” expresses his consciousness:
“You’re here, death, since the beginning of time, / And you’ll reach even the last man.”
190

Throughout the virshi, the lyric voice represents an entire life. The interlocutors take part in this
life, are emotionally involved, and, at the end, are verbally warned.
After a dialogue between death and the dead person that continues for eleven stanzas it is
only in the last where the speaking voice adopts the admonishing tone that we have encountered
in the other poems: “Raise your hands to God in prayer, / So that He will save you from eternal
torment.”
191
However, unlike these other poems, the authority of the voice in the virshi is not
linked to his social status, but to his newly acquired awareness of his own finite nature, which he

186
Miner, Comparative Poetics, 89.
187
“Topos,” from the ancient Greek "topos” (place), means a common place or a recurring motif in a work, an
author, or an epoch.
188
“В нечаяние всего мя обнажила / и между смрадными трупы положила, / Недвижима еси мене показала /
и неразрешимым поясом связала.” Panchenko, Russkaia sillabicheskaia poeziia, 317.
189
“мене тамо черви расточили.” “Вчера были слуги ордами за мною, / а ныне несть ни единаго со мною.”
“Что ты мене рано еще уморила, / двоякое диво на мне сотворила?” Ibidem.
190
“Брала еси, смерте, от начала века, / дойдеши же и до последнего человека.” Ibid., 319.
191
“Ко богу воздевайте в молитвах руки, / дабы вас избавил от вечныя муки.” Ibidem.
62
seeks to share with his fellows. This peculiarity defines a new type of lyric “I”; it shows that not
only a spiritual guide, but also an individual whose identity remains unspecified can take the
floor and express a condition (mortality) that unites all human beings.
The analysis of the above poems demonstrates the variety of ways in which theatricality
brings lyric personae to the fore. Verbal combat—the opposition between an “I” and a “you”—
incites the voice to express his emotions and ideas in an open, direct way, as exemplified in
Evfimii and Feofan’s poems. Agon makes the “I’s” position within the poem more absolute,
which leads him to wear a mask in order to talk in the first person. We also observe this
phenomenon in the anonymous virshi “Oh Death,” where mask-wearing is brought to an extreme
because the communicative situation is clearly fictional. On the one hand, a mask hides the
speaker, and on the other hand, it opens new opportunities for the speaker’s true individuality to
emerge; as Friedrich Nietzsche understands it, taking on an identity that does not coincide with
one’s own can paradoxically allow a given subject to express himself.
192
By wearing the mask of
a person, a man of the Church, or a dead person, lyric voices hide what distinguishes them as
individuals and, at the same time, express their deep feelings and communicate their message
more persuasively.

When the “I” Speaks Through Someone Else’s Words: Translation and Imitation
“Authors often employ translation and imitation (imitatio) as tools to introduce new
genres, themes, or topoi to their own literary traditions. In the seventeenth- and eighteenth-
century East Slavic territories, these devices enabled authors to create a distinct literary tradition,
which referred to other literatures or authors that they viewed as models. Thus, in the literary

192
Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil (New York: Open Road Media, 2014), 69.
63
tradition of the time, translation was one of the main tools through which writers adopted
thematic motifs and stylistic devices coming from West European literature.
193
Giovanna Siedina
illustrates the specific role that imitation played in receiving and re-elaborating the motifs typical
of Russian lyrics in this time period; in doing so, poets heightened and legitimized their
intellectual status to that of the poets they translated or imitated.
194
The processes of translating
and imitating enabled lyric personae to take from the authority of established and authoritative
Western models, which helped them justify their right to exist and express themselves within the
poems.”
Andrei’s “Pentateugum” exemplifies how the practice of translation fosters the
expression of a lyric persona. Throughout the long poem, Andrei shapes a lyric voice that, at
times, speaks through someone else’s voice—a process of translation—and that, at other times,
interweaves his own words with those of the other voices— a process of adaptation. By doing so,
Andrei introduces in Russian poetry a worldview, cultural references, and a type of lyric speaker
that are established in the West European tradition. “Pentateugum” is an atypical work that
interprets the author’s need for poetic self-expression in a peculiar fashion at a time when the
concepts of authors and genres were still very much in flux. The first four sections of the poem
are a translation-adaptation of M. Rader’s and J. Niess’ eschatological work, Quatuor hominis
ultima (1647), while the fifth is a translation-adaptation of J. Balde’s De vanitate mundi
(1638).
195
Because of this structure, the long poem does not conform to the modern criteria of

193
This phenomenon is analyzed in: Giovanna Brogi Bercoff, Maria Di Salvo, and Luigi Marinelli, eds., Traduzione
e rielaborazione nelle letterature di Polonia Ucraina e Russia XVI-XVIII secolo (Alessandria: Edizioni
dell’Orso, 1999), 109-141, 187-197, 215-247, 267-289.
194
Giovanna Siedina, Horace in the Kyiv Mohylanian poetics, 85-184.
195
The term translation-adaptation is from Marina Ciccarini, “Le fonti latine e polacche del ‘Pentateugum’ di A.Ch.
Belobockij,” in Marina Ciccarini and Krzysztof Żaboklicki, eds., Plurilinguismo letterario in Ucraina,
Polonia e Russia tra XVI e XVII secolo (Varsavia, Roma: Accademia Polacca di Roma, 1999), 22. See also
Vladimir Toporov, Andrei Belobotskii, “‘Pentateugum V. Son zhizni celoveka ili sueta.’ Russkii iazyk–
pol’skii iazyk: bor’ba i soglasie (stranichka iz rannykh russko-pol’skikh literaturnykh sviazei), in “Put’
64
originality and authority and some view it as a mere transcription, which lacks Andrei’s creative
impulse. However, Aleksandr Gorfunkel’, Vladimir Toporov, and Marina Ciccarini demonstrate
that “Pentateugum” can be considered an original work.
196
For example, Andrei chose to focus
on the theme of death, as well as selected which works and lines to translate (and which to omit)
in his poem. The expressions that he added transformed “Pentateugum” into a distinct work from
those of the German authors it drew upon. Thus, the act of translating and adapting the German
poems demonstrates what Andrei’s intellectual needs and positions are and becomes a means for
him to reflect on philosophical and theological themes that interest him, like human nature and
destiny. He not only engaged in poetic techniques typical of the lyric genre, expressing personal
ideas and emotions, but also introduced themes and expressive genres and modalities to early
modern Russia by employing the words of authoritative intellectual figures in the literary field.
Hence, Andrei’s contemporaries, as well as modern readers of his work, can perceive the
statements in his poem as original statements by the speaking voice.
Yet transposed in Russia at the turn of the century, the adapted work also acquired new
traits. Notwithstanding the fact that the “I” expresses himself following Western imagery, he
reflects East Slavic culture of the time. For example, certain lines engage with those of
contemporaneous East Slavic authors. The exhortation: “… love the Creator, and do not sin,”
and the threat: “Burn them, their body and soul, lie forever in the Gehenna,” may as well be
authored by Simeon, Evfimii, or Feofan, while the verse, “Death, like a thief and an outlaw,
sneaks up on you silently,” recurs almost identically in the anonymous virshi.
197
By adapting

romantichnyi soversil...”: Sbornik statei pamiati B.F. Stakheeva (Moskva: Institut slavianovedeniia i
balkanistiki Rossiiskoi Akademii nauk, 1996), 199-244.
196
Aleksandr Gorfunkel’, Slovar’ knizhnikov i knizhnosti Drevnei Rusi XVII v., vol. 1 (Sankt-Peterburg: Nauka,
1992), 128-131. Toporov, Belobotskii, “‘Pentateugum V. Son zhizni cheloveka ili sueta,’ 199-244.
Ciccarini, “Le fonti latine e polacche del ‘Pentateugum’ di A.Ch. Belobockij,” 27-29.
197
“… творца люби, а не греши.” “Гори ж им, с душею тело, лежите вечно в гегене.” “Смерть, яко тать и
разбойник, с тиха крадется до тебе.” Panchenko, Russkaia sillabicheskaia poeziia, 222, 229, 221.
65
typical traits of classical lyric poetry—especially Dante, Petrarch, and François Villon, which
Andrei read during his fifteen years in Italy, Spain, France, and Brandenburg— to traditional
East Slavic culture, the author introduces these Western elements to Russia, where he moved in
1681.
198
Indeed, elements of pagan culture, like classical mythology and the long retelling of
Rome’s history in the poem’s fifth book, are woven into “Pentateugum.” That the voice uses
pagan elements to convey Orthodox values and mentions Greek history as a negative example
makes it possible to present such motifs in an Orthodox context: “Where once was the capital
city of Troy, they have sowed the earth with bread. // … Every day, time and misfortune
transform everything in this world.”
199
Thus, Andrei shapes a lyric persona thanks to Western
models and employs Western literary traditions to develop his attacks on sinful life and its
consequences on the afterlife.
Like translation, imitation or imitatio also provided a way for lyric speakers who had not
yet gained public recognition to self-legitimize. According to Nicola Gardini, imitatio “has
served two main goals: 1. Creating a poetic code, and 2. Creating a lyric “I” equipped with the
legitimacy to express himself.”
200
Imitatio reproduces a stylistic device or thematic motif in the
works of a ‘model’ author in order to establish writing examples and codify the characteristics of
a genre before it is fully theorized. In this regard, imitatio is not the opposite of originality:
instead, one follows the rules that define the literary genre within which the poet has decided to
create his own work. Thus, imitatio grants the lyric persona the right to speak thanks to the
existence of a prestigious model.

198
Ibid., 216-217. Ciccarini, Gli ultimi roghi, 57-67.
199
“Где была столица Троя, землю хлебем засеяли. // … Век и случай злый вседневно вся в мире сем
превращает.” Panchenko, Russkaia sillabicheskaia poeziia, 244.
200
“… è servita fondamentalmente a due scopi: 1. la creazione di un codice poetico e 2. la creazione di un ‘io’ lirico
dotato della legittimità di pronunciarsi.” Nicola Gardini, Le umane parole (Milano: Bruno Mondadori,
1997), 220.
66
Evfimii turns to imitatio in the closing lines of his poem: “This bell is tuned in Simonov’s
way / … / So that it calls its believers to the church, / To praise Him for every good deed / And
to proclaim zealous prayers about every need.”
201
Evfimii took these lines from the bell
inscription at the Simonov Uspenskii Monastyr’ outside Moscow that Simeon Polotskii
composed.
202
Evoking another poet’s lines was a literary practice in Russia at the time; authors
exchanged compositions and quoted each other’s works, deeming the conveyed message more
important than their identities and artistic originality.
203
By copying these lines, Evfimii
innovates: he overcomes the principle of anonymity and mentions the source of his verses.
Indeed, in quoting Simeon’s inscription, Evfimii turns Simonov into a pun that refers to Simeon
Polotskii and uses the bell inscription as a metonym for the author. His verses fulfill a
metalinguistic function; they declare personal poetics and endorse the new literary poetry that
authors were creating at the end of the seventeenth century in Russia—a poetry for which
Simeon was the main representative. Therefore, although the debate between Latinophiles and
Grecophiles divided Simeon and Evfimii, the latter showed his appreciation and admiration for
the former’s literary achievements and conferred on them the dignity of a model.
204
It is one of
the first times that a Russian writer recognized a contemporary author as his role model. By
imitating the main East Slavic lyricist in the poem’s only section where the “I” directly expresses
himself, Evfimii turns this quotation into the voice’s most explicit self-expression in the lyric.
Despite the specificities of the literary tradition in Russia vis-à-vis Italy, Evfimii’s
engagement with Simeon achieves something similar to the poetic works of Pietro Bembo (1470-

201
“сей колокол состроен есть на Симоново / … / да гласом созывает в храм его вѣрныя, / Хвалу ему о
благих всех воздаяти / и о нуждах молитвы теплы пролияти.” Sazonova, “Evfimii Chudovskii,” 322.
202
Polotskii, Vetrograd mnotsvetnyi, vol. 3, 524.
203
Sazonova, “Evfimii Chudovskii,” 303, 322.
204
Strakhov notices that there is a “close resemblance between the respective literary devices used by the
Graecophiles and the Latinophiles,” which the present analysis also indicates. Strakhov, The Byzantine
Culture in Muscovite Rus’, 43-44, 49, 55.
67
1547) which drew upon Petrarch’s poetry (1304-1374). In the fifteenth century, Italian Humanist
poets brought the poetics of imitatio back into practice by drawing on Horace’s Ars poetica.
205

Horace supported imitating Greek poets, whose meters and themes he claimed to have
introduced to Latin literature. Bembo repeated the same reasoning, although he identified his
model not in a classical Greek poet but in the more modern poet Petrarch who composed his
works in vernacular. In this way, Bembo inaugurated Petrarchist lyrics, which then spread
throughout Western Europe for at least a century. Evfimii did the same with Simeon, for, in his
poem, he pointed to a path that the next generation of poets would follow.
By writing in the manner of Simeon, Evfimii helps to affirm a writing style that is
considered prestigious, albeit novel. At the same time, he creates a lyric persona who openly
reveals himself in the text. Thus, Evfimii is not an anonymous scribe who copies someone else’s
works, but a poet who follows a model in order to achieve a specific goal. By openly declaring
this in the text, Evfimii introduces in his poem the representation of his own lyric voice. In turn,
the speaker acquires the status of a cultured man of his time and takes a stand in the current
cultural debate. The final lines realize this goal by proclaiming the aim of the poem: “So that he
calls with his voice the believers to the church, / To praise Him for all the good things / And to
pour zealous prayers concerning all matters.”
206
We have here a speaker who carries out the
functions both of a man of the Church who admonishes a group of believers through sermons
and prayers and of a man of culture who acknowledges the particular nature of literature and
inaugurates reflections on poetics.

205
Horace’s poetics has exerted such an influence on Western literature that Earl Miner defines it as an “originative
poetics.” Miner, Comparative Poetics, 25-27.
206
“да гласом созывает в храм его верныя, / Хвалу ему о благих всех воздаяти / и о нуждах молитвы теплы
пролияти.” Sazonova, “Evfmii Chudovskii,” 322.
68
Both Andrei and Evfimii determine the cultural tendencies of their time and help create a
new intellectual figure. By employing someone else’s words through translation and receiving
inspiration from someone else’s words through imitation, each confers legitimacy on a novel
literary genre and new strength to the lyric persona in their poems.

A Thematic Clue that Opens the Door to the “I”
The qualities of the voice that I have highlighted so far help to elucidate how the lyric
persona in these poems comes to the fore by blending characteristics that are typical of pre-
modern Rus’ oral communication and poetry with characteristics stemming from Western
European literature. In order to further define the lyric persona in this period, it is necessary to
consider earlier written literature, to which seventeenth-century poets refer in choosing their
themes and in adapting traditional writing techniques for the new lyric genre.
As Picchio suggests, emphasizing continuity with the previous written tradition helps to
identify the original features of East Slavic lyric poetry and voice. In the second half of the
seventeenth century, poets in the region included biblical and Patristic motifs, as well as
employed the thematic clue in their works, which several scholars identify as one of the main
devices in Medieval East Slavic literature.
207
The thematic clue consists in collocating a citation
from the Bible or the writings of the Church fathers in a predominant position within the text,
usually is the beginning. It recurs throughout the text like a leitmotiv in order to remind the
audience of the ethical and religious message. Consistent reference to the Holy Writs and use of
the thematic clue are crucial tools for lyric personae to affirm themselves in these texts. By

207
Picchio was the first to define this device in ancient texts written in Slavia Orthodoxa: Riccardo Picchio, “The
Function of Biblical Thematic Clues in the Literary Code of ‘Slavia Orthodoxa’,” in Slavica
Hierosolymitana, III: 1977, 1-31.
69
turning to a tradition that is familiar to their interlocutors, the authors confer on the lyric “I” the
identity of a spiritual guide, as well as the authority to speak in the first person about the
universal, yet individual experience of death.
In Simeon’s “Memento mori,” the lyric “I” states his authority through a thematic clue in
the first distich: “When a great happiness fulfills you, / Remember that death kills man.”
208
In
these two lines, we can find a reference to a tradition of Ancient Rome. Following a wartime
victory, the Roman general used to return home, marching through the city to celebrate his
triumph. While being honored by the crowd, someone standing behind the general whispered the
sentence: “Look behind you. Remember you are a man.”
209
The tradition aimed to prevent the
general from falling prey to vanity and arrogance and from forgetting his mortal fate. Whereas in
Western European Baroque literature writers usually intend cultured references as ornaments or
“agudezas,” Simeon uses them consistently with his system of values.
210
He makes the lyric
voice pronounce an admonition with an ethical goal, evokes self-examination within a public
context, and suggests a personal way to talk to one’s soul, clearing through the noise of earthly
life. Because the mention of this ancient habit has been assimilated into Christian thought, it
imbues Simeon’s reference with further depth. With the spread of Christianity, and especially
during the Middle Ages, the tradition of “memento mori” grew in popularity; the Church fathers
cited it frequently, and pupils read their works at the Jesuit Academies where Simeon studied.

208
“Егда тя радость исполнит велика, / помни, яко смерть мертвит человѢка.” Polotskii, Vetrograd
mnogotsvetnyi, vol. 3, 151.
209
“Respice post te. Hominem te memento.” Tertullian is the first Roman author who mentions this tradition.
Tertullian, Q. Septimi Florentis Tertulliani Apologeticus: The Text of Oehler, Annotated, with an
Introduction (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 33:4, 100.
210
The terms “conceptismo” and “agudezas” refer to the use of refined concepts that are exhibited in the texts as an
expression of the poet’s inventiveness. They are typical in Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian Baroque poetry.
Luis de Góngora is usually considered the master of “agudezas.” Christopher D. Johnson, Hyperboles: the
Rhetoric of Excess in Baroque Literature and Thought (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010).
Alfonso Rey, “Teoría y Crítica Literaria En Agudeza y Arte de Ingenio,” in Neophilologus 101, no. 4
(October 2017): 541–560.
70
This includes Saint Jerome’s works, which Simeon also quotes in other compositions: “Lest he
should be unduly elated by his revelations, a reminder of his human weakness was given to him,
just as in the triumphal car of the victorious general there was always a slave to whisper
constantly, amid the cheering of the multitude, ‘Remember that you are but man.’”
211

Furthermore, these lines from Simeon’s “Memento Mori” paraphrase an Easter sermon by
Matthias Faber. In his sermon, Dominica 3 Post Pascha, No. 7, sect. 6, Faber cites Ecclesiastes,
which seventeenth-century East Slavic poets considered an instance of lyric poetry: “Rejoice,
young man, while you are young, and let your heart cheer you in the days of your youth. Follow
the inclination of your heart and the desire of your eyes, but know that for all these things God
will bring you into judgment.”
212
Here, we see what Giovanna Brogi Bercoff points out:
“Byzantine and classical-humanistic rhetorical traditions are merged and blended with one
another, so that it is not always possible (or necessary) to distinguish the elements that belong to
each tradition.”
213
Simeon builds on both of these traditions and actualizes them. From this
creative process, a lyric persona strengthens his authority by employing the thematic clue to play
the role of the man of the Church who shows his disciples how to accept their human fate and
reminds them of the “things [that] must be remembered / By whoever wants to live in God’s
grace.”
In Evfimii’s poem we can also find the thematic clue, which is constituted by a reference
to the Hebraic-Christian tradition of “vanitas vanitatum.” Lines like: “death… / Transforms

211
Saint Jerome, Epistle 39: 2. https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3001039.htm (Last access: 15 June 2020).
212
Hippisley, commentaries to Vertograd mnogotvetnyi, vol, 3, 582. Anthony Hippisley, “A Jesuit source of Simeon
Polotsky’s Vertograd mnogotsvetnyi,” in Oxford Slavonic Papers n.s. 27 (1994): 23-40. The New Oxford
Annotated Bible with Apocrypha: New Revised Standard Version, eds. Michael D. Coogan, et al. (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2010), 11: 9, 948.
213
“… tradizioni retoriche bizantine e classico-umanistiche vengono mescolate e fuse, in modo che non sempre è
possibile (o necessario) distinguere gli elementi appartenenti a ciascuna.” Giovanna Brogi Bercoff, ed., Il
Barocco letterario nei Paesi slavi (Roma: La Nuova Italia Scientifica, 1996), 249.
71
wealth and glory into ashes,” evoke the tradition of the Book of Genesis: “dust you are, and to
dust you shall return.”
214
They also find their highest expression in the Book of Ecclesiastes,
which is especially popular in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Russian culture.
215
In stating
that “[a]ll is vanity,” Ecclesiastes moves from reflecting on the passing of time (“A generation
goes, and a generation comes”) to conclude with the exhortation: “fear God, and keep His
commandments.”
216
We find the same progression in Evfimii’s poem. In effect, the Russian poet
does not take Ecclesiastes only as a thematic source but also turns it into a rhetoric and stylistic
pattern that allows for the creation of a lyric persona who embodies the figure of a religious
guide. It is as a religious guide that the “I” in Evfimii’s poem firmly admonishes his generic
interlocutor: “If you want to be a blessed man, / … / Take Mount Zion as your model / And
intelligently mock all temptations.”
217
These lines’ solemn tone and biblical references (“blessed
man,” “Mount Zion,” and “temptations”), together with the warning about human nature and
destiny, allow the lyric persona to manifest his presence and his religious role in an authoritative
way.
In Feofan’s poem, the lyric “I” also shapes his identity through rich biblical and Patristic
mentions. In fact, the speaker points to his role as a religious guide in the very first distich: “Oh
vain man, unworthy slave, / How far you wander with your dreams!”
218
We can consider this the
lyric’s thematic clue, which most likely refers to an excerpt from Gregory of Nyssa: “you will
not have to blush, you image of earth that will soon be dust… your swollen head is full of pride

214
“смерть… / Богатство, славу прах быти вмѣняет.” Sazonova, “Evfimii Chudovskii,” 322. The New Oxford
Annotated, Genesis 3:19, 16.
215
Marcus C. Levitt, The Visual Dominant in Eighteenth-Century Russia (DeKalb, Illinois: NIU Press, 2011), 184-
185.
216
The New Oxford Annotated Bible, Ecclesiastes 1: 2, 4, 937; 12: 13-14, 949.
217
“Аще хощеши муж быти вменяет, / … / Горня Сиона буди подражатель, / и всех прелестей умный
презиратель.” Sazonova, “Evfimii Chudovskii—novoe imiia,” 322.
218
“О суетный человече, рабе неключимый, / Как то ты делеко бродиш мечтанми твоими!” Panchenko,
Russkaia sillabicheskaia poeziia, 285.
72
and burning with vanity on account of your silly ideas… What dream is so fleeting?”
219
Gregory
of Nyssa in turn draws upon James 2:20: “You foolish person, do you want evidence that faith
without deeds is useless?”
220
Feofan associates vanity with dreams, which is a recurring topos in
Patristic texts. The polemics that the speaker utters are directed against those men who follow
their dreams without turning them into actions and whom God will punish during the Final
Judgment. The “I” reminds his addressee of the importance of human behavior in view of the last
day—the day of our death—mentioned in the third and fourth lines: “But suddenly the last day /
Will destroy your poor life.”
221
On this day, the individual stands before God, whom he could
not know during his lifetime because he embraced “anger” and “arrogance.”
222
Here, Feofan
seems to echo a lyric book from the Bible, the Book of Wisdom 1:12: “Do not invite death by the
error of your life, / Or bring on destruction by the works of your hands.”
223
Starting from the
second stanza, the last day becomes the day of the Final Judgment, as is widely documented in
the New Testament. After the Final Judgment, “[t]here is neither death nor change,” but only
“the most bitter time” that knows no end.
224
As we read in the lyric passages in the Revelation,
sinners “shall seek death, and shall not find it: and they shall desire to die, and death shall fly
from them… [They] will be tormented day and night for ever and ever.”
225
Through this
sequence of biblical references, the lyric “I” manifests himself as a person who is superior to his
interlocutor by virtue of his consciousness and uprightness. He is an external observer of the

219
Gregory of Nyssa, The Lord’s Prayer. The Beatitudes (New York: Newman Press, 1954), 93. Several scholars
pinpoint that the writings of Gregory of Nyssa were popular among the authors considered in this chapter.
Strakhov, The Byzantine Culture in Muscovite Rus’, 103. Prokopovič, De arte rhetorica, XXXIV.
220
The New Oxford Annotated Bible, 2122.
221
“А незапно день последный / Разрушит твой живот бедный.” Panchenko, Russkaia sillabicheskaia poeziia,
285.
222
“злоба.” “спесь.” Ibidem.
223
The New Oxford Annotated Bible, 727.
224
“Ни смерть, ни отмена.” “прегорькая година.” Panchenko, Russkaia sillabicheskaia poeziia, 285.
225
The New Oxford Annotated Bible, Revelation 9: 6, 2165; 20:10, 2177.
73
conduct of the sinful man, whose ways he tries to mend. To this end, he employs religious
references to establish his role as a man of the Church and to help his interlocutor keep the
trauma of death under control.
The virshi “Oh Death” also show the biblical comparison of human beings with earthly
dust and the image of death approaching “as a thief in the night,” which we find in the New
Testament.
226
However, what distinguishes this poem is the appearance of a topos that we have
not encountered yet: the biblical motif “Ubi sunt?” which enjoyed wide popularity during the
Medieval and the Baroque periods. Its first formulation can be found in the words of the prophet
Baruch:
Where are the princes of the heathen become, and such as ruled the beasts upon
the earth; They that had their pastime with the fowls of the air, and they that
hoarded up silver and gold, wherein men trust, and made no end of their getting?
For they that wrought in silver, and were so careful, and whose works are
unsearchable, They are vanished and gone down to the grave, and others are come
up in their steads.
227

The anonymous author encourages engagement with his poem in two ways. On the one hand, he
employs a shared cultural reference with his readers and, on the other hand, he exhibits his
personal culture by referring to a less commonly cited text. The latter, seen between the seventh
and the ninth stanzas, read: “Where are you now, former lovers of the world, / glorious and
hedonistic lovers of gold?” These lines become a means for the lyric persona to express his
judgment on human feelings and behavior before the unavoidable, unforeseeable interruption of
life and its terrible consequences.
228

226
Ibid., Matthew 24:43, 1783; Paul, 1 Thessalonians 5:2, 2078.
227
Baruch 3: 16-19. https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Baruch-3-16_3-19/ (Last access: 15 June 2020).
228
“Где убо ныне бывши миролюбцы, / славныя и лакомыя златолюбцы?” Panchenko, Russkaia sillabicheskaia
poeziia, 318-319.
74
All the lyrics under examination have allowed us to grasp their continuity with the
previous East Slavic Orthodox tradition on the stylistic and thematic levels, as well as to define
the identities of the lyric speakers. Indeed, this exploration indicates that the thematic clue is not
only a stylistic tool, but also a practice that confers authority on the speaking voices in lyric
poetry and credibility to their words. These qualities, which appear in the initial developmental
stages of East Slavic lyrics, continue to distinguish lyric personae as the genre evolves. The lyric
speakers appear as universal personae that are not fully individualized because the reality of
death prompts them to become so conscious of the human condition that they carry out an
evaluation of humankind as a living species. What prevents a fully individualized reflection from
emerging are these compositions’ pedagogic, public goals; their hybrid character, in transition
from the oral to the written tradition; and, as a result, the nascent state of the lyric “I.” However,
in the following sections, I show that in certain passages of these poems, the voice starts to
express the reality of death in the first person in a more individual manner.

Between Divine and Human Words: Erudition
Erudition—the writer’s intentional allusion to concepts elaborated by classical, esteemed,
and canonical authors—is also a method by which lyric speakers to express themselves. Classical
rhetoricians explain the principle eruditio as a tool to eloquently convey a message in a way that
elevates the target culture by including quotations from the starting culture in the text.
229
In East
Slavic literature, eruditio is an innovation. As Aleksander Naumow writes, pre-modern Slavic
authors believed in “the divine origin of wisdom and of the creative power of writers and

229
By “starting culture” I mean the culture from which the author takes motifs, themes, or phrases; by “target
culture” I mean the culture to which the author introduces or adapts such motifs, themes, or phrases.
75
artists.”
230
Hence, they did not value classical culture and its expressive tools, for they deemed
content as superior to aesthetic form. For them, “divine words, though roughly and
ungrammatically written, remain divine and those who read them will redeem themselves.”
231

Nevertheless, the authors considered in this chapter—and presumably the anonymous poet as
well—studied eruditio as part of the curricula in the Academies they attended and applied it in
their works.
232
The fact that these authors employ eruditio points to a shift in end-of-the-
seventeenth-century mindset and culture. Eruditio further specifies the characteristics of lyric
personae and roots them in a particular historical and cultural context. Identifying eruditio in
these poems thus helps to define new qualities and roles that the lyric speaker carries out—those
of the man of culture who has deepened his knowledge through study and of the master who
makes his teachings more efficient by imparting his own knowledge.
Eruditio allows poets to employ new classical models in reflecting on the nature of
humankind and to elevate the register of their meditations on death. In this sense, eruditio fulfills
a specific role within Slavic poetic culture and completes the synthesis between different cultural
models—the biblical, the classical, and the seventeenth-century ones. Such use of erudition is
evident in the third stanza of “Memento mori,” where the lyric subject affirms his presence by
masterfully interweaving classical lay elements with Baroque and Christian motifs. In the third
line, we encounter the implicit comparison of time with natural elements: “The sun flows to the
West, the rivers run to the sea.”
233
This kind of metaphor recurs in the lyric texts of the Bible as
well, like Ecclesiastes 1: 5-7: “The sun rises and the sun goes down / … // All streams run to the

230
“discendenza divina della sapienza e delle capacità creative di scrittori e artisti.” Aleksander Naumow, Idea
immagine testo: studi sulla letteratura slavo-ecclesiastica (Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso, 2004), 102.
231
“le parole divine, se pure scritte in modo rozzo e scorretto, restano divine e tutti coloro che le leggono si
salveranno.” Ibid., 59.
232
Siedina, Horace in the Kyiv Mohylanian Poetics, 186-188.
233
“Течет солнце на запад, бѢгут в море рѢки.” Polotskii, Vertograd mnogotsventnyi, vol. 3, 152.
76
sea…”
234
It also recalls Horace’s lyrics and other classical lyricists, like Ovid: “The years slip by
like flowing water.”
235
Another typically Horatian topos reflects on the transient nature of human
life, which opens the third stanza: “The end of all things admonishes our mind, / Never to forget
the mortal end.”
236
It is meaningful that Simeon includes classical culture and wisdom in poems
dedicated to eternal salvation. By including the positive teachings of classical wisdom and
showing their agreement with biblical wisdom, the speaking voice facilitates the former’s
introduction to Orthodox culture. Furthermore, the insertion of classical wisdom in the poem
confers new qualities on the lyric voice, who once again shares the same mortal condition that
characterizes his interlocutors while having a higher degree of culture. At this point, the figure of
the man of the Church is associated with that of the man of culture who employs his knowledge
to instruct his interlocutors about their mortal fate.
In conducting his meditation on death, the lyric persona in Evfimii’s poem also employs
eruditio and includes lexical and iconographic references to ancient culture and to Medieval and
contemporary art. He mentions “Gehenna,” a term that harks back to Hebraic lore, while the
metonym “Mount Zion” (meaning Jerusalem and salvation) is from the Bible. The voice
represents death with a scythe—a typical Medieval trope—and names the clock as a symbol of
“vanitas”—a recurring Baroque trope.
237
The use of the Church Slavonic term “orologii” to say
“clock” is especially meaningful because it indicates not only that strictly Western European
themes and tropes, like preference for concrete objects, circulated in Russia at the time, but also

234
The New Oxford Annotated Bible, 937.
235
“Eunt anni more fluentis aquae.” Ovid, and E.J. Kenney, Amores; Medicamina faciei femineae; Ars amatoria;
Remedia amoris (Oxonii: E Typographeo Clarendoniano, 1994), Ars Amatoria 3: 62, 190. Ovid, and Julia
D. Hejduk, The Offense of Love: Ars Amatoria, Remedia Amoris, and Tristia 2 (Madison: University of
Wisconsin Press, 2015), 134.
236
“Всяких вещей кончина ум наш увѣщает, / да никогда смертнаго конца забывает.” Polotskii, Vertograd
mnogotsvetnyi, vol. 3, 152.
237
Vitaniello Bonito, ed., Le parole e le ore (Palermo: Sellerio editore, 1994), 83.
77
that cultural assimilation generated a linguistic loan. Something similar occurs with the term
“Hades,” a linguistic loan from ancient Greek that designates pagan hell and enters Church
Slavonic in the sixteenth century. Here, the term is freed from its pagan meaning and becomes a
symbol of death and of physical decay, as well as a synonym of Christian hell.
238
Evfimii may
have consciously realized the loan in the poem, for he knew ancient Greek so well that, in the
1650s, he corrected religious books by comparing them with the original Greek and, in the
1670s, translated texts directly from Greek—two roles that were traditionally appointed to native
speakers of Greek.
239
References like the ones outlined in this paragraph stress that the authors
under study employed erudition not only at the thematic, but also at the lexical levels, opening
the path that would lead to the Russian literary language. They confer two new qualities on the
voice who is uttering them—that of representing the élite of the time and that of embodying the
eclectic nature of East Slavic seventeenth-century culture.
The innovations that ascribe further depth to the personae in Simeon’s and Evfimii’s
lyrics originate from a cultural foundation common to all of the poems analyzed in the chapter.
The fact that the expressions, the themes, and even the lexicon through which the voices express
their experiences and ideas recur in other poems of the time as well suggest the presence of
shared cultural knowledge. For example, the persona in Karion’s “Verses to Remember Death
Pleasantly,” is concerned with the unavoidability of death (“Everyone falls into it [i.e., the earth]
by the hands of death”) and its ability to equalize all differences (“Everyone dissolves into dust,
the strong people as well”), as he is in Simeon’s and Evfimii’s works.
240
In reflecting on earthly
life in view of the inescapable event of death, the “I” in Karion’s “Verses” draws both from the

238
N.B. Bakhilina, et al., Slovar’ russkogo iazyka XI-XVII vv., t. 1 (Moscow: Nauka, 1975), 21.
239
Strakhov, The Byzantine Culture in Muscovite Rus’, 85-89.
240
“Всяк человек в ту смертью валяется.” “Вси сыплются в прах, хоть крепкия груди.” Panchenko, Russkaia
sillabicheskaia poeziia, 211.
78
Orthodox and from the classical traditions—the same procedure encountered in other poems in
this chapter. For instance, the speaker echoes Seneca the Younger’s well-known statement on the
brevity of life and on the subsequent responsibility for humanity to live uprightly: “Life is
short… / Learn to conduct a good life / … by looking the seasons and the years.”
241
The same
lines remind us of the Ecclesiastes, in which we read that “nothing is better / Than the pleasure
one takes in his work.”
242
This brief excursus shows that the poets in the second half of the
seventeenth century refer to the same cultural background and approach both Slavic and
Orthodox texts and Western classical and European sources as open books from which they can
draw themes and tools to include in their own poems. This way, they create a lyric persona who
embodies the role of the man of the Church and that of the erudite, both of whom build on
Orthodox, classical, and Western Baroque references to develop new motifs and educate their
readers.
Andrei Belobotskii’s “Pentateugum” brings to an extreme all the characteristics that I
have mentioned thus far. In this long poem, the lyric persona celebrates culture’s triumph as well
as its vanity and, in so doing, combines the biblical, Orthodox, and Slavic cultures with the
Western and classical ones. Culture is vain because such is earthly knowledge, according to the
Slavic Orthodox tradition and to the idea of the precariousness of human life. Yet culture
triumphs; thanks to culture, the lyric “I” becomes aware of humankind’s destiny and expresses
his consciousness in a summa that comprehends the whole of humanity. In turn, the reference to

241
Seneca, Moral Essays, Volume II: De Consolatione ad Marciam. De Vita Beata. De Otio. De Tranquillitate
Animi. De Brevitate Vitae. De Consolatione ad Polybium. De Consolatione ad Helviam, trans. John W.
Basore (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1932), 286-287, 350-351. “Кратко житие… / благу
жизнь усвоит / … смотря времена и лета.” Panchenko, Russkaia sillabicheskaia poeziia, 211-212.
242
The New Oxford Annotated Bible, 939.
79
both cultures responds to an edifying goal: the positive function of Orthodox culture as bearer of
the truth is placed in opposition to the negative example of classical culture.
The lyric persona starts to define the relationship between humankind and death already
in the epigraph to “Pentateugum’s” first book, which is a biblical quotation from Sirach 41:1:
“Oh death! How bitter is the thought of you.”
243
The epigraph expresses the speaker’s awareness
that death defines human identity, much like Landsberg, who observed that the human being is
“the only living being to know that he must die” and that his experience of death is not
concerned with “the fact of dying, but [with] the certainty that we have to die.”
244
Therefore, as
the epigraph states, death is a “memory” (pamiat’) because it allows the subject to build a
relationship with the future that affects the present. Thus, the lyric persona goes back to
Medieval motifs to talk about his present condition: “Cruel death, bitter death sharpens the arrow
and shoots the bow,” and, “The boyar will be like the peasant, the tsar like the servant.”
245
The
speaking voice, then, names characters from classical mythology in order to represent vices and
sins, thus carrying out an ethical reflection: Caron symbolizes death (I, 7); Tantalus greed (II,
26), Bacchus drunkenness (II, 27), and Herostratus vanity (V, 12). Additionally, the voice
considers the effects of death on humankind, thus realizing the motif of the contemplation of the
dead body that frequently recurs in contemporary Italian and French lyrics. He emphasizes

243
“О смерте, горька ти есть память…” Panchenko, Russkaia sillabicheskaia poeziia, 218.
244
Landsberg, The Experience of Death, 2-3.
245
“Смерть лютая, смерть горькая стрелу острит и лук тягнет.” “боярин крестианину, царь холопу равни
будут.” Panchenko, Russkaia sillabicheskaia poeziia, 219, 221. Although we do not have detailed
information about where exactly Andrei Belobotskii stayed in Western Europe, it is very likely that he saw
Medieval paintings portraying death. The first documented portrayal of death with arrows and a bow is in
Bartolo di Fredi’s fresco, The Triumph of Death (1360 ca.), which is in the church of S. Francis in
Lucignano (Arezzo). The fresco, The Triumph of Death (1446 ca.) in Palazzo Sclafani in Palermo is one of
the most renowned. A version that appeared later on is Giacomo Borlone de Buschis’s The Triumph of
Death (1485) in the parish of the Disciplini in Clusone (Bergamo). Finally, one of the earliest depictions of
death with a scythe is Buonamico Buffalmacco’s fresco, The Triumph of Death (1336-41), at the Campo
Santo in Pisa.
80
macabre details in a way that is reminiscent of Western Baroque poetry: “In your coffin all the
vipers, worms, mice, and frogs / Will live, sir; serpents and snakes will keep watch.”
246
This
confirms Ciccarini’s point that “[t]he thread that links [Andrei Belobotskii’s] works to one
another and that gives unity to all of [his] corpus, from the standpoint of the cultural
environment, can be fully conducted back to the contemporary Baroque tradition.”
247
A similar
accumulation of erudition is not only a rhetorical device, but it may even be considered one of
the main devices through which the persona comes to the fore in “Pentateugum.” Indeed, the
lyric persona fully realizes his educative goal by employing erudition as a negative ethical and
spiritual example.
This becomes clear in “Pentateugum”’s fifth book, in which the voice considers examples
of vanity from antiquity through a historical and epic account; here, the history of Rome is
highlighted as an instance of punished vanity. As the persona affirms in one of Andrei’s original
additions to “Pentateugum,” “[t]he essence of every created thing proclaims to us this truth / … //
What is born, dies; in the world nothing lasts eternally.”
248
However, since humans often forget
their precarious nature, the “I” identifies vanity as the main cause of human sin. But, while
Evfimii’s lyric voice expresses the idea of vanity with one admonition (“… reject all the vanities
from you”), Andrei dedicates to it an entire book.
249
The original poem is one hundred stanzas
long, but Andrei ultimately decided to abruptly finish the work at the thirtieth stanza with the
statement: “The century turned into a tragedy, everybody is now laying on the ground.”
250
The

246
“В гробе твоем вся гадина, черви, мыши с легушками / Жити будут, господине, караулить змеи с ужами.”
Panchenko, Russkaia sillabicheskaia poeziia, 222.
247
“Il filo conduttore che lega queste opere e che da compattezza a tutto il corpus è, dal punto di vista dell’humus
culturale, pienamente riconducibile alla tradizione barocca coeva.” Ciccarini, “Le fonti latine e polacche
del ‘Pentateugum’ di A.Ch.Belobockij,” 27.
248
“Всея твари естество нам сию правду объявляет. / … // Что ся родит, умирает, в мире ничтоже векует.”
Panchenko, Russkaia sillabicheskaia poeziia, 244.
249
“вся суеты от себе отвержи.” Sazonova, “Evfmii Chudovskii,” 322.
250
“Век пременил в трагедие, вся днесь лежат под ногами.” Panchenko, Russkaia sillabicheskaia poeziia, 249.
81
line is an epitaph to the very culture that serves as the book’s subject matter—an epitaph that
defines the speaker’s worldview. Andrei’s deployment of Latin culture proves that it deserves
our attention because it provides important examples of civilization and of comparison with East
Orthodox culture. Andrei uses this example to condemn Latin culture, thereby showing us that
the vanity of earthly life is only dust and that we can achieve salvation only through our love for
God. Meanwhile, in his work, the “I” does not show features ascribable only to the lyric voice,
but also to the persona typical of historical, epic, didactic, and philosophical texts. While the
persona in “Pentateugum” thus cannot be considered a fully developed lyric voice, it
nevertheless represents a crucial moment on the path toward the distinction of genres in East
Slavic early modern literature.
In the poems analyzed in this chapter we can see the lyric personae appearing and
affirming their presence as a new type of erudite. They employ eruditio in order to innovate the
classical tradition of the meditation on death. In expressing such tradition, the voices acquire
further depth and historical grounding. The variety of cultural references in these poems,
together with their blending of biblical and classical motifs, helps define the historical and social
background from which the voices operate. We can observe how, in the poems, lay culture takes
its place close to religious culture and the earthly dimension is no longer belittled before the
heavenly one but rather re-evaluated. These procedures lay out the groundwork for the
emergence of voices that are simultaneously universal and characterized by the “here and now”
of their individual, historical identities.

82
From Dialogue to Soliloquy, From Admonition to Reflection
The final step in defining the lyric personae in this period’s poems is to show how they
become aware of themselves and the precariousness of human nature not through their religious
faith and high erudition, but through their personal experiences. In some passages, the “I” is not
only a grammatical marker but the protagonist of an individual adventure. As a result,
consciousness of death becomes a perception that the persona develops inwardly. We can grasp
this type of experience in excerpts from the anonymous virshi, “Oh Death,” Andrei’s
“Pentateugum,” and, above all, Karion’s “Verses to Remember Death Pleasantly.”
As we have previously observed, the voice in “Oh Death” speaks of the trauma of death
in the first person: “What profit have you received from me / In separating me from my
body?”
251
However, this voice is a fictional lyric persona who adopts the viewpoint of a dead
person. Wearing the mask of a dead body frees the persona of the communicative conventions of
an actual dialogue and opens new expressive possibilities. Notwithstanding the virshi’s intimate
tone, the confession maintains a universal dimension throughout the composition, and conveys
the discouragement and regret that every human perceives before death even in the details about
personal life: “And so my happiness is gone, / Richness and glory are asleep forever.”
252
The
following statement directly expresses the universal dimension of “Oh Death”: “You have been
here, death, since the beginning of time, / And you’ll reach even the last man.”
253
Despite the
composition’s subjective mode and the personalization of the experience, we can conclude that
the “I” in this composition is also a universal voice who expresses in personal tones ideas that
concern the whole of humankind.

251
“Что себе прибытка во мне получила, / еже мне с телом моим разлучила?” Ibid., 317.
252
“И тако мое веселие минуло, / богатство и слава навеки уснуло.” Ibidem.
253
“Брала еси, смерте, от начала века, / дойдеши же и до последнего человека.” Ibid., 319.
83
The set of values for which the voice in the poem is the spokesperson constitutes a
further novelty and element of internalization with respect to the other lyrics of the period. In
“Oh Death,” melancholy for the earthly goods that death inevitably carries away prevails over
the fear of death and the Final Judgment. The only reference to Christian thought and to God “so
that He saves you from eternal torment” appears in the last, twelfth stanza.
254
The voice in the
virshi thus affirms a worldview that endorses the terrestrial experiences that all individuals go
through during their lives and, in doing so, marks the establishment of lay culture—symbolized
mainly by references to Western European Baroque literature—alongside the Slavic Orthodox
tradition.
Since the opening of Andrei’s “Pentateugum,” the “I” declares in the first person the
“memento” represented by death and perceives its irrevocable nature. In addressing the stars, he
states: “I have to die; for you, life is good.”
255
In this line, the “I’s” mortal nature, which stands
for that of humanity, is opposed to the stars’ eternal nature, which stands for that of the Deity.
The “I” expresses this antithesis by contrasting the experience of his own opaqueness with the
sun and the moon’s brightness. The persona directs his gaze at the sky, and through this
movement expresses his longing for the stars’ immortal essence: “Oh sun brighter than gold,
moon shinier than silver.”
256
The persona’s self-awareness originates in this meditation: “The
heart hears that death is near, I have to die.”
257
Therefore, the “I” says goodbye to the world,
whose wonders he lists in the heartfelt accumulations in Baroque fashion in the third stanza:
“Lawns, herbs, little flowers, orchards, fields, mountains, grapes…”
258
The list makes the

254
“дабы вас избавил от вечныя муки.” Ibid., 319.
255
“мне умрети, вам жизнь добра.” Ibid., 218.
256
“О светлейше злата солнце, луно, чиста паче сребра.” Ibidem.
257
“Смерть блискую слышит сердце, мне умрети…” Ibidem.
258
“Луги, травки, цветки, рощи, поля, горы, винограды.” Ibid., 219.
84
opposition between terrestrial life and death even stronger because it reveals life’s main limit—
that is, the human’s finite nature as an earthly creature: “Death has taken possession of my
infirmity, it has called me to the other world.”
259
The “I” protests in vain: “Whether I like it or
not, the strong one [death] will soon call me to itself.”
260
In contrast to the poems analyzed thus
far, the initial “memento mori” in “Pentateugum” empowers the lyric subject to admire both the
sky and the earth and, as a result, to perceive the awareness of his mortal nature with great
emotional intensity.
We encounter a similar approach in the second book, as expressed by the epigraph and
the lyric persona. In enumerating different reactions to death, the epigraph brings together
“anger… mourning… misery… darkness… cloud… trumpet and cry.”
261
Similarly, the book’s
initial pages bring together the physical disturbance of the subject and the world around him. By
means of the first-person possessive, the speaker attributes to himself the physical and spiritual
turmoil that he is describing: “Fear torments my heart, my soul is locked in my throat.”
262
Here,
the utterer again builds the individual perspective on reality, which is typical of lyric poetry. The
lyric “I” observes the same turmoil that he is experiencing on an internal level in the outer world:
“Wherever I look, there is thunderstorm, fear, disease, and confusion.”
263
From the third to the
fifth stanzas, the “I” sees the universe in the same chaotic state that the lyric passages from
Revelation describe: “The planets, the stars vanished, the sun, the moon darkened, / The winds
became scarier than the waves, the earthquakes created the abyss.”
264
Similarly to the dynamic

259
“Овладала мною немощь, смерть мя на он свет позвала.” Ibidem.
260
“Хощу, не хощу, сильная скоро мя к себе потягнет.” Ibidem.
261
“гнева… скорбен… исчезения… тьмы… облака… трубы и клича.” Ibid., 223.
262
“Страх утробу мою мучит, дух ся в горле запирает.” Ibidem.
263
“Где посмотрю, везде гроза, страх, болесть, замешание.” Ibidem.
264
“Планиты, звезды погасли, солнце, луна помрачели, / Ветры вольны страшне стали, трусы пропасть
сотворили.” Ibidem. The lyric passage is from Revelation 6:12-14: “When he opened the sixth seal, I
looked, and there came a great earthquake; the sun became black as sackcloth, the full moon became like
blood, and the stars of the sky fell to the earth as the fig tree drops its winter fruit when shaken by a gale.
85
perspectives depicted in paintings of the time by Tintoretto and El Greco, the lyric persona in the
long poem occupies every corner of the universe, an omniscient presence who knows what is
happening everywhere, from fires to inundation, from the darkening of the sun and moon to the
earthquake and the plague.
Here, the persona is not only omnipresent and omniscient—qualities that imply distance
or detachment—but also plays a more active role. In many representations, death represents the
moment of highest passivity, but in “Pentateugum,” the subject becomes the protagonist of his
own death, which he transforms into an action that he carries out himself. The speaker portrays
death as a master who continues to gradually close in on him. In doing so, death helps the “I”
recognize human limitations and the value of life. To acquire this awareness, the subject needs to
wittingly take the event of death on himself: “You want not to be afraid of death, so be ready for
the fight, / Be careful, stay strong, don’t be lazy, and wait for it day and night.”
265
In the second
book, before the dramatic approaching of the Final Judgment, the lyric speaker also admonishes
his readers: “True conscience appears to you, denounces your sins. / It, sacredly true, judges you,
condemns you to eternal death.”
266
The Judgment is entrusted to personal consciousness—a
divergence from the other poems—and is connected to Andrei’s familiarity with Protestantism
and also to the call for individual awareness that developed after the Time of Troubles. The
confidence with which the voice speaks in the first person of the trauma of death and expresses a
new sense of his nature now acquires a novel meaning. In this context, the most explicit self-

The sky vanished like a scroll rolling itself up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place.”
The New Oxford Annotated Bible, 2163. As for the paintings, good cases in point are the vortex of human
figures in Tintoretto’s Massacre of the Innocents (1582-87) and The Jews in the Desert (1592-94); and the
chaos in El Greco’s The Opening of the Fifth Seal (1609-14) and Laocoön (1610-14).
265
“Хочешь не устрашитися смерти, буди готов к бою, / Бди, стой крепко, не ленися, жди ея днем и ночию.”
Panchenko, Russkaia sillabicheskaia poeziia, 222.
266
“Суща совесть вам являет, грехи ваши обличает. / Суд истинна на вас дает, на смерть вечну осуждает.”
Ibid., 230.
86
expression of the lyric “I” plays a crucial role: “Hurry, hurry here, sovereigns of this world. /
Listen to my songs, ecclesiastical powers.”
267
In this distich, located in the second book’s
opening, the “I” proclaims himself a poet and states the dignity of his role. It allows him to speak
to the “sovereigns of this world” with authority, thanks to the generic vocative that makes the
sovereigns anonymous, and to hint at the eternal value of his voice.
The “Verses to Remember Death Pleasantly” by Karion illuminate traits that add a new
quality to the characteristics that we have so far attributed to the lyric “I” in East Slavic early
modern poetry. Even if he is reflecting on death as a shared condition among all humans like
other personae, the lyric subject in Karion’s verses internalizes his meditation, and in doing so he
presents his internal, contemplative aptitude as a distinguishing trait.
In Karion’s “Verses,” the lyric “I” appears in the first line: “I look at the sky—the mind
does not understand, / I cannot fathom how I can go there, but God is calling. / The earth I look
at—the thought is dimmed, / Each person falls into it because of death.”
268
The lyric’s first word
reveals the difference between the writings of Evfimii and Karion. Whereas Evfimii exhorts his
interlocutor (“Look at”), Karion internalizes that action and says: “I look at.” In turn, Evfimii
utters a sound that reaches the listener’s ears, thus mimicking oral communication. Karion
instead carries out an action that is based on the sense of sight, just as written communication is
based on sight.
269
The voices in the lyrics by Simeon, Evfimii, and Feofan establish their
presences by means of their direct addresses and dialogues with their interlocutors, whereas the
persona in Karion’s verses emerges through a soliloquy, which further focuses attention on the

267
“Сюды, сюды поспешайте, монархове мира сего. / Песней моих послушайте, власть чина церковнаго.”
Ibid., 223.
268
“Воззрю на небо—ум не постигает, / како в не пойду, а бог призывает. / На землю смотрю—мысль
притупляется, / всяк человек в ту смертью валяется.” Ibid., 211.
269
Ong, Orality and Literacy, 70-73. Marcus C. Levitt, The Visual Dominant in Eighteenth-Century Russia
(DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2011), 4-14, 19-27.
87
speaking voice. It also determines the specific function of the lyric’s discourse, which is no
longer conative and admonishing, but expressive and reflexive. Karion’s speaking voice
expresses a movement of the soul and thinks to himself without referring to an external tradition.
He is still a universal “I” who considers death as concerning the whole of humanity, but locates
its experience in his inner self.
270
This way, Karion makes explicit an aspect in the human’s
relationship with death that has remained only implicit in the poems by Simeon, Evfimii, and
Feofan and which Vladimir Jankélévitch investigates: in the event of death the “experienced
involvement” is always perceived in the first person, that is “it does not concern the me (the “me”
in itself), but it is about me: the same me who says ‘I’ in this very moment.”
271
In other terms,
acquiring awareness of death is not abstract knowledge, but coincides with personal
experience—the individual understands that death is a fact involving him in the first person and
perceives it as it approaches. Opening the poem with two first-person verbs causes the
subsequent meditation to be filtered through the speaking voice’s perspective, so that the reader
ascribes the reflection on death that develops throughout the poem to the lyric persona.
In the first four lines, the “I” realizes his own mortality while noting the unsurmountable
distance between the sky and himself, and between God’s call and his mind, which exists on
earth and views death as its own end. This process is connected with a sense of longing and
lacking: the “I” is looking at the sky and hearing God’s call, but he cannot understand it and
cannot reach his celestial home. The resulting feelings of failure and confusion are expressed

270
Here, I refer to St. Augustine’s concept: “In interiore homine habitat veritas.” Karion Istomin was familiar with
St. Augustine’s works, to the point that he translated the Saint’s Bogovidnaia liubov’ from a Belorusian
adaptation. On the reception of St. Augustine in East Slavic seventeenth- and eighteenth-century literature,
see Maria Grazia Bartolini, “Sant’Ambrogio nella letteratura religiosa slava orientale del sei e settecento.
Per uno studio preliminare delle citazioni ambrosiane nell’omiletica rutena barocca,” in Slavica
Ambrosiana, 2, 2012, 163-203.
271
“le concernement vécu… il ne s’agit pas du moi (le moi en soi), mais de moi: moi-même qui dis je en ce moment
même.” Vladimir Jankélèvitch, La mort (Paris: Flammarion Editeur, 1966), 195.
88
through the inversion of the usual sequence of verb and complement in the third line, which is a
chiasm of the first line’s first hemistich: “I look at the sky” in the first line turns into “The earth I
look at” in the third. Because of the enormous threat that death represents, the earth becomes the
only horizon for the subject, whose “thought is dimmed.” Thus, in this poem, the “I’s” sense of
identity develops first and foremost as an aspiration to overcome the human mortal condition—
an aspiration which, for now, seems destined to fail.
No matter how much he looks around, the voice is aware that he will never be able to find
the answer to questions about creation and the world order. The “I” expresses such
consciousness in the list of questions at ll.5-10: “Where does the mind rush into the vastness of
the world— / … / What holds the sky? Who creates the earth? / How can a person make a good
life his own?”
272
These questions also point to an inner dialogue and develop the text’s reflective,
rational tone. They show that earthly knowledge is a symbol of higher knowledge, thus
connecting the human and the divine levels. In particular, the speaking voice hints in the last
question that the necessity to hold ethically correct behavior in view of death constitutes the
transition between the human and the Divine. Indeed, in order to understand what a good life
consists of, “[o]ne has to pay attention to how people die here”; this acknowledgement leads
Karion to outline a brief phenomenology of death.
273

In the short phenomenology, which occupies ll.11-22, the speaker affirms the traditional
motif of equality before physical death: “Everybody dissolves into dust, even the strong
people.”
274
Everybody is likewise subject to spiritual death caused by vane passions, such as “all
those that have been in the flesh,” “eating and drinking a lot,” and living “here in a superficial

272
“По широте ли ум где понесется— / … / Что небо держит, кто землю строит, / человек како благу жизнь
усвоит?” Panchenko, Russkaia sillabicheskaia poeziia, 211.
273
“Внимати должно, како мрут зде люди.” Ibidem.
274
“вси сыплются в прах, хоть крепкия груди.” Ibidem.
89
way.”
275
Passions “generate sin” and cause “many sinners / To die hopelessly.”
276
The voice
mentions the vanity of life and of passions to prompt the individual to become responsible for his
or her own actions. The “I” revives the classical motif of tempus fugit, noting that people learn
“to conduct a good life / … by watching the seasons and the years.”
277
By reminding his
interlocutors of the precariousness of human life, the lyric “I” wants to encourage them to behave
correctly and that the goal of “a good life… / … [is] to enjoy the beauties of God’s world.”
278

This statement overturns the admonitions in Evfimii’s poem: “Death, Hades, Gehenna keep in
mind / And push away from yourself all vanities”; in Simeon’s work: “all earthly things are /
Excessively unstable, quickly changing”; and in Feofan’s composition, where “everything that is
temporary, like dreams,” is earthly. In these lines, the personae condemn the earthly dimension;
however, the voice in Karion’s poem suggests a worldview that does not belittle terrestrial
existence because of its precariousness but values it as the opportunity to live our lives on earth
in the best possible way, respecting God’s teachings. Indeed, the “I” in the lyric’s seventh line
explicitly states: “Every creature is contained in the wise God.”
279
Reevaluating the earth and
human activity is a necessary condition for the “I” to establish his presence and root himself in
this world.
In the poem’s last section, which occupies ll.24-32, the poetic voice focuses on how to
achieve salvation with a calm that recalls Horatian moderation. The persona ends the lyric with a
personal invitation to behave responsibly and wisely, recalling some of the main principles of
classical and Hebraic knowledge. As figures who come to the aid of human beings attempting to

275
“вси, бывше в плоти.” “много бо ясти, быть пьяну.” “люди, живше зде небрежно.” Ibid., 211-212.
276
“грех родят.” “умирают мнози ненадежно / грешние люди.” Ibid., 212.
277
“благу жизнь усвоит / … смотря времена и лета.” Ibid., 211.
278
“благу жизнь… / … насладится зренства бога света.” Ibidem.
279
“Тварь бо вся в бозе мудре содержится.” Ibidem.
90
achieve salvation, God and the Virgin Mary make their appearances. Consistently with the
worldview affirmed in the previous section, the “I” does not portray God as the terrible celestial
judge, but as He to whom one has “to ask for protection” and who “saves from every
misfortune.”
280
Alongside God, the other helper of humanity is “Mary, the purest virgin, /
Tsaritsa of all people and of all celestial forces,” to whom one can also turn for protection.
281

This outlines another way for the “I” to become the protagonist of his own salvation and to take
initiative in shaping his own destiny. So that one is not “rejected by the sky” behaving
righteously is essential and a determining factor in the good life and a good death before the
Final Judgment: “Don’t be amazed by worth, honor, success, / Praise God for everything and
always rejoice.”
282
God’s role of helper rather than of executioner, together with the lyric voice’s
invitation to humankind to celebrate life, re-evaluates human nature within a religious
worldview. Human essence is also characterized by positive qualities, to the point that attaining a
good death and salvation depends on everyone’s behavior: “everyone should pay attention.”
283

Although the voice in this poem explicitly addresses “anyone,” like the personae elsewhere in
this chapter, in Karion’s lyric “anyone” stands for “each one,” which means that the voice
addresses the single individual. Hence, in the lyric’s conclusion, the “I” reiterates the personal,
almost intimate tone that opened the composition.
Although the anonymous virshi and Andrei’s long poem also present instances of
internalization, it is Karion Istomin’s poem that takes a further step in defining the characteristics
of the lyric persona. Here, the “I” is first and foremost defined as a reflective being, whose
standpoint on reality determines the experience of the reader. Therefore, in Karion’s lyric, as

280
“просить обороны.” “спасает от напасти всяки.” Ibid., 212.
281
“Марии пречисты девицы, / всех небесных сил и людей царицы.” Ibidem.
282
“Лицам доволству чести не дивися, / о всем славь бога, всегда веселися.” Ibidem.
283
“кождый смотри.” Ibidem.
91
well as in Andrei’s poem, elements of orality leave room for a meditative style that reflects the
process of writing. As Zumthor points out, the utterer’s physicality does not play a role in written
texts; hence, the speaker cannot reveal his identity and his relationship with the message being
conveyed, which he must express through the text’s rational organization.
284
The “I” needs to
nestle in the written text and to affirm his presence and his characteristics in the stylistic
elaboration of his message. Furthermore, Ong observes that by separating the subject and the
object of knowledge, writing opens the possibility for the human mind to analyze not only the
external, objective world but also the inner, introspective one.
285
Hence, Karion’s lyric
exemplifies how writing is intrinsically linked to self-analysis and literariness.

Conclusions
In this chapter, I have ascertained the knowledge and practice of lyric poetry in
seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Russia through a survey of the manuals of poetics, programs
of the Academies, and the circulation of lyric biblical, classical, and Western European texts.
However, the lyric poetry that East Slavic early modern writers develop differs from our modern
understanding of the genre. In particular, East Slavic early modern poetry blends with other
literary genres, which helps explain its unstable classification in manuals of poetics, where it is at
times classified as a genre, at others as a type of poetry based on meter, and at others as an
expressive modality.
The studies of Picchio, Zhivov, and Sazonova offer precious guides for my analysis of the
continuity between previous oral and written forms and the new literary poetry that emerged at
the turn of the eighteenth century. I therefore began my analysis of the first literary poetic

284
Zumthor, La lettre et la voix, 203-224, 245-295.
285
Ong, Orality and Literacy, 158.
92
compositions by tracing the emergence of the lyric persona from the characteristics common to
the previous cultural tradition—mainly, dialogism and theatricality. I verified that these elements
correspond to the constitutive elements of the lyric genre identified by the main theoreticians of
lyric poetry—Miner, Frye, and Culler.
Upon their recognition of death as “the transformation of the living being into person”
and the necessity of proper behavior so as to deserve eternal salvation, the poets considered in
this chapter aim to communicate this newfound awareness to their interlocutors.
286
In turn, this
new consciousness of humankind’s mortality catalyzes the emergence of the universal lyric
persona. The poems in this chapter also highlight that lyric voices in East Slavic poetry manifest
their presence in a variety of ways. Sometimes, these voices reveal themselves indirectly through
devices such as translation, imitation, thematic clue, and erudition, while other times, they make
statements in the first person, internalizing the experience of death. Another phenomenon that
fosters the development of the lyric voice is its re-evaluation of the earthly dimension, as
illustrated by the anonymous virshi, Andrei’s poem, and Karion’s lyric. Thanks to such re-
evaluation, individual experience and reflection acquire new importance.
We can thus assert that, in East Slavic poetry, lyric personae take their first steps when
they admonish their interlocutors. Meditating on the unavoidability of death prompts them to
leave traces of their presence within these texts. In this process, written literature starts
distinguishing itself from the oral tradition. In addition, two conceptions of culture begin to
creatively blend with one another: One, derived from the Slavic Orthodox tradition, conceives
culture as wisdom that God puts in the human heart while the other, developed through contact
with Western European culture, can be learnt through study and is the result of one’s own

286
Landsberg, The Experience of Death, 21.
93
dedication. Simeon opens this path by showing that knowledge and dedication acquired through
study help to better express the divine word. Karion continues such path in his “Verses to
Remember Death Pleasantly” by showing that the lyric persona can internalize the impressions
caused by one’s meditation on death. The lyric voice, once an indirect presence in a poem’s
rhetoric and structure, thus becomes a subject who takes on the responsibility of the word and
who turns the “I” into the object of the discourse.

94
Chapter Two:
When Death Is No Longer Frightening

The poems in the first chapter feature a handful of key themes: death as the experience
that characterizes human nature, the fear of dying, and the hope for an afterlife. In these texts, the
“universal lyric personae” reveal themselves while exhorting their interlocutors—who usually
stand for the whole of humanity—to conform to divine teachings in order to earn an eternal
afterlife. A lyric persona that is fully individualized or defined in biographical terms rarely
appears.
This second chapter explores the first East Slavic poems celebrating prominent people,
namely sovereigns, religious people, nobles, and members of the army—mostly in the form of
epitaphs and odes. These poems memorialize those who, according to the living, acted
righteously so as to have earned salvation in heaven. In the texts, lyric personae do not make
clear appearances. However, I identify certain signals that help to locate their more subtle
emergence. For instance, the personae may take part in dynastic disputes, expressing their own
opinions on matters of public interest and manifesting their relationship with figure celebrated in
the poem. As the distance between the social status of the celebrated figures and those
celebrating them narrows, the lyric speakers come to the fore, providing information that identify
the latter at the social and sentimental levels. In this way, the poetic voices become interpreters
for their community, whose integrity and stability are threatened by the death of their sovereign.
The speakers guide their interlocutors in the grieving process and support them during the
transition of power. In outlining the biographies of sovereigns and other prominent individuals,
95
lyric personae thus carry out a public role; tellingly, these poems were often read during public
ceremonies. Following this logic, I call the persona in these poems the “public lyric I.”
In these compositions we can observe a shift in perspective in regard to death. In them
death, rather than being macabre, acquires new meanings. Death does not stand before the
speaking subject but behind him; in other words, the subject does not observe death from the
earthly life but looks at earthly life from the afterlife. He adopts what I call an upside-down
perspective, whereby death is no longer the looming and dreaded event that dominates the poems
in chapter one, but rather an event that has ended one’s existence on earth and is now observed in
its entirety. As Vladimir Jankélévitch writes, “death transforms life into biography, retroactively
projects upon it a perspective, an order, and, sometimes, even a moral meaning.”
287

Paradoxically, death “gives shape to life, but it has to negate this life in order to give it a
shape.”
288
As a result, life is no longer perceived as the transitory experience that all human
beings share in these poems, but as an opportunity for living people to carry out illustrious deeds
and commemorate the actions of accomplished figures who have gained eternal life after death.
For these figures, the Last Judgment is not pronounced at the End Times but at the time
of death. Just as their earthly life earned them eternal glory, it will earn them salvation in the
afterlife. Vice versa, their everlasting salvation enables their remembrance on earth, where their
example will continue to bear salvific fruit and point to the fundamental values to abide by. In
this way, “memory conferred upon the dead a sort of [earthly] immortality.”
289
In the poems
dedicated to the death of eminent people, the lyric “I” undertakes the public task of conveying

287
“La mort transforme la vie en biographie, rétrojette sur elle un éclairage, un ordre et parfois même un sens
moral.” Vladimir Jankélévitch, La mort (Paris: Flammarion Editeur, 1966), 110.
288
Ibid., 166.
289
Philippe Ariès, Western Attitudes toward Death from the Middle Ages to the Present, transl. Patricia M. Ranum
(Baltimore, London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974), 61.
96
their memory and interceding between the living and the dead, and between the common people
and the glorified deceased.
In order to trace the evolution in the conception of death and the perspective and role of
the lyric persona, I analyze poems composed over the course of a just over a century, from 1694
until 1796. Considering such a long span of time allows me to examine and pinpoint the
dynamics at play, the recurring features, and the particular qualities that define the public lyric
voices celebrating prominent deceased figures. The composition of some of these poems
chronologically overlaps with that of poems included in the first chapter, which highlights how
differently the personae manifest themselves when they are meditating on the death of the
everyman versus when they are celebrating the death of sovereigns and other prominent
individuals.
Eighteenth-century Russia underwent dramatic changes in politics, culture, society, and
literature during this period that shaped the development of lyric self-consciousness. One of the
paramount events that fostered the transformations examined in this chapter is the foundation of
the Russian Empire (1721). Harsha Ram emphasizes the importance of this event: “No longer a
saintly guardian of the faith, the emperor became a divinity in his own right, the source and
repository of all power.”
290
The creation of a strong centralized State also ushered in the
transition from East Slavic to Russian culture. As noted in the introduction, Ram’s analysis of
eighteenth-century Russian poetry emphasizes the rupture brought about by the establishment of
the Empire, which undermined continuities with the previous literary tradition: “Initially rooted
in the vicissitudes of court life, the imperial academy, and state policy, Russian poetry began
with and as a subject of empire.”
291

290
Harsha Ram, The Imperial Sublime (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2003), 29.
291
Ibid., 6.
97
Russian poetry already dealt with praises of the sovereigns, their endeavors, and
celebrations during the reign of Peter I’s father, Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich (1645-76). In 1705,
before the foundation of the Russian Empire, Feofan Prokopovich indicated in his De arte
poetica that poets “write praises of great men and pass their most glorious deeds down to the
memory of future generations.”
292
The establishment of the Russian Empire undoubtedly made
this agenda more explicit, prompting poets to take on a new, public role celebrating sovereigns,
noble people, and members of the army—those who highly contributed to the reign. Poets such
as Vasilii Trediakovskii, Mikhail Lomonosov, and Gavrila Derzhavin became members of the
élite because of their services in the administrative and in military ranks.
293
They were often
invited to create cultural events at court—theatrical representations, public readings of sermons
and poems, and discussions on intellectual topics—and also brought to court the occasional
poetry, like odes celebrating births, coronations, and funerals, as with the poems of Karion,
Trediakovskii, and Lomonosov. Their incorporation into and participation in cultural circles and
newly founded academies brought Russian men of letters closer to Western European literary
polemics and the poetic system; they introduced genres, like lyric poetry, and poetic
compositions, like elegies, into Russia. Some of these genres—epitaphs, elegies, and epic poems
on the death of sovereigns and other prominent figures in particular—allow us to trace the
specific ways in which lyric consciousness developed in Russia.
I start this chapter by considering lyric compositions written by Karion Istomin, Vasilii
Trediakovskii, and Antiokh Kantemir on the death of sovereigns, who in every society were the

292
“scribuntur laudes magnorum virorum, eorumque praeclara facinora ad memoriam posteritatis transmittuntur.”
Feofan Prokopovich, De arte poetica, ed. I.P. Eremin (Leningrad: Akademiia nauk SSSR, 1961), 233.
293
Irina Reyfman, How Russia Learned to Write. Literature and the Imperial Table of Ranks (Madison: The
University of Wisconsin Press, 2016), 5. Marc Raeff, Origins of the Russian Intelligentsia: The Eighteenth-
Century Nobility (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1966), 8.
98
first individuals granted the right to be celebrated through funerals.
294
Such selection is by no
means exhaustive. For instance, I have not included odes by Mikhail Lomonosov, who is the
century’s most prominent Russian odic writer, because the theme of death is mostly peripheral in
his celebrative writings. I selected the poems based on their historic and thematic relevance,
which makes them appropriate for demonstrating the different phases in the evolution of the lyric
persona in death poems. Indeed, the celebration of sovereigns in these compositions pushes the
speaking voices and their functions to the surface: they express shared feeling and record the
nation’s crucial events, thus carrying out a socially relevant role. Because these works have an
explicit public function, the lyric personae sometimes appear indirectly, speaking in the name of
the community and hiding their individuality in order to fulfill their public role. We can
nevertheless perceive their presence because the public lyric personae do not present themselves
as timeless voices who admonish people about the universal human condition, as does the
universal “I” in the poems featured in chapter one. On the contrary, the lyric speakers considered
in this chapter are aware of the historical situation in which they operate, defining themselves
with reference to dates, historical figures, and pivotal moments in the lives of Russian people and
the Empire. Moreover, they are aware that their voices are listened to by sovereigns and cultural
élites—the only groups who were able to listen to and read these compositions at the time due to
literacy rates. The poems’ public function confirms the importance of extratextual relationships
in Russian eighteenth- and nineteenth-century poetry
295
and unveils the role played by the voices,
who are not men of the Church or erudites, but rather court poets who are close to their
sovereigns.

294
Edgar Morin, L’homme et la mort (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1970), 61.
295
Iurii M. Lotman, Testo e contesto: semiotica dell’arte e della cultura, transl. Simonetta Salvestroni (Rome:
Laterza, 1980), 27.
99
I then examine epitaphs in honor of men of the Church and of culture, like those by
Sil’vestr Medvedev for the poet and monk Simeon Polotskii, and by Mikhail Lomonosov for
Dmitrii, the archbishop of Rostov who was later proclaimed a saint. Although they are not fully
lyric, these epitaphs carry out the epideictic function that distinguishes lyric poetry. In these
epitaphs the celebrated figures, the lyric persona, and the real-life writer overlap; the voices play
the roles of poets and the men of the Church, which coincide with those of the deceased and
commemorated figures, as well as with the authors of the epitaphs. In this way, by celebrating
their counterparts, the speakers are actually celebrating themselves and affirming the value of
their voice and of their function.
After sovereigns, men of the Church, and men of culture, I consider the nobility with Petr
Buslaev’s poem on the death of Baroness Maria Stroganova and Gavrila Derzhavin’s ode on the
death of Countess Maria Rumiantseva. Commemorating the lives of these noblewomen after
their deaths leads the authors to frame their lives within the historical and cultural milieu of their
time, thus further individualizing the lyric speakers. Moreover, because writers often personally
knew the individuals they memorialized in their writings, the lyric texts bear signs of these
relationships. Poems commemorating the nobility also illuminate the values that inspired these
figures and their contemporaries, as Ivan Dolgorukov’s ode, “On the Death of Gorich,” shows.
My analysis ends with Nikolai Karamzin’s “On the Death of Prince A.G. Khovanskii,” probably
the first Russian poem that memorialize an individual through a discussion of their everyday
rather than their exceptional qualities.
The interest in glorifying sovereigns and other prominent figures in these poems relates
to the eighteenth-century phenomenon that Marcus Levitt has called “visual dominant,” or the
necessity of making glory visible: “Russian self-image of the age was profoundly marked by a
100
substantively new requirement that was central to early modem sociability: the need to be seen
and approved, so that virtue was not its own reward—it still had to be seen, staged, and
appreciated.”
296
In Public Figures, Antoine Lilti distinguishes “the glory of Roman emperors and
the celebrity of contemporary actors.”
297
Moving away from Leo Braudy’s study on glory, The
Frenzy of Renown, Lilti highlights the crucial distinction between glory, reputation, and
celebrity.
298
Glory is usually assigned posthumously and “designates the notoriety acquired by a
being judged above the common for the feats he has accomplished.”
299
It is attributed to great
individuals, like sovereigns, heroes, and saints. On the other hand, reputation “corresponds to the
judgment that the members of a group, of a community, collectively bring on one of them” in
order to consider someone honest and an expert.
300
Finally, celebrity indicates “people who are
known for being known… individuals without talent and without art, whose only merit is to
spend time on television.”
301
Celebrity is a modern phenomenon, which Lilti relates to the
establishment of a public sphere in the eighteenth century. Following Lilti’s categories, in this
chapter we will see the public lyric persona evolve from singing the glory of sovereigns,
religious figures, poets, noble people, and heroes to singing the reputation of people who, while
being nobles, distinguished themselves in their everyday qualities. Yet despite these differences,
in all the poems explored in this chapter, the voices assert themselves before their public as the

296
Marcus Levitt, The Visual Dominant in Eighteenth-Century Russia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011), 104,
124.
297
“la gloire des empereurs romains et la célébrité des actrices contemporaines.” Antoine Lilti, Figures publiques
(Paris: Fayard, 2014), 10.
298
Leo Braudy, The Frenzy of Renown: Fame and its History (New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986).
299
“désigne la notoriété acquise par un être jugé hors du commun pour les exploits qu’il a accomplis.” Lilti, Figures
publiques, 11.
300
“correspond au jugement que les membres d’un groupe, d’une communauté, portent collectivement sur l’un
d’entre eux.” Ibidem.
301
“les persone connues pour être connues… des individus sans talent et sans oeuvre, dont le seul mérite est de
passer à la television.” Ibid., 10.
101
holders of poetic, celebrating words and as the guarantors of memory. As Dolgorukov proclaims
in “On the Death of Gorich”: “I knew him personally, and I am a witness myself.”
302

First Comes the King
In the epitaphs dedicated to the death of the sovereigns we do not observe what Simeon
Polotskii states in “Death”—“It is well-known to humankind that death awaits us all, / Nobody
keeps living immortally”—or what Karion Istomin writes in “Verses to Remember Death
Pleasantly”—“[t]he tsars and the kings and every authority, / do not bypass all of the sorrows
existing in the flesh.”
303
As the voices state in these lines, death characterizes the human
condition. However, as the poems featured in this chapter illustrate, death is not experienced in
the same way by every human being.
304
In fact, in all societies, sovereigns are the first
individuals to be immortalized with a biography and, consequently, to be granted the right of a
glorious life after death. By virtue of such a right, they are acknowledged with individual identity
and spiritual immortality on earth; the right to heavenly life guarantees the right to earthly
memory. As Morin writes, the trauma of death and the belief in immortality, “which [are] the
affirmation of individuality beyond death, [are not] within the same reach for all the members of
a society… The first ‘declared individuals’ who emerge in the social spotlight are the rulers: the
shaman and the chief.”
305
While erecting a monumentum aere perennius to the sovereigns, the

302
“Я лично его зналъ, и самъ тому свидѣтель.” Ivan M. Dolgorukov, Bytie serdtsa moego, ili Stikhotvoreniia
kniazia Ivana Mikhailovicha Dolgorukago (Moscow: V universitetskoi tipografii, 1817-18), 58.
303
“Извѣестно человѣком, яко смерть всѣх чает, / никого же безсмертно жити оставляет.” Simeon Polotskii,
Vertograd mnogotsvetnyi, eds. A. Hippisley and L.I. Sazonova (Köln, Weimar, Wien: Böhlau, 1996), 144.
“Цари и князи и всякия власти, / не обходят вси, бывше в плоти, старасти.” Aleksandr M. Panchenko, Russkaia
sillabicheskaia poeziia XVII-XVIII vv. (Leningrad: Sovetskii pisatel’, 1970), 211.
304
Michel Vovelle, Mourir autrefois (Paris: Gallimard, 1974), 13.
305
“qui [sont] affirmation de l’individualité par-delà la mort… [ne sont pas] au même étage pour tous les membres
d’une société… Les premiers ‘individus affirmés’ qui émergent à la surface sociale sont les dominateurs: le
chaman… et le chef.” Morin, L’homme et la mort, 43, 60.
102
poetic voices extend to themselves and to their deeds the immortality attributed to the
sovereigns.
In this section, I focus on the first epitaph dedicated to the death of a tsaritsa in Russia,
which shows all the characteristics of the genre in an exemplary manner and manifests, albeit
indirectly, the presence of the lyric persona in its communicative intentions and the stylistic
signs. This text, Karion Istomin’s “Epitaph to Tsaritsa Natal’ia Kirillovna,” includes twenty
syllabic verses, which are divided into hemistiches unusually grouped into two columns and
which form three four-line sentences followed by three two-line sentences.
306
The poem,
composed in the year of the tsaritsa’s death in 1694, (b. 1651), was most likely destined to be
read during Natal’ia Kirillovna’s funeral celebrations. Natal’ia Kirillovna was a member of the
Russian imperial family. She was the wife of Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich and the mother of Peter
I and became a protagonist during the time of political turmoil that followed the death of Tsar
Aleksei in 1676. The historian Paul Bushkovitch, who analyzes the heated debates between the
families connected to Tsar Aleksei, the members of the court, and the army, notes that Natal’ia
Kirillovna skillfully maintained her place as a leading figure, as well as preserved the place of
co-Tsar for her son, Peter I. She was then rewarded when Peter I acquired an ever more
prominent role at court and became the main Tsar after the regency of Sof’ia (1682-89).
307
Given
her political skills, Natal’ia Kirillovna played a crucial role in her country’s development.
308

Therefore, Karion’s memorialization takes a clear stance in the power disputes of the time. The

306
A.P. Bogdanov, Stikhi i obraz izmeniaiushcheisia Rossii. Posledniaia chetvert’ XVII-nachalo XVIII vv. (Moskva:
Institut rossiiskoi istorii RAN, 2005), 33-34.
307
Paul Bushkovitch, Peter the Great: The Struggle for Power, 1671-1725 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2001), 81-168.
308
Oscar Browning, Peter the Great (London: Hutchinson & Company, 1898), 3-4.
103
poetic voice in the epitaph undertakes the public function of court poet by making politically
relevant statements in end-of-the-seventeenth-century Russia.
In this poem, the poetic voice does not explicitly present himself as a lyric speaker and
does not express himself in the first person. Nevertheless, we can perceive his presence through
his relationship with the commemorated tsaritsa and through his communicative modalities.
Since the epitaph bears a clear public value, the speaker posits himself as he who records the
event and gives voice to the feelings of the Russian people, which he identifies with the entirety
of the population. Furthermore, he impresses an encomiastic goal: in celebrating Natal’ia
Kirillovna, he also gets the chance to praise the co-monarch Peter I, “great pious man among the
Russians, / The heir of kingdoms and the conqueror of several countries, / Guardian of
Orthodoxy eternal in the Lord.”
309
In commemorating the deceased tsaritsa in addition to the co-
monarch Peter I, the voice restates the public function of the author, Karion, who worked for a
long time at court, dedicated several works to Sof’ia, Natal’ia Kirillovna, and Peter I, and had a
deeply formative role in the latter’s education without ever becoming his official tutor.
310
The
voice is aware that he is speaking before the Russian people and that his composition bears
political significance. He therefore employs the epitaph to proclaim the legitimacy of Peter I’s
accession to the throne by including him in the dynastic line and in the divine plan—both of
which Peter I’s opponents challenged.
The speaking voice also defines himself by adapting the genre of the epitaph to a specific
historical and communicative situation. Karion’s poem shows the characteristics of both a
funerary inscription and a poetic composition. As an epitaph, it confirms Daniel H. Kaiser’s

309
“благочестиваго в россах великаго, / Наследника царств и мног стран побелителя, / православия в бозе
верна хранителя.” Ibidem.
310
Paola Cotta Ramusino, Un poeta alla corte degli zar. Karion Istomin e il panegirico imperiale (Alessandria:
Edizioni dell’Orso, 2002), 7, 14-17.
104
claim that, at the end of the seventeenth century, the structure of epitaphs reflected an awakening
self-awareness and that “engraved epitaphs… resembled compact biographies, testifying to the
identities of the deceased whose names, social ranks, times of death, and spans of life [they]
dutifully recorded.”
311
The “Epitaph to Tsaritsa Natal’ia Kirillovna” shows all of the features that
Kaiser lists. It starts by indicating the date of the tsaritsa’s death, which is counted starting from
the date of the world’s creation, as was the tendency of the Orthodox tradition up until the
eighteenth century: “In the year seven thousand two hundred two from the creation of the world /
In January in the twenty-fifth day in the second hour of light…”
312
Such a device establishes the
Orthodox value system within which the speaker is operating. A few lines later, the voice
restates the tsaritsa’s faith by defining her as “pious.” In the conclusion, it affirms that “the God-
loving soul went to God.”
313
Here, death is not the event that all of humanity fears and eternal
salvation is not the celestial prospect that leads the speaker to admonish his interlocutors. The
deceased tsaritsa is “the purest light”—death is not frightening to her, and salvation is certain.
She is in the heavens among the saints as the poem is being performed or read. Similarly, the
speaker overturns the perspective on death and re-evaluates earthly life when he mentions the
burial procedure and the funeral ceremony, names the patriarch involved in it, and indicates its
date of occurrence in the lines 11-14, which links the poem’s conclusion to its beginning.
The deployment of these devices points to the fact that the epitaph’s poetic function
interweaves with the referential one, so that the lyric speaker appears as the manipulator of
language. While the first date identifies the day of Natal’ia Kirillovna’s death, the second one

311
Daniel H. Kaiser, “Discovering Individualism Among the Deceased: Gravestones in Early Modern Russia,” in
Modernizing Muscovy. Reform and Social Change in Seventeenth-Century Russia, eds. Jarmo Kotilaine and
Marshall Poe (London, New York: Routledge Curzon, 2004), 437.
312
“Мирозданна седмьтысящь двесте втора лета / генваря в дватцать пять день друга часа света.” Panchenko,
Russkaia sillabicheskaia poeziia, 205.
313
“[б]лагочестива.” “Душа боголюбива отъиде ко богу.” Ibidem.
105
identifies that of her burial; by means of the repetition with variation, a stylistic device taken
from Russian folkloric poetry that Roman Iakobson has defined as “the essence of poetic
artifice,” the voice conveys the notion that the tsaritsa’s life is complete.
314
Through this type of
repetition, the “I” confers upon the text a certain unity and simultaneously captures the listener’s
attention by introducing an element of variation. The composition’s circular structure makes the
epitaph’s stylistic register solemn and, as a result, the speaking voice also becomes solemn.
Karion’s text thus allows us to notice not only the individualizing nature of the epitaph
documented by Kaiser, but that the epitaph, in evolving from inscription to literary genre,
contributes to the appearance of the speaking subject’s individuality and to the expression of his
role.
The poetic voice, then, celebrates Natal’ia Kirillovna by identifying her role within the
Russian state and her relationship with the tsars who have reigned and who will reign. She is “the
pious… Natal’ia Kirillovna, the lady tsaritsa and the Russian mistress. / The wife of the deceased
tsar… / And the mother of tsar Peter Alekseevich.”
315
This way of identifying her closely recalls
Ernst Kantorowicz’s theory of “the king’s two bodies” in the homonymous work.
316
Although
Kantorowicz, in his study, has focused on Medieval political thought developed in Western
Europe, we can apply the same principle to early modern Russia. In fact, Karion’s verses convey
the idea that the political and spiritual bodies of sovereigns or members of the royal family
continue to live, even if their physical bodies are no longer alive. The political body is eternal

314
Roman Iakobson, “Grammatical Parallelism and Its Russian Facet,” in Language, v. 42, no. 2 (Apr.–Jun. 1966),
399.
315
“[б]лагочестива… Наталия Кирилловна, госпожа царица росска владычица. / Супруга царя успша… /
Мати же царя Петра Алексеевича.” Panchenko, Russkaia sillabicheskaia poeziia, 205.
316
Ernst Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology, introd. and pref. Jordan
William Chester, and Leyser Conrad (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016), 366-412.
A study on the religious foundations of political power in Russia is Boris A. Uspenskii, Viktor M. Zhivov, “Tzar’ i
Bog: semioticheskie aspekty sakralizatsii monarkha v Rossii,” in Izbrannye trudy, v. 1 (Moskva: Gnosis,
1994), 110-218.
106
because of the dynastic rule, according to which each ruler continues the political legacy of the
previous one, whereas the spiritual one is eternal because of the religious authority that the
sovereigns embody. We can find the same parallelism between temporal and spiritual powers in
the iconography of the time. As Dmitrii Likhachev observes in Russkoe iskusstvo ot drevnosti do
avangarda, the official portraits of Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich and of his son, Fedor Alekseevich,
in formal attire can be compared with the representation of God in some of Gurii Nikitin’s
icons.
317
The link between the temporal and spiritual powers is confirmed by the way in which
the voice in the epitaph characterizes Natal’ia Kirillovna, who is both the “lady tsaritsa and the
Russian mistress.” The speaker stresses that the tsaritsa belongs to the Russian line by reiterating
words like “Russian” and “Russia” multiple times throughout the poem, at ll. 3, 6, 7, 8, 11.
318

Political role and religious faith coincide in the figure of Natal’ia Kirillovna consistently with the
principle of theocracy, which is well-established in the Slavic context since the fifteenth century.
In the composition’s second part, the elements so far analyzed—the reflection on death
and the establishment of Natal’ia Kirillovna’s individuality as the political and religious
discourses evolve—merge in the description of the public function of the funeral ceremony. The
poetic voice dedicates a few, meaningful lines to the ritual:
Adrian the Russian, the most holy patriarch,
Buried her body…
Given to the earth on the Friday of this month,
On the twenty-sixth day from her death she was put in the bed of the grave.
319

Kantorowicz also notices that the funeral ritual plays a crucial role in perpetuating the life of the
sovereign’s political body. The poetic voice seems to apply this principle to Natal’ia Kirillovna,

317
Dmitrii S. Likhachev, Russkoe iskusstvo ot drevnosti do avangarda (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1992), 210-211.
318
“российский,” “росска,” and “Россия.” Panchenko, Russkaia sillabicheskaia poeziia, 205.
319
“Погребе тело ея патриарх святейший / Адриан российск… / Земли предаша в пяток месяца того же, / в
двадесят шестый день бысть гробно ей зде ложе.” Ibidem.
107
who is a member of the royal family, and highlights the relationship between her soul, the
Russian people, and God. These three subjects are unified by the same goal, namely the
assumption of Natal’ia Kirillovna. The tsaritsa “might see the purest light,” the Russian people
“prayed for her to enter the number of the saints,” and God is asked to welcome the tsaritsa.
320

The speaker’s viewpoint traces a line of glances from the earth to heaven, which constitutes the
horizon of the tsaritsa, the people, and God’s intentions; the pure world of the saints is the
element that unifies all of these actors. The persona concludes by invoking the Lord: “God, calm
the soul of tsaritsa Natal’ia, / Include her in heaven’s happiness alongside all the saints.”
321
In
this way, he conveys his and the people’s longing through a lyric expressive modality, the
apostrophe to God, which is recurring in East Slavic lyric poetry.
Thus, the lyric speaker in Karion’s epitaph does not come to the fore, but acts by
expressing his communicative intentions and ideas about the political situation of his time, which
are presented as coinciding with those of the Russian people. In doing this, the lyric voice takes
position in the court conflict, because the line of continuity that he delineates from Aleksei
Mikhailovich to Natal’ia Kirillovna to Peter I builds a dynastic line constituted both by family
relationships and by the ability to reign. Meanwhile, the “I” manifests himself as representing the
entirety of the Russian people without mentioning the distinction among different factions prone
to court quarrels. The thematic and stylistic levels of expression come together when the voice
utilizes stylistic devices in describing the funeral ritual in order to bring together his interlocutors
in the line of gazes directed towards the earth and the sky. As a result, the persona becomes the
mediator between God, the royal family, and the Russian people, of whom he is the interpreter.

320
Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies, 409-437. “да зрит она свет чистейший.” “молися, быть ей святых в
слогу.” Panchenko, Russkaia sillabicheskaia poeziia, 205.
321
“Боже, упокой душу Наталии царицы, / причти в радости в небе, где святых всех лицы.” Ibidem.
108
In doing so, Karion defines the role of the leading poet in Russia differently from how Derzhavin
does a century later. While Crone identifies the leading poet by his “independence and
authority,” as embodied in Derzhavin’s work, Karion identifies the leading poet by his synergy
with God, the royal family, and the Russian people.
322
The continuous alternation noted
throughout the analysis between a hieratic, solemn tone and concrete, everyday language
underscores this latter point.

The Trinity of Wisdom: God, Poet, and Sovereign
Karion included the “Panegyric,” dedicated to Peter I for his eleventh name-day, in the
manuscript, “Book of Reasoning of the Intellectual Vision and of the Bodily Activity in God’s
Wisdom” (1683), which he destined to a public reading at court, followed by an individual
reading intended to foster reflection.
323
As stated in the panegyric, wisdom is essential both for
effective governance and for achieving a self-consciousness that enables one to overcome fear of
death. In order to understand the role played by Karion’s panegyric in the emergence of the lyric

322
Anna Lisa Crone, The Daring of Derzavin: The Moral and Aesthetic Independence of the Poet in Russia
(Bloomington: Slavica, 2001), 218.
323
The genre of the panegyric and of the panegyric ode spread in eighteenth-century Russia. Several studies focus
on this literary genre and on the cultural, social, and political phenomena connected to it Robert Collis,
“Merkavah Mysticism and Visions of Power in Early Eighteenth-Century Russia: The New Year
Panegyrics of Stefan Javorskij, 1703–1706,” in Russian literature 2014, 75(1-4): 73-109. Maria Di Salvo,
“Felix Catharina Regnet! Felix Catharina Vincat! Panegyrics Dedicated to Catherine II by White Russian
Catholic Schools,” in Russian literature, 2014, 75(1-4): 111-120. James von Geldern, “The Ode as a
Performative Genre,” in Slavic Review, 1991, 50(4): 927-939. Luba Golburt, “The Queen Is Dead, Long
Live the King: Paul’s Accession and the Plasticity of Late Eighteenth-Century Panegyric,” in Russian
literature, 2014, 75(1-4): 163-187. Marcus Levitt, Early Modern Russian Letters (Boston: Academic
Studies Press, 2009), 218-248, 320-338. Elena Pogosian, Vostorg russkoi ody i reshenie temy poeta v
russkom panegirike 1730-1762 gg., Dissertationes Philologiae Slavicae Universitatis Tartuensis, 3, Tartu,
1997. Lidiia I. Sazonova, “Ot russkogo panegirika XVII v. k ode M.V. Lomonosova,” in Lomonosov i
russkaia literatura (Moskow: Nauka, 1987), 103-126. Ronald Vroon, “Poetry Speaks to Power: Panegyric
Responses to Peter III, Catherine II and the Coup d’État of 1762,” in Russian literature 2014, 75(1-4), 563-
590. Viktor M. Zhivov, Language and Culture in Eighteenth-Century Russia, transl. Marcus Levitt
(Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2009), 189-209.
109
persona in Russian poetry, one needs to consider that, in seventeenth-century Russia, the role of
the tutor was usually identified with that of the poet.
324

In the “Panegyric,” we observe how an overturning of the speaker’s perspective allows
them to appreciate earthly life. In step with other panegyrics, which honor the sovereign in
power by recalling the achievements of their predecessors, Karion celebrates the deceased
sovereigns who came before Peter I. This corresponds with Marina Kiseleva’s observation that
seventeenth- and eighteenth-century writers composed panegyrics to celebrate well-known
personalities belonging to the royal families, expressing an interest in the “concrete man, with
their names and the dates of their births and… deaths… So, court life started with the
anthropologization of the cultural context.”
325
On the one hand, the voice creates these royal
biographies. On the other, they connect the figure of the poet and that of the sovereign. The
function that the poet attributes to themself—celebrating and educating the royal family—is vital
for the state and enables the lyric “I” to speak publicly in the first person.
In the “Panegyric,” the relationship between the sovereign, the poet, and the lyric persona
takes shape in Karion’s theoretical justification of absolutism, which creates “the first example in
the Russian setting of a ‘Mirror for Princes.’”
326
The poem’s didactic nature is outlined in its
structure, whereby God, the Virgin Mary, and tsaritsa Natal’ia Kirillovna directly impart lessons
on the notion of wisdom to young Peter through a series of monologues and prayers, which
create a sacred representation typical of seventeenth-century art.
327
In the poem’s second part,

324
Giovanna Brogi Bercoff, “La cultura letteraria barocca in Russia,” in Il Barocco letterario nei paesi slavi (Roma:
La Nuova Italia Scientifica, 1996), 233.
325
“человек, конкретный, со своим именем и временем рождения… и смерти… Так жизнь двора
инициировала антропологизацию культурного контекста.” Marina Kiseleva, Intellektual’nyi vybor
Rossii vtoroi poloviny XVII-nachala XVIII veka: ot drevnerusskoi knozhnosti k evropeiskoi uchenosti
(Moscow: Progress-Traditsiia, 2011), 224-225.
326
“..il primo esempio in ambito russo di speculum principis.” Cotta Ramusino, Un poeta alla corte degli zar, 50.
327
See the section “The Staging of the ‘I’” in chapter one.
110
this group of figures is replaced by the speaking voice, who leads the discourse. Sources that link
knowledge to political power and that certainly inspired Karion include the Biblical book of
Proverbs; the “Book of Royal Degrees” in the “Life” of Ol’ga; the “Tale of Peter and Fevronia”;
and the “Spiritual Testament of Emperor Basil to His Son Leo,” which was published multiple
times throughout the seventeenth century and reprinted in 1680 by the Verkhniaia Tipografiia
established by Simeon Polotskii.
328
Nevertheless, in the “Panegyric,” Karion realizes something
different and innovative: he portrays the deeds of both the sovereign and the poet, who share
their knowledge and spread wisdom, as necessary for the Russian state and for the Russian
Orthodox people.
In the “Panegyric,” the speaking voice comes to the fore when claiming their role as a
poet and in carrying it out in the process of writing. The speaker establishes their presence by
preserving the memory of the deceased tsars and passing it to his readers. The lives of the
sovereigns conform to the design of divine wisdom to the point that they receive wisdom and
power directly from God, who the voice reports to have told Peter: “I made you a tsar” and “I
loved you, / I put the realm in your hands.”
329
The work of the sovereign is supratemporal
because of the long-lasting deeds that it plants in the kingdom’s political life, but it is constituted
by the individual’s actions that build his biography, characterize him, and make him worthy of
God’s love. So, in the “Panegyric,” the single episodes in one’s own life build on each other to
acquire new political meaning. At the same time, the speaking voice emerges and acts as a
guarantor of memory, a legitimating role. The previous tsars whom the voice celebrates are
Aleksei Mikhailovich, the Tsar’s father; Natal’ia Kirillovna, the Tsar’s mother; and Fedor
Alekseevich and Ivan Alekseevich, the Tsar’s half-brothers. Like their successor Peter I, they all

328
Cotta Ramusino, Un poeta alla corte degli zar, 41.
329
“Аз поставих тебе царя”; “Аз тя возлюбих, / царство ти вручих.” Ibid., 90-93.
111
embody what Kantorowicz has called the king’s “political body,” which is invisible and
incorruptible and which goes from one ruler to the next, following an endless succession.
330
The
voice brings together all of the sovereigns in this eternal genealogy, united by a shared wisdom:
The Sovereign built, following God’s will,
Schools to teach those who desired it.
And, as knowledge was appreciated by the tsar,
So did his son, your brother, study it.
The good Aleksei, the most handsome tsarevich…
Took study into such consideration
That he soon started seeing its goodness.
331

Ernst Curtius points out that attributing wisdom and fortitude to the sovereigns is commonplace,
dating back to classical antiquity and continuing through the Middle Ages and the
Renaissance.
332
The “I” in Karion’s poem centers on the notion of wisdom, which becomes the
real protagonist of the “Panegyric” as the virtue that guides the tsars’ actions. Praise of wisdom
references specific historic circumstances. For instance, the poetic voice says that Fedor
Alekseevich “attempted at rooting science in the tsardom, / At increasing the ingenuity of those
who desired it.”
333
These verses refer to the fact that Fedor Alekseevich, the son and successor of
Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich, continued his father’s intention to cultivate knowledge and instituted
an Academy of Science in the Zaikonospassky monastery. At the same time, these lines allow
the voice to emphasize his own presence as a poet; they glorify and address the previous tsars
and their interlocutor (“The Sovereign… / … his son, your brother…”) and invite their listeners

330
Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies, 87-192.
331
“Строил государь ко божией воли, / В научение восхотѣвшым схоли / Тако бо царю наука сладися, / Яко
сын его ваш брат ей учися. / Благий Алексий царевич прекрасный, / … / В учении он сице взя охоту,
/ Яко да вскорѣ узрит ю доброту.” Cotta Ramusino, Un poeta alla corte degli zar, 139.
332
Ernst R. Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013),
173-178.
333
“Тщися науку в царствѣ вкоренити / хотящим людем разумы острити.” Cotta Ramusino, Un poeta alla corte
degli zar, 141.
112
and readers to cultivate wisdom themselves. So, in the “Panegyric,” a lyric voice develops who is
rooted in a specific historical moment, of which he is the chronicler and protagonist as a tutor.
The lyric voice states that human nature longs for wisdom, and this longing is part of the
aspiration towards salvation that allows individuals to overcome the trauma of death examined in
the first chapter. The persona affirms that, through wisdom, “you will know yourself” and “all
our things are known. / We firstly recognize who we are.”
334
Wisdom is “salvation for the world”
and helps one to look at the “end of all things consciously,” to delve into the human mortal
nature, and to go beyond the trauma that stems from it.
335
Indeed, while the individual alone “is
filled with fear when he lives here [on earth],” through the support of wisdom one can behave
correctly and “[o]n earth will see the light, / And who cares if the waves of sin will rage!”
336

Wisdom is, thus, a means for salvation and self-knowledge that generates such self-awareness
that one becomes able to express oneself: “it will give everyone their own voice.”
337
As a result,
wisdom leads the lyric persona to develop his own voice.
The lyric persona enters the composition and speaks in the first person in the prayer that
occupies the poem’s second part. Paola Cotta Ramusino maintains that the panegyric’s structure
is “built on reflection (“zertsalo”) rather than on the author’s voice, which instead remains
hidden.”
338
I claim, on the contrary, that Karion’s “Panegyric” is a key step in the path that leads

334
On ideas of wisdom in seventeenth-century Russia, see Olga B. Strakhov, The Byzantine Culture in Muscovite
Rus’. The Case of Evfimii Chudovskii (1620-1705) (Köln, Weimar, Wien: Böhlau Verlag, 1998), 43-55.
Boris A. Uspenskii, Iazykovaia situatsiia Kievskoi Rusi i ee znachenie dlia istorii russkogo literaturnogo
iazyka (Moskva: Izd-stvo Moskovskogo universiteta, 1983), 65, 106. Zhivov, Language and Culture in
Eighteenth-Century Culture, 69-70.
“самого ся познаеш.” “вся нашя извѣщенно / В первых сами ся кто есмы взнаваем.” Cotta Ramusino, Un poeta
alla corte degli zar, 144-147.
335
“спасение миру.” “конец всѣх дѣл извѣстно.” Ibid., 156–157, 132–133.
336
“здѣ живя страхом содержится.” “В свѣте же свѣт… узрят, / и что волны грѣхов бурят.” Ibid., 142-143, 92-
93.
337
“Она… даст всякому си гласу.” Ibid., 146-147.
338
“basata sul rispecchiamento (“zercalo”) piuttosto che sulla voce dell’autore, che rimane invece nascosta.” Cotta
Ramusino, Un poeta alla corte degli zar, 40.
113
to a more explicit presence of the lyric persona in Russian poetry. Whereas in the “Epitaph to
Natal’ia Kirillovna” the presence of the lyric persona is implicit, in the “Panegyric” the “I”
explicitly manifests himself by declaring his social status. This is evident in the prayer to Peter I:
In announcing this to Your Highness,
I am a miserable man bowing my head to your feet.
While listening, you tend your ears towards me,
I pray your good royal eyes.
Please be merciful with the worthless man
Your servant, the miserable monk.
339

The self’s reflection on their own identity stems from this exclusive relationship between the
lyric “I” who embodies the court poet and the “you” who is Peter I. The reflection centers on the
idea of wisdom and on its function in society and in the state and leads to one of the lyric voice’s
most explicit statements in the prayer, in which he says, while addressing Christ:
Your hands made me a flute,
Harbinger of your endeavors;
But the enemy with pleasant sounds made me deaf
And darkened my mind with sinful thoughts.
Out of necessity my mouth is speechless,
I cannot sing you beautiful songs.
Therefore, please save me as you know how to and can,
Call me into your beautiful palace.
340

In these lines, the lyric voice also uses the first-person pronoun to refer to himself and
metonymically presents himself as a “flute.” The “I” becomes a concrete instrument in God’s
hands, “[h]arbinger of your [Christ’s] endeavors,” but as a man he is “speechless” and unable to
“sing… the beautiful songs.” He is aware that “the enemy is making [him] deaf with pleasing
sounds / and clouded [his] reason with sinful considerations.” We can reconduct these statements

339
“Се величеству твоему вѣщая, / главу худѣйш аз к стопам приклоняя. / Во слушание склони ми ушеса, /
молю царска ти благая очеса. / Изволи милость сотворити мнѣйшу, / рабу твоему монаху худѣйшу.”
Ibid., 146-147.
340
“Твои мя руки создаста цѣвницу, / Премудых ти дѣл возгласителницу. / Но враг оглуши лестными
звизданми, / и ум помрачи грѣховны гаданми. / Имам от нужды и уста безгласна, / Не могу пѣти
пения ти красна. / Тѣм яко вѣси и хощеши спаси, / В красный ти чертог вниди ми возгласи.” Ibid.,
144-145.
114
to the “declaration of inability” that is typical of late antiquity, although Karion does not simply
employ the commonplace, but situates it within an ethical and metaphysical framework.
341

Indeed, the lyric subject needs a relationship with God in order to be able to sing again: “Call me
into your beautiful palace,” he asks. The voice enacts the classical association of lyric poetry
with playing and singing and equates himself with a musical instrument, whose task is to
communicate to his interlocutors that they must embrace wisdom in order to understand Christ’s
deeds. In this light, the “I” does not ask to be “[c]all[ed]… into [the] beautiful palace” for his
own advantage, rather he posits it as an action to spread God’s word for the good of humanity.
Karion delineates a trinity in which each member plays a specific role: God creates
wisdom and inspires the poet; the latter sings and teaches thanks to the inspiration coming from
God and under the protection of the sovereign; and the ruler permits wisdom to spread and
realizes God’s word as sung by the poet.
342
A series of bijective relationships establish itself: the
tie between God and the poet is realized through the word, the one between God and the
sovereign is realized through power, and the one between the poet and the sovereign is realized
through the spread of God’s word. In these lines, the voice openly affirms the task of spreading
wisdom that the Russian man of culture has always carried out with a new, consciously
developed poetics. In the invitation addressed to Peter I “[t]o make a plan for instruction, / To
root sacred wisdom in Russia,” we can read the voice’s “fishing for goodwill” (captatio
benevolentiae) to the sovereign, a statement of the reign’s political and cultural policies, and an
expression of the desire to exert a certain influence on Peter I as a man of culture.
343

341
Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, 407-413.
342
Sazonova considers the relationship between the poet and God in the chapter: “Poet—perevodchik slov i
pomylslov Boga,” in Literaturnaia kul’tura Rossii, 118-129.
343
“О учении промысл сотворити, / мудрость в России святу коренити.” Cotta Ramusino, Un poeta alla corte
degli zar, 154-155.
115
The poetic voice realizes the panegyric’s didactic goal and praises his role as tutor. God
himself proclaims that “[t]he words of the wise men / Are ornament to the reign. / From them
wisdom came, / And showed the actions,” while the speaking voice affirms that “[a] lot of wise
men are salvation to the world.”
344
When talking about wise men, the speaker is talking about
himself as a poet. We can, therefore, consider the previous quotes as implicit meta-literary
declarations, to the point that God, the Virgin Mary, and Natal’ia Kirillovna do not act as
“dramatis personae,” but are distinct expressions of the lyric voice and converge towards
representing the lyric persona as a poet and a wise man. Through wisdom, the poet earns a
pivotal role both on earth and in heaven. Acquiring awareness of human mortality, the poet
brings on earth the wisdom that allows humankind to overcome fear and to behave according to
God’s teachings. A similar representation foreshadows the correspondence between ethical
ideals and imperial government. Prior to the foundation of the Empire, Karion lays the
ontological foundations for the imperial sublime. Karion’s “Panegyric” functions as the case
study for the original path through which Russian poetry defines the public function of the lyric
“I” and roots him in a deeper inner world.

Court Life Leaves No Space to the Lyric Personae
Grigorii Gukovskii points out how, at the turn of the century, “[p]oetry… did not exist by
itself… at all; it appeared as an element of a synthetic action, drawn up by the painter, the master
of ceremonies, the tailor, the furniture maker, the actor, the courtier, the dancing master, the
pyrotechnic, the architect, the academician, and the poet—in general, forming a performance of

344
“Царству бо краса, / мудрых словеса. / Из них же дѣла, / мудрость подала”; “Много бо мудрых спасение
миру.” Ibid., 94-95, 156-157.
116
the imperial court.”
345
This is what we observe in Trediakovskii’s “Elegy on the Death of Peter
the Great,” which was presented during a ceremony in the Moscow Slavo-Greek-Latin Academy
in 1725 and then rewritten in 1730. The “Elegy” shows many references to the paintings,
sculptures, and architectures that were prepared for Peter the Great’s funeral. As such, it is a
good instance of how difficult it can be for lyric voices to manifest themselves in texts when the
non-poetic goals prevail over the poetic ones.
Vasilii Trediakovskii (1703-68) represents a turning point in the evolution of eighteenth-
century Russian lyrics. He studied at the Sorbonne in Paris, becoming the first Russian
commoner to receive a humanistic education abroad and a key figure in the cultural relationships
between Imperial Russia and Western Europe. Indeed, he did translate a wide array of works by
classical authors, Medieval philosophers, and French writers and was influential to poets like
Mikhail Kheraskov and Sumarokov with his 1720s-30s experimentation in the elegies.
346
Upon
his return to Russia he became a member of the Academy of Sciences and a court poet, although
his popularity in the intellectual and court circles of the time experienced several twists and
turns.

345
“Поэзия… вообще… существовала не сама по себе; она фигурировала как элемент синтетического
действа, составленного живописцем, церемониймейстером, портным, мебельщиком, актером,
придворным, танцмейстером, пиротехником, архитектором, академиком и поэтом — в целом
образующего спектакль императорского двора.” Grigorii A. Gukovskii, Ocerki po istorii russkoi
literatury XVIII veka: dvorianskaia fronda v literature, 1750-1760 gg. (Moscow-Leningrad: Izd-tvo
Akademii Nauk, 1936), 13-14.
346
Nadezhda Iu. Alekseeva, Russkaia oda (Petersburg: Nauka, 2005), 78-127. Lev Pumpianskii, “Trediakovskii i
nemetskaia shkola razuma,” in Zapadnyi sbornik, 1937:1(Moscow-Leningrad): 157-186. Irina Reyfman,
Vasilii Trediakovskii. The Fool of the “New” Russian Literature (Stanford: Stanford University Press,
1990). Il’ia Z. Serman, “Russkaia poeziia nachala XVIII veka. Kantemir, Trediakovskii, Lomonosov,” in
Istoriia russkoi poezii, v. 1 (Leningrad: Nauka, 1968), 55-89. Boris A. Uspenskii, Vokrug Trediakovskii:
Trudy po istorii russkogo iazyka i russkoi kul’tury (Moscow: Indrik, 2008). Grigorii Gukovskii, “Elegiia v
XVIII veke,” in Rannie raboty po istorii russkoi poezii XVIII veka (Moscow: Iazyki russkoi kul’tury,
2001), 77-116.
117
The “Elegy,” written in syllabic verses, describes the sorrow that spread throughout
Russia after the death of Peter the Great.
347
As such, the composition fully fits the notion of
elegy dating back to classical Greece: “from the Greek elegia, for ‘mournful poem,’ early songs
of lamentation were… about… lost life.”
348
Although the poem is defined as an elegy, which is
one of the genres centered around the speaker’s emotional self-expression, the lyric “I” does not
manifest himself directly.
349
We can grasp his presence only indirectly, as one of the people
among the Russians and through the stylistic devices used to describe the funeral ceremony. In
the first line, we read: “What sadness is heard everywhere terribly? / Ach! it must be Russia
crying loudly in a great crowd.”
350
Here, the occurrence of the construction “What…?”, of a non-
further specified third person singular (“is heard”), and of the adverbs “everywhere” and
“terribly” convey feelings of surprise and sorrow (pechal’), shared by all of the Russian people.
Likewise, we read that “Russia cries,” and Trediakovskii’s decision to metonymically name the
nation in place of the people further widens the outreach of these feelings across the population.
Moreover, this decision posits the speaking voice as part of the broader collective, whose
feelings he proposes to interpret. Thus, in the same expression, the lyric persona both hides and
reveals himself.
The speaker’s reversed perspective on human life that we observed in Karion’s works
also prevails in Trediakovskii’s “Elegy.” The voice locates the cry over the deceased sovereign
in the sky and, from there, calls on several mythological figures to honor him—Cosmos, Glory,
Politics, Athena, Mars, and Neptune. From the sky, Peter the Great’s life is not belittled because

347
On the poem, see Richard Kroneberg, Studien Zur Geschichte Der Russischen Klassizistischen Elegie
(Wiesbaden: Athenaum, Franz Steiner Verlag, 1972). S.N. Nikolaev, “Ranii Trediakovskii: K istorii ‘Elegii
o smerti Petra Velikogo,’ in Russkaia literatura (Saint Petersburg), 2000(1): 126-131.
348
Diana Fuss, Dying Modern: A Meditation on Elegy (Durham, London: Duke University Press, 2013), 6.
349
Ibid., 107-108.
350
“Что за печаль повсюду слышится ужасно? / Ах! знать Россия плачет в многолюдстве гласно!” Vasilii K.
Trediakovskii, Izbrannye proizvedeniia (Moscow-Leningrad: Sovetskii pisatel’, 1963), 56.
118
of its earthly end, which, on the contrary, constitutes the apotheosis of Peter’s life. Athena cries
at his death: “I have taught wisdom to everyone else; / But you, I myself desired to listen to you
about that.”
351
Here, the goddess of wisdom herself states that she wanted to listen to the wise
Peter the Great, and she invites the sciences to cry with her: “Cry… philosophy, / Dear sciences,
you cry with me now. / Moan, mechanics, all of mathematics.”
352
The discourse of Athena, in
which the Goddess of wisdom depicts herself inferior to Peter precisely in the quality of wisdom,
suggests that Trediakovskii understands wisdom as an instrument of government that lies no
longer with the poet-speaking voice but rather with the sovereign. In this context, the “I” can
only move to the background, leaving space for the voices that commemorate the sovereign and
his wisdom.
To grasp the lyric persona’s role in the “Elegy,” a comparison with what Dmitrii
Rostovskii (1651-1709) wrote twenty years earlier can help. Dmitrii, who was a bishop and the
metropolitan of Rostov and Iaroslav and supported Peter the Great’s reforms, writes:
“Remember, tsar, that you are mortal, and that you won’t live forever—Today everybody bows
to you, but tomorrow you will remain alone in the womb of the earth. Today everybody fears
you, but tomorrow who will be afraid of you, when you will be dead? Today you are
unapproachable, but tomorrow, while lying in the grave, everybody will step on you with their
feet.”
353
Dmitrii, whom the Orthodox Church proclaimed a saint in 1757, maintains his own
voice when he emphasizes the human nature of Peter the Great. In affirming Peter the Great’s
mortality, Dmitrii refers to a universal truth that does not belittles the sovereign’s greatness.

351
“Я прочих мудрости всех мною наставляла; / А тебя я сама в той слышати желала.” Ibid., 58.
352
“Плачь… философия, / Плачьте со мною ныне, науки драгие. / Стени, механика, вся математика.” Ibidem.
353
“Помни, царь, что ты смертен, а не во веки живешь, – днесь вси тебе предстоят, а утро сам един
останешься в недрах земных. Днесь всем страшен, а утро мертва тя кто убоится? Днесь неприступен
еси, а утро лежащ во гробе, ногами всех попираем будеши.” Quoted from Ieromonakh Ioann
Kologrigov, Ocherki po istorii russkoi sviatosti (Siracusa: Siracusa Istina, 1991), 281.
119
The approach of the lyric voice in Trediakovskii’s elegy is different as the speaking voice
overlooks Peter the Great’s humanity. Although most of Trediakovskii’s and Lomonosov’s odes
address different Russian sovereigns, “their representations were anything but distinct or
particular,” as Ram observes.
354
In Trediakovskij’s Elegy we see “the thinking about history…
pivoting around archetypes and mythical models” that Luba Golburt identifies as one of the
phases in the evolution of the eighteenth-century ode.
355
After Athena, the procession of the
Gods continues. Mars cries: “Mars, I am not Mars without you, ach!” and recalls the military
victories of the Tsar, who is called “Mars in the whole world” and “protection of Mars.”
356
Mars
even states that he cannot compare himself to Peter the Great. Then, Neptune recalls that Peter
the Great built the first Russian fleet and mentions his naval battles on the Black and the Baltic
Seas. By alluding to these events, the persona merges wisdom and fortitude in the figure of Peter
the Great—two qualities traditionally attributed to rulers.
357
Nevertheless, by staging a series of
praises by different Gods who act as unauthoritative courtiers rather than as divine beings, the
“I” celebrates Peter the Great in a way that is so hyperbolic that it appears unconvincing, even if
we consider the work a recited poem and imagine it read publicly.
This hyperbolic depiction of Peter the Great occurs in spite of the recurring traces of the
subjectivity of language that may lead us to think that the lyric persona is well-established within
the elegy: numerous exclamations and apostrophes, the repetition of first- and second-person

354
Ram, The Imperial Sublime, 100.
355
Luba Golburt, The First Epoch. The Eighteenth Century and the Russian Cultural Imagination (London:
University of Wisconsin Press, 2014), 36.
356
“Марс, не Марс без тебя есмь, ах!” “Марсе во всем свете.” “Марсова защита.” Trediakovskii, Isbrannye
proizvedeniia, 58-59.
357
See note 332.
120
possessives and pronouns, and an abundance of adjectives that Catherine Kerbrat-Orecchioni
defines as axiologically evaluative. Take, for example, this lamentation by Cosmos
358
:
Alas, my Peter! Peter, the height of royal glory!
Alas, most precious one! Oh, power of destinies!
Alas, you, one universal kindness!
Alas, my hope! Grief is hard for me!
Alas, color and light! Alas, my only one!
359

In these lines, Trediakovskii embraces all the characteristics traditionally associated with
seventeenth- and eighteenth-century culture: hyperboles and exaggerations, theatricality, pathos,
reevaluation of the earthly dimension, and frequent use of mythology. Despite being key to
defining the lyric voice as I illustrated in the first chapter, the excessive, derivative use of
imitation can prevent lyric personae from expressing their inner world.
While the celebration in Trediakovskii’s “Elegy” does not engender the poetic voice, it
faithfully represents the theatrical, spectacular characteristics of the real funeral of Peter the
Great. The organization of the ceremony merged different media, allowing multi-layered
messages to be conveyed; at the scenographic level, it also provided a model for the relationship
between the lyric “I” and the characters established in the “Elegy.” In her historical study, Peter
the Great, Lindsey Hughes describes the funeral as follows:
The coffin was surrounded by nine tables holding… four ‘bronze’ statues…
depicting Russia weeping, Europe, Mars and Hercules. Four pyramids of white
marble on pedestals, draped with genies in mournful poses and allegorical
representations of Death, Time, Glory and Victory… Other pedestals bore statues of
virtues: Wisdom, Bravery, Piety, Mercy, Peace, Love of the Fatherland and
Justice.
360

358
Catherine Kerbrat-Orecchioni, L’Enonciation. De la subjectivité dans le language (Orléans: Armand Colin,
1988), 90-100.
359
“Увы, мой Петре! Петре верх царския славы! / Увы, предрагоценный! О судеб державы! / Увы, вселенныя
ты едина доброта! / Увы, моя надежда! Тяжка мне сухота! / Увы, цвете и свете! Увы, мой единый!”
Trediakovskii, Isbrannye proizvedeniia, 58-59.
360
Lindsey Hughes, Peter the Great: A Biography (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 205.
121
The texts displayed during the funeral recreated the Tsar’s ideal biography. They were spatially
displaced in a theatrical way and associated with statues, paintings, and pyramids “inscribed with
verses extolling Peter’s feats.”
361
The pyramids “bore the legends SOLICITUDE FOR THE
CHURCH, REFORM OF THE CITIZENRY, INSTRUCTION OF THE MILITARY and
BUILDING OF THE FLEET, [and a] drape spread between the pyramids exhorted Russia ‘to
grieve and weep, your father PETER THE GREAT has left you’.”
362
These inscriptions and
exhortations convey the same ideas and celebratory motifs that the voice affirms throughout the
“Elegy.” Just as syncretism between different art forms characterized the funerary ceremony, the
“I” in the “Elegy” is not individualized in one and only subject, but their ideas and feelings are
expressed by the various subjects involved in the celebration—from the gods to the Russian
community for whom the voice serves as spokesperson. These distinct subjects do not
monologically interact with one another but convey the same message and express a shared
feeling following the Peter the Great’s death. The limit of this poetic strategy lies in that, in his
attempt to elevate Peter the Great to a divine dimension, Trediakovskii lets the lyric persona
disperse among so many different figures that we, as readers, can hardly identify him. The
parade of masks invoked does not reveal, but rather hides the lyric subject.
Another comparison can help us to locate the “Elegy” in its historical context. Take, for
example, the “Funerary Sermon to Peter I” (1725) by Feofan Prokopovich, whose political ideas
inspired Trediakovskii in his youth.
363
Trediakovskii’s “Elegy” and Feofan’s “Sermon” share the
manner in which the voice establishes his presence in the texts. Similarly to Trediakovskii,
Feofan in his discourse widely employs first-person pronouns and verbs, thus verbally

361
Ibidem.
362
Ibidem.
363
Il’ia Z. Serman, “Trediakovskii i prosvetitel’stvo,” in XVIII vek, 1962(5): 207-208.
122
communicating the shared ideas and feelings between the “I” and the audience. In his sermon,
however, Feofan encourages the royal family and the cultural élites to continue Peter the Great’s
politics. He elaborates the notion that Peter the Great has given birth to Russia by putting the
dead emperor in a line of continuity with several Biblical figures: Peter is called Samson,
Japheth, Moses, Solomon, and David. Indeed, the death of the sovereign is “a dangerous moment
of transition”; in turn, the funeral rites provide “an opportunity to combat this vulnerability”
because they are “the most powerful natural symbol for the continuity of every community.”
364

In celebrating Peter the Great and his achievements in all aspects of Russian politics and culture,
Feofan deploys images that pertain to the religious sphere—a choice that is clearly consistent
with Feofan’s role as theologian and Archbishop of Novgorod. So Feofan remodels the ruler’s
figure in a politically correct way and shows us how the Petrine reforms were compatible with
traditional Russian faith. For these reasons, in Feofan’s text there is no room for the classical
gods who are central in Trediakovskii’s “Elegy.”
In Trediakovskii’s “Elegy,” mythology turns into an ornamental device that prevents him
from conveying authentic feelings. This hinders the lyric persona’s self-expression among
participants who bombastically say that they are crying invisible and inaudible tears. Hence, the
lyric persona in the “Elegy” no longer presents himself as the mediator between God and the
Tsar and as the repository of wisdom as he was in Karion Istomin’s works. Wisdom is now in the
hands of the Tsar who has risen up among the gods in light of his political and cultural actions,
which the “I” can only record. Although he has gained new exposure within the court and
society, the poet’s intellectual autonomy is ostensibly reduced.

364
Richard Huntington, Peter Metcalf, Celebrations of Death. The Anthropology of Mortuary Ritual, 2
nd
ed.
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1991), 140, 160.
123
The Lyric Personae Wink at the Epic
By representing the assumption of Peter the Great, Trediakovskii symbolically realizes the
eternizing power of poetry. A few years later, Antiokh Kantemir (1708-44), the Macedonian-
born Russian-by-adoption poet, declares this directly. Kantemir was an eminent man of letters in
eighteenth-century Russia who embodied the turn between seventeenth- and eighteenth-century
literary poetry and whose poetic endeavors were original and experimental for his time. Because
of his work as a diplomat, he travelled throughout Europe and became acquainted with figures
like Montesquieu and Voltaire. Thanks to his knowledge of European culture, he introduced in
Russia the genre of the satire and contributed to spreading classical culture amid the eighteenth-
century Russian élite with his translations of Horace’s and Anacreon’s lyrics.
365

Of Petrida (March-August 1730), we have only the first, unfinished book, composed of
two hundred and fifty syllabic lines. This excerpt calls attention to the eternizing power of
poetry; poems not only honor great personalities, but also establish the commemorated people’s
eternal memory, which ensures their immortality and glory among the populace. What Levitt
notices about Lomonosov, we can also apply to Kantemir: “the poet leads the Great Men out
onto the bright stage of universal history.”
366
As several scholars have demonstrated—in
particular, Curtius and Alberto Tenenti—, in the Western world the notion of eternizing poetry
dates back to classical antiquity, runs through the Middle Ages, and becomes popular again

365
Alekseeva, Russkaia oda, 70-77. Aleksandr S. Kurilov, ed., Antiokh Kantemir i russkaia literatura (Moscow:
Nasledie, 1999). Moisei I. Radovskii, Antiokh Kantemir i Peterburgskaia Akademiia nauk (Moscow-
Leningrad: Akademiia nauk, 1959). Vladimir V. Veselitskii, Antiokh Kantemir i razvitie russkogo
literaturnogo iazyka (Moscow: Nauka, 1974). Aleksandr V. Zapadov, Poety XVIII veka. A. Kantemir. A.
Sumarokov. V. Maikov. M. Kheraskov (Moscow: Izd-tvo moskovskogo universiteta, 1984).
366
Levitt, The Visual Dominant in Eighteenth-Century Russia, 82.
124
during Humanism and the Renaissance.
367
Between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
such a notion of poetry also spread throughout Russia.
Kantemir did not compose Petrida in the aftermath of Peter the Great’s death, like
Trediakovskii did with his “Elegy,” so it is not an occasional poem. Nevertheless, it was
motivated by politics and aimed to provide the model of a wise sovereign for the new tsaritsa
Anna, who was the niece of Peter the Great, during the political crises of 1730.
368
In fact,
Kantemir was a friend of Feofan Prokopovich and a supporter of Peter the Great’s reforms; with
this work, he aimed to compose an epic that celebrated the deceased emperor.
369
As we saw in
the introduction and the first chapter, the idea of literary lyric poetry in early modern East Slavic
culture incorporated hybrid texts and lyric passages within texts that are not lyric, as is the case
of Kantemir’s Petrida. In its title, this work presents itself as an epic poem—just as the Aeneid is
an epic that celebrates Aeneas, Petrida is an epic that celebrates Peter the Great. Its subtitle
affirms that it is a descriptive poem—“Verse Description”—, and the poem includes satiric and
lyric passages.
370
This is consistent with Kantemir’s style, which does not respect the Classicist
theory of genres. Scholars like Z.I. Gershkovitch observe how Kantemir combines different

367
Curtius has listed multiple instances of this phenomenon. While Horace’s odes are undoubtedly the most well-
known example, Homer, Theognis, Theocritus, Propertius, Ovid, and Lucanus authored poems testifying to
how poetry gives immortal fame to those it celebrates. Curtius has also provided proofs of poems by
Reginald of Canterbury, Hildebert of Lavandin, Baldric of Dol, Abelard, Benzo of Alba, Walter of
Châtillon, and Dante Alighieri, which confirm how popular this technique was during the Middle Ages.
European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, 476-477.
In the fourteenth century, Petrarch wrote to the Prince of Rimini that studies in the Humanities make humans
immortal. In the following centuries, such a notion became common sense among men of culture to the
point that even a minor Italian Baroque poet, Tommaso Stigliani (1573-1651), who authored several
funeral poems—the sonnet on the death of Pope Clemente VIII and the poem on the death of the Duchess
of Urbino—affirms that poetry ascribes glory to those it celebrates. Alberto Tenenti, Il senso della morte e
l’amore della vita nel Rinascimento (Francia e Italia) (Torino: Einaudi, 1957), 5.
368
Gary M. Hamburg, Russia’s Path toward Enlightenment. Faith, Politics, and Reason, 1500-1801 (New Haven,
London: Yale University Press, 2016), 348.
369
Ibid., 246.
370
“Описание стихотворное.” Antiokh D. Kantemir, Sobranie stikhotvorenii (Leningrad: Sovetskii pisatel’, 1956),
241.
125
stylistic registers and literary traditions, and studies such as Gordana Stanchfield’s explain this
pluralism by referring to Kantemir as a Baroque author.
371
However, this feature is undoubtedly
rooted in the previous East Slavic poetic tradition as well.
The voice affirms his presence in the very beginning when the first-person singular
pronoun appears. The use of the first person in epic poems dates to Virgil’s Aeneid and is also
present in Voltaire’s La Henriade, but in these works, the “I” is only a narrating voice. In
contrast, the voice in the Petrida’s opening lines declares their mood and the source for their
inspiration with pathos: “I weep the inconsolable sorrow of Russia: / … I cry the excessive loss
among the Russian population, / which the death of Peter I has brought about in the royal
family.”
372
To an extent, the speaker carries out a function that is typical of the epic singer: they
present the subject matter in the protasis, but in a peculiar way that is more typical of the lyric.
They use nouns like “sadness” that have a subjective semantic value because they convey an
axiological and an emotional judgment regarding the narrated events. Ann Banfield calls these
“sensation adjectives,” whose function is to convey the speaker’s subjectivity (they define
sadness as “inconsolable” and the loss as “excessive”).
373
Subsequently, the verb “cry” activates
the subject’s feelings and projects a negative perspective over the events.
374
The poem’s subject
matter is also particular, since it does not center on the beginning of an illustrious genealogy, like
Virgil’s Aeneid; on the celebration of a heroic figure, like Homer’s Iliad; or on the narration of
an exemplary man’s adventures, like Homer’s Odyssey. The object of the speaker’s discourse is

371
Z.I. Gershkovich, “Ob ideino-khudozhestvennoi evoliutsii A. D. Kantemira,” in Problemy russkogo
prosveshcheniia v literature XVIII veka (Moscow-Leningrad: Akademiia nauk SSSR, 1961), 221-247.
Gordana Stanchfield, “Russian Baroque: A.D. Kantemir,” ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 1977, 75, 89-
91, 100-102, 108-114.
372
“Печаль неутешную России рыдаю: / … Плачу гибель чрезмерну в роксолян народе, / Юже введе смерть
Петра перва в царском роде.” Kantemir, Sobranie stikhotvorenii, 241.
373
Ann Banfield, Unspeakable Sentences: Narration and Representation in the Language of Fiction (Oxfordshire,
England: Routledge, 2015), 11-12.
374
Kerbrat-Orecchioni, L’énonciation, 73-81, 100-118.
126
the death of Russia’s first emperor, as the epic poem’s full title declares: “Verse Description of
Peter the Great’s Death, Russian Emperor.”
375
It is the event of death that has caused the lyric
subject’s sadness and crying, which are outpoured in the epic poem.
The voice announces his goal of glorifying and of making humans immortal in his
invocation to the Muses: “Muses! Even when other people are free to call / You for help, I have
enough reasons, more than everyone else, / To ask you this: to record this man’s such marvelous
actions.”
376
Death becomes an occasion to analyze an individual life and portray an idealized
image of the deceased sovereign in Petrida, much like in the poems examined above. The
persona continues to employ axiological language when listing the “miraculous… deeds” that
gained Peter the Great his fame:
When I say Peter—What am I not including
In this very word? Wisdom, courage
In both misfortune and success, a strong prudence,
Love, care, a tender pleasantness,
A righteous judge, a tsar who keeps his house in order,
A loyal friend, a warrior worthy of all laurels, —
In a word, everything that one can call perfect.
377

Some of the moral qualities listed above, like wisdom and fortitude, are a clear reference to the
qualities praised in the inscriptions at the funerary ceremony for Peter the Great and coincide
with those named in Trediakovskii’s “Elegy.” In Kantemir’s Petrida, however, the lyric voice
adds distinctly human qualities, like “love, care, a tender pleasantness.” In a deep, compelling
way, they express the earthly perspective that is missing from Trediakovskii’s elegy, conferring

375
“Описание стихотворное смерти Петра Великого, императора всероссийского.” Kantemir, Sobranie
stikhotvorenii, 241.
376
“Музы! аще когда бысть иным просить вольно / Вас в помощь, мне паче всех причины довольно /
Требовать то: и дела бо мужа списати / Толь чудны.” Ibidem.
377
“Петра когда глаголю—что не заключаю / В той самой речи? Мудрость, мужество к случаю / Злу и
благополучну, осторожность сильну, / Любовь, попечение, приятность умильну, / Правдивого
судию, царя домостройна, / Друга верна, воина, всех лавров достойна,— / Словом, все, что либо
звать совершенным можно.” Ibidem.
127
human features to the sovereign, and giving the impression that Peter the Great is still among the
living humans through these humanly qualities. In these lines, the voice strengthens their
presence because they continue to speak in the first person (“I say”; “I am not including”) and
ask a direct question, undertaking responsibility for their own statements—a device that Banfield
reads as typical of the linguistic expression of subjectivity.
378

The lyric “I” also celebrates Peter the Great as a military leader—a recurring trope in epic
poetry: “He convinced the Persian coast to recognize his power / and, after conquering the
hitherto untraversable / Mountain of the Caucasus, became the dominator of the sea.”
379

Although these deeds are commemorated in Trediakovskii’s “Elegy” as well, in Kantemir’s
Petrida, the speaking voice—not Neptune—praises Peter the Great’s naval victories. Similarly,
the lyric “I” does not attribute the torment following Peter the Great’s death to all of Russia but
assumes it themself. Overwhelmed by sorrow and fearing that they may not be able to conclude
the task at hand, they invoke the Muses: “When sorrow oppresses the heart, the mind cannot
think. / Therefore give me strength, show the causes / Of this calamity, instruct my mind, my
pen!”
380
These lines not only affirm the commonplace of the poet’s modesty. Rather, the fact that
the speaker invokes pagan Muses and, consequently, inserts their work within the classical
tradition demonstrates that the lyric persona believes in the autonomous function of poetry
maintained by classical authors.
As I have pointed out, the speaker introduces themself in the proem with individualized
traits, which diverges from how the speaker appears in epic poems like the Aeneid and La

378
Banfield, Unspeakable Sentences, 47-49.
379
“Поморие Персиды власть его познати / Убедил и, дотоле непреходну гору / Кавказскую одолев,
властелин бысть морю.” Kantemir, Sobranie stikhotvorenii, 242.
380
“Когда скорбь сердце теснит, ум мыслить не знает. / Вы убо дайте силу, причины представьте / Бедства
сего, вы ум мой, вы перо наставьте.” Ibid., 241-242.
128
Henriade. Individualized traits are unusual in epic poetry, an objective genre par excellence.
381

Something similar to what occurs in Kantemir’s proem takes place in Ludovico Ariosto’s
Orlando furioso and in Torquato Tasso’s Gerusalemme Liberata. For instance, the speaking
voice in the proem of Orlando furioso ironically mentions Ariosto himself as the servant of
Cardinal Ippolito d’Este, who is Ariosto’s patron, and as in love with Alessandra Benucci, who
later becomes Ariosto’s wife, to whom he dedicates all his thoughts: “If she / Nigh brought my
feeble wit which fain would climb / And hourly wastes my sense, concede me skill / And
strength my daring promise to fulfil.”
382
Kantemir’s relationship with Italian culture is well-
known. Stanchfield observes that Kantemir “uses Italian words to explain a Russian term… and
shows how a verse in Italian is the basis for one of his own verses” while Guido Carpi points out
that Kantemir studied many languages and read Ariosto in the original, so we can suppose that
Orlando furioso was one of the inspirations behind Petrida.
383
The similarities do not end here,
since Kantemir, like Ariosto, does not limit himself to developing a poetic voice in his epic
poem, but refers to his own concrete individuality when mentioning his activity as a satiric poet:
the “amusing syllables [with which he criticized] malevolence.”
384

By building on the early East Slavic habit of considering lyric excerpts from works that
belong to a different literary genre, we can state that in Kantemir’s Petrida, the lyric persona

381
In epic poetry, “[o]n account of the objectivity of the whole epic, the poet as subject must retire in face of his
object and lose himself in it. Only the product, not the poet, appears… the epic presents not the poet’s own
inner world but the objective events… his is why the great epic style consists in the work’s seeming to be
its own minstrel and appearing independently without having any author to conduct it or be at its head.”
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Hegel’s Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art, vol. 2, transl. and ed. T.M.
Knox (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 1048-1049.
382
Lodovico Ariosto, Orlando Furioso. The Frenzy of Orlando, transl. William Stewart (Auckland: The Floating
Press, 2009), 11.
383
Stanchfield, “Russian Baroque,” 108. Guido Carpi, Storia della letteratura russa. Da Pietro il Grande alla
Rivoluzione d’Ottobre (Roma: Carocci 2011), 93. Other studies have also focused on the influence of
Italian literature on Kantemir’s poetic production, like Valentine J. Boss, “La quatrième ode de Kantemir et
‘L’italia Liberata’ de Gian Giorgio Trissino,” in Cahiers du monde russe et soviétique 4, no. 1/2 (January 1,
1963): 47–55.
384
“забавными слоги.” “злонравия.” Kantemir, Sobranie stikhotvorenii, 241.
129
merges with the epic speaker and the satirical narrator. In Kantemir’s work, however, the
conflation of the lyric, the epic, and the satiric speakers strengthens the presence and the
expressive means of the lyric “I.” This substantiates the argument that the lyric persona
stabilized in early eighteenth-century Russian literary poetry. In turn, we can locate Kantemir’s
proem within a broader path leading to the emergence of the lyric “I.” Notwithstanding the epic
poem’s encomiastic goal, the poetic voice manifests that they are aware both of their own
feelings and biographic features and of their role in affirming the function of poetry.

The Lyric Personae Celebrate Themselves Without Talking about Themselves
After the sovereigns and the royal family, the men of the Church and of culture have the
right to be remembered in an epitaph and to be destined to eternal glory. The relationship
between the poet and the sovereign is outlined in the first epitaphs by Simeon Polotskii, whose
teachings his disciples received and put into practice in their activity as poets.
385
The connection
between the poet and the sovereign was already seen in Karion’s “Panegyric,” in which the poet
sings and spreads his wisdom thanks to God’s inspiration and under the sovereign’s protection.
Because of the public role of the poet, sometimes sovereigns themselves commissioned epitaphs
to commemorate deceased poets. In light of the artistic and social importance of the celebrated
poet in these epitaphs, the speaking voices reveal themselves publicly. One example of this
phenomenon appears in the epitaph that Sil’vestr Medvedev wrote for Simeon in 1680. In
testifying to the qualities of the deceased, the voice pleads the case of the men of the Church and
of culture, which he himself represents.

385
Sazonova, Literaturnaia kul’tura Rossii, 49-84.
130
The epitaphs dedicated to the death of men of the Church and of culture share features
with those dedicated to the death of the sovereigns. They include the deceased’s name and his
status; they mention certain qualities of his and aim to reconstruct the deceased’s career by
recalling his personality, his roles and deeds, and his honest way of life. This results in a concise
biography of the commemorated person. In these epitaphs, we can perceive the speaker’s
presence in the way in which he presents the subject matter and selects the ideas that he wants to
convey to his interlocutors. An interesting case is the lyric speaker in Lomonosov’s epitaph for
Dmitrii Rostovskii, in which the voice carries out a multi-layered task, whereby he performs both
a religious and a political function, celebrates the saint, and defines his cultural role.
The biographical characteristics mentioned in most of these epitaphs do not differ
meaningfully from one another; on the contrary, they resemble one another and delineate an
ideal-type person. In 1675, Simeon, for instance, writes that the “Reverend Father Epifanii
Slavinetskii [is] a theologian and a man skilled in / Many languages. / … A hieromonk, an
ingenious theologian / who lived honestly.”
386
In the same year, he writes that Paul, the
metropolitan of Sarsk and Podonsk, was a “great worker, / [He] held the dignity of
Metropolitan… / Host of the strangers, the poor, the men of the Church, and scholars.”
387

Religion and culture are put near each other: religiosity is one of the defining qualities of the
men of culture, and being cultured is one of the identifying qualities of the men of the Church.
The speaking voice solemnly celebrates both qualities and, in so doing, celebrates himself.
His disciple and successor, Sil’vestr Medvedev, wrote the epitaph on the death of Simeon
Polotskii (1680) upon request of Tsar Fedor Alekseevich; it was later carved on Simeon’s

386
“богослову и многих язык / мужу искусну. / … Иеромонах, богослов искусный, / честно поживый…”
Polotskii, Vertograd mnogotsvetnyi, 4, 558.
387
“Многотрудный… / митрополит бѣ саном… / Странных, нищих, церковных и книжных чредитель…”
Ibid., 6, 559.
131
tombstone in the Moscow Zaikonospasskii school monastery. In it, we can grasp an
unindividualized speaking voice in his intent to call to mind the main badge of honor for a man
of culture: he “showed himself to the world as a true wise man.”
388
The same wisdom theorized
in Karion’s “Panegyric” is once again the protagonist of an epitaph, and the voice presents its
acquisition as a reason for personal merit for Sil’vestr. The voice praises Simeon, poet and man
of culture, both for his public role and for his personal qualities. Simeon has been a “teacher such
that there is only one here,” and carried out a key political and cultural role “in teaching the
Russian people.”
389
Likewise, at the religious level, he was a “true theologian, the protector of
the Church dogmas. // A good believer, necessary to the Church and the tsardom, / helpful to the
people with the teaching of his word.”
390
In this praise of Polotskii’s religiosity we can identify
an autobiographical reference, namely Medvedev’s self-defense against charges of heresy
against him. Hence, while talking about Simeon, the speaker presents his own religious, moral,
and cultural qualities as complementary. The voice, in fact, affirms that Simeon was “loved by
all believers, / surprising for his humility, // … His kindness, calm, meekness surprised people. /
In him there were faith, hope, / prayer, and charity.”
391
Apart from the fact that he “wrote many
books,” the persona praises Simeon because “[h]e wanted to get along with the institution of the
Church, / And he did not philosophize against the Church.”
392
As a man of letters, “[i]n defense
of the Church [he] composed the book ‘Staff,’ / In its favor ‘Crown’ and ‘Vow’ were published.

388
“учением правым то миру показаше.” Pavel N. Berkov, Virshi (sillabicheskaia poeziia XVII–XVIII vv.), introd.
Ivanov Rozanov (Leningrad: Sovetskii pisatel’, 1935), 127.
389
“Учитель бо зде токмо один таков бывый.” “в научение роду российску.” Ibid., 126.
390
“богослов правый, церкве догмата хранивый, / Муж благоверный, церкви и царству потребный, /
проповедию слова народу полезный.” Ibidem.
391
“от всех верных любимый, / за смиренномудрие преудивляемый. // … незлобие же, тихость, кротость
удивляла, / В нем же вера, надежда, любы пребываше.” Ibidem.
392
“многи книги написал есть.” “С церковию бо хоте согласен он быти, / и ничто же противно церкве
мудрствовати.” Ibid., 127.
132
// ‘Vespers,’ ‘Psalter,’ lines from ‘Rifmologion,’ / ‘Multi-flowered Garden’ with catechism.”
393

The voice provides little information by means of formulaic expressions that become particular
through mention of Simeon’s works, which individualize the stereotype of the seventeenth-
century man of culture. That the speaker names Simeon’s works testifies to the fact that the idea
of authority is now affirmed in the Russian cultural milieu.
The speaking voice, in dutifully mentioning Simeon’s qualities, activities, and works, is
actually painting a self-portrait of the author himself. Sil’vestr was, in fact, not only one of
Simeon’s disciples but was also friends with him and collaborated with him on many religious
and cultural endeavors. In the original manuscripts of Simeon’s works one can still see
corrections and notes by Sil’vestr, who used to edit his master’s writings.
394
So the work of
Sil’vestr in some cases interweaves with that of Simeon, and this determines a certain
overlapping between the celebrated and the celebrating subjects within the epitaph. By
commemorating the dead man of culture, the voice honors the living people who continue the
deceased’s work—and among them figures the voice himself as the author of the epitaph. Here,
literary society celebrates itself because commemorating its most illustrious members implies
establishing its own function. Identifying the celebrated alongisde the celebrating subjects, the
lyric “I” thus lauds himself without talking about himself.

393
“В защищение церкве книгу «Жезл» создал есть, / в её же пользу «Венец» и «Обет» издал есть, /
«Вечерю», «Псалтырь», стихи со «Рифмословием», / «Вертоград» многоценный с беседословием.”
Ibidem.
394
Polotskii, Vertograd mnogotsvetnyi, vol. 1, xl.
Many of Simeon Polotskii’s writings are preserved at the Gosudarstvennyi Istoricheskii Muzei (GIM, State
Historical Museum) in Moscow and are full of notes and corrections by Sil’vestr Medvedev.
133
This dynamic becomes ever more evident in the epitaph for Dmitrii Rostovskii by
Mikhail Lomonosov (1711-65), another key figure in eighteenth-century Russian culture.
Lomonosov contributed to the evolution of the Russian literary language and genres and to the
establishment of the celebrative ode within the Russian Empire.
Dmitrii Rostovskii (1651-1709), whom the Orthodox Church proclaimed saint in 1757,
was educated in the Academy of Kiev-Mohyla. He was a man of culture, composed sacred music
and books, among which figures the Lives of Saints. He also founded the grammatical school in
Rostov, in which students were taught, besides Church Slavonic and theology, Latin, ancient
Greek, philosophy, and poetry. He also used theater as an artistic medium to educate the public
and spread the Orthodox faith. He participated in the reforms promoted by Peter the Great,
although he always maintained his intellectual independence.
395
Lomonosov’s epitaph for
Dmitrii is a six-line composition organized in rhyming couplets with feminine and masculine
rhymes wherein the syntactic and metric unities coincide apart from the fifth and sixth lines,
which are united by an enjambment. The poem’s regular stylistic form is counterbalanced by the
variety of its expressive modalities, which see the alternation of apostrophes, exclamations,
imperatives, and direct speeches. It seems that Lomonosov composed the epitaph around
December 13, 1757, when a reliquary for the canonization of Dmitrii Rostovskii was
commissioned. It was published first as an inscription on a silver pedestal for the saint’s
reliquary and then, in 1772, in Nikolai Novikov’s dictionary of Russian writers.
In the epitaph, Lomonosov places himself in a line of continuity with the deceased saint
by supporting Dmitrii’s fight against the schismatics as well as the clergymen, both of whom
were the target of Tsar Peter the Great’s reforms regarding social norms, the tax system, and

395
See the discussion of Dmitrii’s discourse on Peter the Great at p.118.
134
religious life in the Empire. Lomonosov does so through the political passion and the “prophetic
and priestly character” that distinguishes his odes, according to Lev Pumpianskii.
396
This feature
of the poem also combines with an oratory quality, which Iurii Tynianov observes Lomonosov’s
odes; in the epitaph we witness “the principle of the greatest action at each given moment… at
the oratorial-emotional level, in which the influence of the word was conceived.”
397
The lyric “I”
directly addresses both the Old Believers and the men of the Church opposite to Peter through
the opening apostrophe: “O you, that honor the Deity in the narrow confines, / Thinking that His
likeness is in the bodily parts!”
398
This way, the lyric voice defines the Old Believers and the
clergymen as their interlocutors and affirms their presence as the speaker. Through the opening
apostrophe the “I” starts a conversation with these religious groups as Dmitrii did during his
lifetime and brings the saint’s ideals and values back to life, which he directly affirms in the
poem’s conclusion.
The persona in the poem stages a true poetic performance and invites his interlocutors to
listen to Dmitrii’s voice, which “from the image of the heavenly powers” continues to
reverberate and to communicate with them: “Write in your thought what this Saint taught.”
399

This line also shows the austere style that, according to Serman, Lomonosov found in Biblical
poetry and religious books.
400
At the same time, it refers to precise events from Dmitrii’s
biography. In fact, the verb “taught” refers to Dmitrii’s pedagogic efforts—that is, his role as an

396
“о пророческом и жреческом характере.” Lev V. Pumpianskii, Klassicheskaia traditsia. Sobranie trudov po
istorii russkoi literatury (Moskow: Iazyki russkoi literatury, 2000), 73.
397
“Начало наибольшего действия в каждый данный миг… при ораторски-эмоциональном плане, в котором
мыслилось воздействие слова.” Iurii N. Tynianov, “Oda kak oratorskii zhanr,” in Poetika. Istoriia
literatury. Kino (Moscow: Nauka, 1977), 230.
398
“О вы, что божество в пределах чтите тесных,

/ Подобие его мня быть в частях телесных!” Mikhail V.
Lomonosov, Polnoe sovranie sochinenii, v. 8 (Leningrad, Moscow: Izd-tvo Akademii Nauk SSSR, 1959),
155.

399
“от лика горних сил.” “Вперите в мысль, чему святитель сей учил.” Ibidem.
400
Il’ia Z. Serman, “Poeziia Lomonosova v 1740-e gody,” in XVIII vek, (Moscow-Leningrad) 1962(5): 8.
135
educator in the religious and cultural fields. The persona neither repeats Dmitrii’s religious
thought, nor appropriates it, nor aims to substitute himself with the Saint; rather, he is trying to
draw the interlocutors’ attention to himself. Immediately after, the voice yields to the Saint with
a powerful prosopopoeia that concludes the epitaph. This way, Dmitrii gets one more chance to
act as a religious, cultural, and pedagogic reference point for the community and to restate his
role as the defender of Russian Orthodoxy, for which he is remembered: “Bow to the mercy of
the Highest, to the truth / And reconcile with your mother, with the church.”
401
This is the
composition’s message, to which the speaking voice has drawn his interlocutors’ attention in the
opening lines. In so doing, the “I” revives Dmitrii’s activity and continues it. This action bears
political significance because it allows Lomonosov to place himself in the same position, which
Dmitrii held with respect to Peter the Great, relatively to Empress Elisabeth Petrovna, who was
Peter the Great’s daughter. By celebrating Dmitrii, the lyric persona indirectly speaks with the
court and manifests himself while carrying out the role of the inspired poet—a role that
Lomonosov attributed to the poet in other compositions.
In the epitaphs examined, the personae testify to the value of the men of the Church and
of culture and carries out a performance that is typical of the lyrics. We have seen how, in
Sil’vestr’s epitaph for Simeon, the poetic voice and the celebrated poet come to share certain
features. The lyric persona carries out a documentary and rhetoric function in order to honor the
deceased individual and to persuade the readers of his spiritual and cultural nobility. In so doing,
the voice celebrates his own public role, his values, and his poetry. Similarly, in Lomonosov’s
epitaph for Dmitrii Rostovskii, the “I” performs an allocutory function, summarizes the saint’s
life, and manifests his own presence and faith as well as the role attributed to the poet.

401
“На милость вышняго, на истинну склонитесь / И к матери своей вы к церькви примиритесь.” Lomonosov,
Polnoe sovranie sochinenii, 155.
136
The Lyric Personae among Baronesses, Princesses, and Countesses
After the sovereigns and the royal family, the men of the Church and of culture, poetry
honors the nobility through a monumentum aere perennius. Throughout the eighteenth century,
the celebratory poems composed at the death of prominent figures came to include noble people;
these works testified to the values that this social class embodied and to their qualities that
society believed future generations should remember. In Lilti’s terms, the high esteem that the
voices in these poems express for these figures is somewhere between glory and reputation. The
personae celebrate noble people for the qualities that their contemporaries attributed to them,
which are linked to their social role and personal merits. The personae commemorate noblemen
“for the national benefit / And the patronage of sciences,” as well as their strength and military
value, while they praise noblewomen for their religious faith, their “intelligence, [their] breeding,
[their] beauty,” as well as their loveliness and goodness in the family and with their neighbors.
402

In this section I analyze “Spiritual Vision” by Petr Buslaev (liv. eighteenth century) and
“On the Death of Countess Rumiantseva” by Gavrila Derzhavin (1743-1816), which show how
the celebration of the deceased in the poems on the death of noble people bears similarities to the
celebrations in the poems following the death of sovereigns. In “Spiritual Vision,” the
encomiastic goal prevails so that the lyric “I” appears among the ceremony’s spectators, while
the speaker, as an individual, remains in the shadows. In contrast, in Derzhavin’s ode, as the
speaking voice manifests the human nature of the celebrated person and shows his relationship
with her, death becomes “a place where the individual traits of each life, of each biography,
appeared in the bright light,” and the lyric “I” comes to define himself in an ever original,

402
“для всенародной льготы / И покровительства наук.” “Умом, породой, красотой.” Gavrila Derzhavin,
Stikhotvoreniia (Leningrad: Sovetskii pisatel’, 1957), 255, 119.
137
concrete, and individualized way.
403
In this ode we can also notice what Golburt has maintained
regarding “Felitsa”—namely that, in Derzhavin’s poetry, the individualization of the celebrated
figure and the lyric persona go hand in hand.
404

In the long poem, “Spiritual Vision, Written in Verses, on the Assumption into Eternal
Life of the Excellent Baroness Maria Iakovlevna Strogonova, Printed in Moscow on the 20th
January 1734 by Her Most Diligent Servant, Petr Buslaev. Printed in St. Petersburg at the
Typography of the Academy of Sciences in March 1734…”, Petr Buslaev paints an idealized
portrait of the Baroness that is framed within a sort of icon.
405
Little is known about Petr
Buslaev, only that he was the son of a priest, studied at the Slavo-Greek-Latin Academy in the
1720s, and served at the Cathedral of the Dormition in the Moscow Kremlin as a man of the
Church. It seems that he spent some time in St. Petersburg at the Academy of Sciences and that
his death occurred sometime in the 1730s-40s.
406
The heirs of the deceased Baroness likely
commissioned the composition of the poem, which is paired with a prose commentary and an
epitaph, “which is a kind of continuation of it in a different text space; this epitaph enhances the
inherent heterogeneity of the work, making it a text of complex structure,” as P.E. Bukharkin has

403
Ariès, Western Attitudes toward Death, 105.
404
Golburt, The First Epoch, 54-58.
405
“Умозрителство душевное, описанное стихами, о преселении в вечную жизнь превосходительной
баронессы Марии Яковлевны Строгоновой, изданное в Москве 1734, генваря в 20 день чрез
усерднейшего слугу ея Петра Буслаева. Печатано в Санкт-Петербурге в типографии Академии Наук
1734 года, марта в день.” Panchenko, Russkaia sillabicheskaia poeziia, 288. On “Spiritual Vision,” see
P.E. Bukharkin, “Poema ‘Umozritelstvo dushevnoe’ v literaturnom dvizhenii petrovskoi epokhi,” in XVIII
vek, 2011(26): 4-19. Panchenko, Russkaia sillabicheskaia poeziia, 392-394. E. Soshkin, “‘Umozritelstvo
dushevnoe’ Petra Buslaeva v sisteme poetiki barokko,” in XVIII vek, 2004(23): 56-69. Lidiia I. Sazonova,
“K probleme povestvovaniia. Avtorskii commentarii v strukture proizvedeniia (Poema ‘Umozritelstvo
dushvnoe’ Petra Buslaeva),” in Literaturoman(n)ia. K 90-letiiu Iuriia Vladimirovicha Manna (Moscow:
Ros. Gos. Gum. Un., 2019), 502-511. Vladimir N. Toporov, “Eine Seite aus der Geschichte des russischen
barocken Concettismus: Petr Buslaevs “Umozritel’stvo Duševnoe,’” in Slavishe Barocklitcratur II
(München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1983), 57-86.
406
Aleksandr M. Panchenko, “Buslaev Petr,” in Slovar’ russkikh pisatelei XVIII veka, v.1 (Leningrad: Nauka, 1988),
136.
138
argued.
407
Here, I focus on “Spiritual Vision” because it displays an interesting instance of the
lyric “I,” who aims to focus on the ideal representation of the Baroness rather than on her
individual traits or on his observing the ceremony in order to carry out his public function. The
poem is divided into two symmetrical parts of two-hundred lines each, structured around
couplets, or “dvustishie,” and focused on the assumption and entrance of Baroness Maria
Strogonova into heaven, alongside other blessed people. The speaker presents the assumption of
the Baroness as if it were theatrically staged and divided into two scenes. They mostly direct the
attention towards the ceremony, whose theatrical aspect aims to praise the deceased woman
rather than detail her individual biography. Drowned out by theatricality, the lyric “I” in the
poem does not emerge directly and posits themself as a spectator of the events narrated.
Nevertheless, we can identify the lyric “I” through the stylistic tools that he deploys,
which place the text’s poetic function—like rhetorical devices and figures of speech—before the
referential one. The poem’s first six lines indicate the year of the Baroness’ death starting from
Christ’s birth. The numbers nine and ten recur twice in three lines in specifying the time of her
death and explicitly refer to numerical symbolism, whereby nine is a multiple of three, which
stands for the Trinity, and ten is the perfect number in Pythagorean philosophy. Several scholars,
like Valdimir Toporov, have emphasized how symbolism is present throughout the poem.
408

Indeed, symbolism is a characteristic typical of Orthodox art. As Leonid Uspensklii points out, in
icon painting, “after Incarnation, the Son is consubstantial with the Father, being, according to
His Divinity, His image, equal in honour. This truth revealed in Christianity lies at the
foundation of its pictorial art. So the image not only does not contradict the essence of

407
“являющаяся своего рода ее продолжением уже в ином текстовом пространстве; данная эпитафия
усиливает присущую произведению гетерогенность, делая его текстом сложной структуры.”
Bukharkin, “Poema ‘Umozritelstvo dushevnoe’,” 6.
408
Toporov, “Eine Seite…,” 69.
139
Christianity, but, being its basic truth, is inalienably connected with it.”
409
In other words, the
image is always a symbol because it conveys a spiritual concept. We can observe the symbolic
nature of lyric representation in the description of the deceased: “Baroness Mary was all aching
in her body, / And her healthy soul was dressed in a white dress, / As if she were ready to
celebrate the victory.”
410
The white in her dress creates a holy halo around her figure, which
Bukharkin has defined as a “materialization of the spiritual aspects of being.”
411
The speaker
frames the Baroness in a white dress because it symbolizes the light and purity in the icons, in
which white is the color of the angels and of Jesus during his Transfiguration.
412

In fact, in the long poem, the voice portrays the transfiguration of the deceased Baroness
specifically. The silence of the ceremony’s spectators stresses the importance of this moment,
which is reaffirmed by means of antithesis with the spirit’s superiority to the body that the
speaker emphasizes in their description of the Baroness: “They were blind in their bodies
because of their tears, but they could see with their souls.”
413
In fact, the statement is followed by
the vision of the divine spirit that “wants to know Mary” through the “spiritual mind,” while
Christ is surrounded by “celestial forces, / bright faces… and amber wings.”
414
Toporov
highlights that, in “Spiritual Vision,” we are witnessing to the ceremony of the Baroness’ soul
ascending to the heavens through the “spiritual mind’s” inner vision.
415
By attributing the vision

409
Leonid Ouspenskii, Vladimir Losskii, The Meaning of Icons (Crestwood, New York: St. Vladimir’s Seminar
Press, 1999), 26.
410
“Баронесса Мария вся болела телом, / Здрава ж душа одета в платье была белом, / Бутто бы по победе к
торжеству готова.” Panchenko, Russkaia sillabicheskaia poeziia, 288.
411
“материализация спиритуальных сторон бытия.” Bukharkin, “Poema ‘Umozritelstvo dushevnoe’,” 9.
412
Pavel Florenskii, “Nebesnye znameniia. Razmyshleniia o simvolike tsvetov,” in Ikonostas. Izbrannye trudy po
iskusstvu (Petersburg: Mifril-Russkaia shkola, 1993), 309-316.
Consider the icons The Spice-Bearing Women at the Sepulchre, Russia, fifteenth century; and The Transfiguration,
School of Theophanes the Greek, 1403 ca. Ouspenskii, Losskii, The Meaning of Icons, 189, 209.
413
“Телесны от слез слепы, душевны ж смотрили.” Panchenko, Russkaia sillabicheskaia poeziia, 288.
414
“хощет… Марию прияти.” “умозрителство душевное.” “небесныя силы, / Светлы лица… илектровы ж
крилы.” Ibid, 288-289.
415
Toporov, “Eine Seite…,” 81-82.
140
to the “spiritual mind,” the voice recalls the Neo-Platonic tradition that is widely represented in
East Slavic culture and the arts. A description of the famous painter of icons Theophanes the
Greek in a 1414-15 letter by Epiphanii the Wise provides a good example of a “spiritual vision”
that is rooted in the same philosophical framework that we can observe in Petr’s work as well:
It seems that when his hands are painting images, he is standing, walking around
constantly, and conversing with those who stop by, but in fact his mind is reflecting on
lofty and important matters and his sharp, wise eyes are seeing intellectual beauty.
416

Like Epiphanii, Petr’s artist embodies Plotinus’ notion that the human mind, through emanation,
can see within itself the Ideas that God has put in it. At the same time, as E. Soshkin points out,
the poem proceeds through a series of oppositions, which make it possible for the physicality and
the spirituality of the speaker’s vision to coexist.
417
This is consistent with the very notion of the
icon in East Orthodoxy, according to which icons constitute the incarnation of the divine.
418

Similar to the images in the icons, the speaking voice in the poem reproduces with human words
the divine vision that he has witnessed.
The “I” posits himself amid the participants, with whom he shares the vision and an
overwhelming feeling of sorrow: “It was terrible for us sinners to reflect on the cause.”
419
So the
lyric persona plays the role of a spectator who is emotionally partaking in the “spiritual vision.”
By so doing, he adopts a specific “viewing position… from which he perceives what will
constitute his visual field” and communicates it to his interlocutors—a subjective perspective on

416
“Он же, кажется, руками пишет изображение, а сам на ногах, в беспрестанной ходьбе, беседует с
приходящими, а умом обдумывает высокое и мудрое, острыми же очами разумными разумную
видит доброту.” http://www.drevne.ru/lib/epifan_s.htm (Last access: 15 December 2020). The information
about the influence of Neo-Platonic thought on pre-modern East Slavic culture is from Giovanna Brogi,
“‘Filosofia’ e ‘poesia’ nella tradizione slava medievale,” in La poesia filosofica, ed. Alessandro Costazza
(Milano: Cisalpino editore, 2007), 103.
417
Soshkin, “‘Umozritelstvo dushvnoe…’,” 57.
418
Timothy Ware, The Orthodox Church (London: Penguin Books, 1993), 33-34.
419
“Страшно нам грешным было разсуждать причину.” Panchenko, Russkaia sillabicheskaia poeziia, 289.
141
the narrated events.
420
From the human perspective, death continues to be “terrible,” whereas
from the Baroness’ perspective it is a “migration to eternal life.”
421
She invokes Christ who
satisfies her spiritual thirst: “My soul, like a deer, wants water, / It desires you: for fifty-six
years, / Three months, twenty days, [it desires] your mercy.”
422
These words recall the passage
from Psalm 41: “As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God.”
423

Several scholars, like Soshkin, have analyzed the symbolism in the figure of the deer and the
water, which signify Christ and re-birth.
424
However, it is worth emphasizing that indicating the
Baroness’ lifespan also individualizes her and expresses how physical her spiritual need is.
Further, comparing her with a deer allows the lyric persona root her in the earthly dimension.
The poetic voice records the ceremony for hundreds of lines, until, in the end, they
confirm that the Baroness has “lived in the world according to divine will” and has now
“received celestial life”: “this eternal memory is held in everybody[’s hearts].”
425
In the
conclusion, the speaker reiterates the portrait of a shining “spiritual vision” of divine lights, thus
creating a written rendition of an icon. Indeed, Uspenskii notices that an icon “is an image… not
of corruptible flesh, but of flesh transfigured, radiant with Divine light.”
426
Nevertheless, the
splendor of the idea hinders the emergence of the individual: “a temporal portrait… cannot be an
icon, precisely because it reflects not his transfigured but his ordinary, carnal state.”
427
Though

420
Boris Uspenskii, A Poetics of Composition, transs. V. Zavarin and S. Wittig (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1973), 2. Banfield, Unspeakable Sentences, 68.
421
“преселении в вечную жизнь.” Panchenko, Russkaia sillabicheskaia poeziia, 288.
422
“Душа моя, как елень, желает на воды, / К тебе та желает: чрез пятдесятшесть годы / Месяца три дней
дватцать, к твоей благодати.” Ibid., 289.
423
The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha: New Revised Standard Version, ed. Michael D. Coogan et al.,
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 807.
424
Soshkin, “‘Umozritelstvo dushevnoe’…,” 64.
425
“поживе на свете по божией воли.” “жизнь в небе получила.” “вечна память у всех заключила.”
Panchenko, Russkaia sillabicheskaia poeziia, 298.
426
Ouspenskii, Losskii, The Meaning of Icons, 36.
427
Ibidem.
142
Baroness Maria Stroganova is characterized by qualities, such as her faith and exemplary ethical
behavior, these qualities are not particularly individualized. Similarly, the lyric “I,” whose
feelings and presence we perceive, is not characterized. Instead, they are part of the group of the
spectators (with whom the speaker identifies himself). This undefined nature of the “I” also
resembles the icon, which, as Uspenskii notes, “is never signed. The freedom of an iconographer
consists not in an untrammeled expression of his personality, of his ‘I,’ but in his ‘liberation from
all passions and lusts of the world and the flesh’.”
428
The characterization of the Baroness and
the “I” illustrates the relation established between the celebrated and the celebrator, who share
the same spiritual worldview. Yet, there is a subtle reference to the lyric “I” when the voice
mentions the memories that all of the participants in the Baroness’ assumption share, which
poetry hands on to future generations.
In contrast, individualization is the marker of the lyric voice in praise of a deceased
noblewoman carried out in Gavrila Derzhavin’s “On the Death of Countess Rumiantseva”
(1788), an ode of thirteen eight-line stanzas in iambic tetrameter with alternating rhymes.
429

More than half a century passed from Petr’s to Derzhavin’s poems. During this time, Russia
moved from the reign of Empress Anna to that of Catherine the Great, during which a public
sphere was established through the creation of journals, salons, and circles and ties with Western
European countries strengthened unprecedentedly. Petr is an almost unknown man of the Church
who lived between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, so his way of delineating the lyric
speaker within his composition bears traces of seventeenth-century East Slavic culture—in his
connection between the religious and literary spheres, his definition of the lyric voice as the

428
Ibid., 42-3.
429
Gavrila Derzhavin is a meaningful figure both within Russian literature and within research on the origins of the
lyric persona and lyric poetry. I provide an in-depth introduction to his works and cultural background, as
well as a thorough analysis of his lyric production in chapter four.
143
spokesperson for their community, and his partial acquaintance with Western conceptions of
literature. In contrast, Derzhavin—despite being mostly self-taught in the literary field—learned
from Trediakovskii and, above all, Lomonosov and Western European authors, especially the
classical and German ones. He deployed a refined style that is reminiscent of Lomonosov’s odes,
while developing a heterogeneous and colloquial language. In his odes, Derzhavin deals with
high topics while simultaneously introducing elements of the quotidian, thus overcoming the
genres’ stylistic and thematic limitations. In this way, he creates characters who are defined by
their human, historical, and social personalities. This poetics leads to the “destruction of the ode
as a sharply closed, canonical genre, the substitution of the ‘solemn ode’, and… the development
of stylistic particularities”—in Ram’s terms, “a radical if implicit assault on the stylistic markers
of the Lomonosovian sublime.”
430
Such poetic practice determines the way in which lyric “I”
establishes their presence in Derzhavin’s poetry.
In “On the Death of Countess Rumiantseva,” the lyric persona appears in the second
stanza, which creates the frame for the entire ode. The lyric “I” directly addresses Princess
Dashkova, and the ode’s real protagonist, Countess Rumiantseva, emerges from this dialogue. As
we saw in the first chapter, dialogism is one of the defining characteristics of lyric poetry and
reveals both the lyric voices and their relationships with their interlocutors. The lyric “I” in this
particular ode is clearly aware of the suffering that Princess Dashkova is experiencing and
addresses her in a friendly way. This shows that the “I” is not feeling the same subjection before
his interlocutor as the “I” in Petr Buslaev’s work does before Baroness Maria Strogonova:
You shouldn’t…
Dashkova, always worry…
You spend your life in anguish…

430
“Новый путь Державина был уничтожением оды как резко замкнутого, канонического
жанра, заменою «торжественной оды» и… развитием стилистических особенностей.” Tynianov,
“Oda kak oratorskii zhanr,” 245. Ram, The Imperial Sublime, 94.
144
Isolating yourself, you go about all agitated
And let you tears freely flow.
431

These lines from the second stanza refer to Princess Dashkova’s suffering, which stemmed from
her son’s marriage to a woman of inferior social status, notwithstanding her projects for him to
marry a noblewoman.
432
After the lyric voice’s advice, a series of “subjectless imperatives” (to
borrow Banfield’s terms), follow, which are often located at the stanza’s beginning (e.g., “Stop!”
in the third stanza’s opening and “Be patient!” in the last stanza’s opening).
433
With these
subjectless imperatives the speaker addresses the Princess, reinforcing the informal tone of their
conversation. In this context, the woman who is praised and whose righteous behavior has gained
her eternal memory among the living enters the poem: Countess Rumiantseva. The lyric “I”
introduces her as a model and then turns her into the ode’s real protagonist, although they
explicitly talk about the countess in only four of the thirteen stanzas. The “I” celebrates her for
her nobility and closeness with the court: “She served eight monarchs, / Wore the signs of their
honors.”
434
However, her personal qualities are the main reason for this praise:
Rumiantseva!–She shone…
And in her old age earned
Everybody’s love with her lovable soul;
She put together with her determination
A wife’s gaze, her friends, her sons…
435

The exclamation at the beginning of the fourth stanza expresses the lyric persona’s admiration
for this righteous woman and introduces his praise for her. The Countess acts within her familiar

431
“тебе крушиться / Не должно, Дашкова, всегда, / … Ты жизнь свою в тоске проводишь, / … Уединясь, в
смущеньи ходишь / И волю течь даешь слезам.” Derzhavin, Stikhotvoreniia, 118.
432
On the real-life references present in the ode, see Marcus C. Levitt, “Stikhotvorenie Derzhavina o kniagine
Dashkovoi: K probleme ikh vzaimootnoshenii,” in Aonidy: Sbornik statei v chest’ Natal’i Dmitrievny
Kochetkovoi (Moscow-St. Petersburg: Al’ians-Arkheo, 2013), 52-62.
433
“Престань!” “Терпи.” Ibid., 118, 120.
434
“Монархам осмерым служила, / Носила знаки их честей.” Derzhavin, Stikhotvoreniia, 119.
435
“Румянцевой!—Она блистала /… И в старости любовь снискала / У всех любезною душой; / Она со
твердостью смежила / Супружний взор, друзей, детей.” Ibidem.
145
sphere; her strength lies in her determination and in “her lovable soul,” with which she “earned /
Everybody’s love.” Especially laudable is the fact that, throughout her long life, the Countess
remained calm and detached from events throughout the lifecourse:
She did not change her heart or her behavior
For anyone or anything;
She instead experienced everything herself
Both the good and the bad together…
436

After this, the lyric persona comes to the fore again as the poem’s third protagonist and states
that they share the Countess’ approach to the hardships of life. In talking about Countess
Rumiantseva, he carries out a concrete action towards Princess Dashkova: he wants to cast off
her sorrow by professing the values in which he believes to her. The voice’s words suggest much
torment, deep patience, and heroic nature, which the deceased Countess cultivated in her private
life. Thanks to these virtues we can say, in Paul-Louis Landsberg’s words, that “[i]f death were
the absent presence, then the dead man is now the present absence”
437
:
So, with a quiet sigh, with a clear gaze,
She left this world;
But in her most beautiful name
She still, still lives.
438

In the previous stanzas, the lyric persona depicts an ethical portrait of Countess Rumiantseva that
he is now presenting to other human beings. Through a series of repetitions (“with a calm breath,
with a clear gaze”; “still, still”), the voice reiterates the values that the Countess embodies and
affirms their eternal significance for future generations. Her name comes to identify her as a
concrete individual; it does not indicate her social status or religious faith, but her personal

436
“Не изменялась в сердце, нраве / Ни для кого, ни для чего; / А доброе и злое купно / Собою испытала
всё.” Ibidem.
437
Paul-Louis Landsberg, The Experience of Death, transl. Cynthia Rowland, for. Fr. Martin Jarrett-Kerr, C.R. (New
York: Philosophical Library, 1953), 234.
438
“Так с тихим вздохом, взором ясным / Она оставила сей свет; / Но именем своим прекрасным / Еще, еще
она живет.” Derzhavin, Stikhotvoreniia, 119.
146
qualities, which inspire the voice’s praise and can benefit other people. This way, memory acts
on the present, recognizing earthly immortality and the co-existence of the living with the dead.
The lyric “I” thus becomes a mediator between the deceased noblewoman and the other human
beings.
In effect, Countess Rumiantseva becomes a unique individual, while Baroness Maria
Strogonova, though pompously celebrated, represents an idealized type that is not distinguished
from other noblewomen. We can note something similar about the lyric “I” that emerges from
these two poems. In Petr Buslaev’s work, the speaker hides behind a ceremony that recalls
official court celebrations. Conversely, the lyric voice in Derzhavin’s ode posits themself on the
fore both through his original linguistic creations and through his individualization, which
confers concrete traits upon them. By painting a portrait of their characters, who are real people,
they locate themself in a specific time and place and depict the ethical and spiritual values in
which they believe in the poem.

Lyric Personae as Witnesses: Heroic Actions and Everyday Life Qualities
I end this chapter with Ivan Dolgorukov’s “On the Death of Gorich” (1788), dedicated to
a Cossack major general of princely descent who died during the take of the city of Ochakov in
the Russian-Turkish war (1787-92), and with Nikolai Karamzin’s “On the Death of Prince G.A.
Khovanskii” (1796), dedicated to a prince celebrated not for his social stance or extraordinary
achievements but, rather, for being a good person in his everyday life.
Prince Ivan Dolgorukov (1764-1823), who joined the army and worked as a governor in
Penza and Vladimir, composed numerous poems; his most famous collection is the four-volume
The Being of My Heart (1817-8). “On the Death of Gorich,” dedicated to Ivan Gorich the Great
147
(1740-88), was first published in The Moscow News and is composed of five four-line stanzas in
iambic hexameter with alternating feminine rhymes. The lyric “I” steadfastly affirms his
presence at the beginning and end of the composition. In the first stanza, the persona puts the
collective and individual situations in opposition with one another, as if they wanted to show that
they are conscious that their perspective is innovative within Russian culture. So, while the news
of the Russian people’s joy “is heard everywhere [and] news [of the positive outcomes from a
war victory] is circulating everywhere,” the “I” cannot put an end to their individual sorrow:
“Involuntarily from my eyes the stream of tears flows, / From happiness to sorrow it suddenly
arrives to my soul.”
439
The second stanza explains the reason for such feelings through another
antithesis: the Russian conquest of the city of Ochakov “enraptures all feelings,” but during the
battle “Gorich died—this calls to tears.”
440
The nation’s great history and a single individual’s
existence appear antagonistic, but they converge in the lyric speaker’s perspective: “This true
hero sleeps in the earth.”
441
In this sense, the great land and the single man are mutually
connected. Gorich’s noble nature stems from the fact that he is a valorous warrior who is
inspired by love for his motherland. This links a single individual to a great nation: he “brought
his life as a gift for Russia.”
442
As Morin writes, “in the risk of dying, we always find... the
affirmation of the individual... The hero never feels ‘himself’ so strongly as in the moment of
danger.”
443
In other words, heroism is one of the values through which humans can overcome the
trauma of death by affirming the meaning of their existence and of their choices. Heroism is even
more authentic and worthy when it is cultivated and employed humbly. The lyric “I” restates this

439
“повсюду раздается; / … вездѣ несется слухѣ.” “Неволно изъ очей моихъ токъ слезный льется, / Изь
радости въ печаль преходитъ вдругъ мой духъ.” Dolgorukov, Bytie serdtsa moego, 58.
440
“всѣ чувства восхищает!” “Горичъ умерщвленъ—сiе зоветъ къ слезамъ.” Ibidem.
441
“Сей истинный герой въ землѣ опочивает.” Ibidem.
442
“Принесъ Росси въ даръ… жизнь.” Ibidem.
443
“dans le risque de mort, nous retrouvons toujours… l’affirmation de l’individu… le héros ne se sent jamais aussi
fortement ‘lui-même’ qu’au moment du risque.” Morin, L’homme et la mort, 85-86.
148
principle with a new series of antitheses. Gorich “did not look for title, but war actions alone”; he
desired “to become a hero before everybody more than wealth.”
444
The “I” asserts even Gorich’s
most personal qualities by means of antitheses, like: “Since he was a good man, he abhorred
treachery.”
445
At the end, the lyric persona posits himself on the fore, as he did in the opening,
thus creating a ring composition: “I knew him personally, and I am a witness myself / That
honesty was always a sacred law for him.”
446

Dolgorukov’s poem records changes in the social and cultural context and in the way of
conceiving and manifesting the lyric persona. The “I” affirms the nationalistic values that build
the identity of the Russian state and adds them to the religious and cultural ones that prevailed in
the other poems. They celebrate the State not as the propagator of wisdom and the defender of
faith, but as the guarantor of happiness and richness. Neither God nor the idea of eternal
salvation are mentioned in this poem and the only regret that the lyric voice expresses is that
Gorich has been “[d]eprived of the joy of hearing the sung praises.”
447
The speaker once again
conveys an earthly perspective on life and death and tells us that we can affirm our own
individuality on earth in the face of death. In “On the Death of Gorich,” the lyric voice comes to
the fore without pre-established masks and roles. The poet, Dolgorukov, knows Gorich because
he has also joined the army; hence, he shapes a lyric persona who is a historical figure rooted in a
specific geographical and factual reality. No superior entity or final judgment are expected to
intervene and judge Gorich because the lyric “I” guarantees the value of Gorich’s life.

444
“Ни титловъ лишъ однихъ военныхъ онъ искалъ.” “Прямымъ героемъ стать всѣхъ паче благъ.”
Dolgorukov, Bytie serdtsa moego, 58.
445
“Бывъ добрый человѣкъ, коварств гнушался онъ.” Ibidem.
446
“Я лично его зналъ, и самъ тому свидѣтель, / Что честности ему всегда былъ святъ законъ.” Ibidem.
447
“Лишенъ отрады внять сплетаемымъ хваламъ.” Ibidem.
149
Nikolai Karamzin wrote the ode, “On the Death of Prince G.A. Khovanskii” (1796), a
poem of thirteen four-line stanzas in iambic tetrameter with alternating masculine and feminine
rhymes, to celebrate the death not of a prominent man or a dear friend, but of an individual
whom the community praised for his qualities in everyday life. In this sense, the lyric persona
creates the public appreciation of the commemorated figure, which Lilti calls “reputation.” In
this poem Karamzin (1776-1826)—together with such poets as Derzhavin, Dolgorukov, and
Radishchev—pays attention to feelings in a way that continues Sumarokov’s lyrics, “although its
code was not as austere and lofty as Sumarokov’s.”
448
Karamzin himself states that poetry needs
to deal with “what truly occupies his [i.e. the poet’s] soul…, to depict in verses the first
impressions of love, friendship, the tender beauties of nature…, to denote sorrow not only by
general features…, but by the special ones that relate to the character and circumstances of the
poet [and that] assure us of the truth value of the descriptions.”
449

In the apostrophe opening the ode, the lyric persona continues to carry out a public
function because it addresses “friends,” thus defining the conversation as occurring within a
friendly circle that belongs to the noble and intellectual milieus. The persona also establishes the
composition’s everyday tone through the linguistic register used: “Khovanskii is gone! / … / The
sting of death threatens everyone: / As soon as it touches them, they must die!”
450
These lines
show that Karamzin introduces elements of prose language into his poetry, as Lotman

448
Anthony G. Cross, N.M. Karamzin. A Study of His Literary Career. 1783-1803 (London, Amsterdam: Southern
Illinois University Press, 1971), xix. Look also Iurii M. Lotman, Sotvorenie Karamzina (Moscow: kniga,
1987), 308-320.
449
“… что подлинно занимает его душу…, изображать в стихах первые впечатления любви, дружбы,
нежных красот природы…, означить горесть не только общими чертами…, но особенными,
имеющими отношение к характеру и обстоятельствам поэта [и которые] уверяют нас в истине
описаний.” From Karamzin’s preface to the second volume of Aonidy (1797), quoted in Iurii Tynianov,
“Oda kak oratorskii zhanr,” 251.
450
“Хованского не стало! / … / На всех грозится смерти жало: / Лишь тронет, должно умирать!” Nikolai
Karamzin, Stikhotvoreniia (Leningrad: Sovetskii pisatel’, 1966), 190.
150
observes.
451
Through the next five stanzas, the lyric voice develops the motif of the “triumph of
death” introduced in the second line: “Ach! We will all have to lie in the coffin.”
452
However,
they elaborate on this theme by merging high and low registers. Instances of the former are
found in the reference to Zeus and in recalling the mortality of the sovereign, the hero, and the
mythological character Narcyssus. However, the speaker balances such references with a
realistic tone: the king “sat wearing a golden crown”; “a bullet got into the forehead, and the hero
ended up in the ground”; and the miser “sat on his coffers.”
453
In the sixth stanza, the lyric voice
expresses even the moment of death—the moment bearing the highest emotional intensity—
through an ordinary action: death “orders us to change house.”
454
Punctuation and syntax
contribute to build the colloquial tone of the conversation by means of exclamations, ellipses,
and dashes that recreate the prosody typical of oral dialogues. The imperative: “Look,” and the
address: “Farewell, love!” produce the same effect as direct speech: “I am the conqueror of the
world!”
455
In the poem’s first six stanzas, the style delineates the lyric speaker as interacting with
friends while talking about the critical topic of death.
Another apostrophe, “Friends!”, marks the beginning of the poem’s second part, whose
protagonist is the deceased Khovanskii. The persona presents Khovanskii as part of the
community of friends and calls him “our friend.”
456
The voice characterizes him through
qualities belonging to the familial sphere: death visits him, fearless, “under his cover” and, after
death, he will live “in a new dwelling.”
457
Nothing extraordinary characterizes Khovanskii:

451
Iurii M. Lotman, O russkoi literature. Stat’i i issledovaniia (1958-1993). Istoriia russkoi prozy. Teoriia literatury
(St. Petersburg, Isskustvo SPB, 1997), 159.
452
“Увы! нам в гробе всем лежать.” Karamzin, Stikhotvoreniia, 190.
453
“сидел в златой короне.” “Но пуля в лоб—герой в земле.” “сидел над сундуками.” Ibid., 190-191.
454
“Велит нам дом переменять.” Ibid., 191.
455
“Взгляни.” “Прости любовь!” “Я мира победитель!” Ibid., 190-191.
456
“Друзья!” “наш приятель.” Ibid., 191.
457
“под его покровом.” “в жилище новом.” Ibidem.
151
Khovanskii was not famous for anything;
He was… only a good person,
In friendly conversations he was funny
And lived his life without enemies.
458

The speaker then continues to describe Khovanskii’s ordinary life through a series of negative
sentences indicating that the deceased was not worthy exceptional reasons for merit or
distinction: He “did not know envy”; “Not many praised him”; and he was “without Croeses’
wealth.”
459
The voice informs us that Khovanskii also understood religious faith as the expansion
of familiar affections: “He believed that the God of the hearts exists; / He believed that the
creator of the worlds / Is a father to us both here and there,” and that he was full of human
qualities: He “eagerly glorified everybody,” “was rich with a good heart,” and “was happy to
give away his last things.”
460
As Lotman points out, “the idea of the poem consisted in
underlining the ordinary as a high and poetic quality of the human being.”
461

In the poem’s final stanza, the lyric “I” invites his friends to honor Khovanskii by
reiterating the apostrophe that opened the composition:
Friends! Let’s go with a sad soul
To pay him our sad dues:
Crying on his coffin.
We will also have to die!
462

Here, the lyric persona does not commemorate Khovanskii for being a sovereign or a man of the
Church, a nobleman, or a soldier. Rather, they commemorate the deceased as an individual with

458
“Ничем Хованский не был славен; / Он был… лишь доброй человек, / В беседах дружеских забавен / И
прожил без злодеев век.” Ibidem.
459
“зависти не знал; / Его немногие хвалили.” “Богатства Крезов не имея.” Ibid., 191-192.
460
“Он верил, что есть бог сердец; / Он верил, что миров создатель / И здесь, и там для нас отец.” “Он всех
охотно прославлял.” “Он добрым сердцем был богат; / … / Отдать последнее был рад.” Ibid. 191-
192.
461
“Замысел стихотворения состоял в утверждении обыденного как высокого и поэтического свойства
человека.” Iurii M. Lotman, “Kommentarii: Karamzin,” in Karamzin, Stikhotvoreniia, 394.
462
“Друзья! пойдем с душой унылой / Ему печальный долг воздать: / Поплакать над его могилой. / Нам
также будет умирать!” Ibid., 192.
152
whom they share a mortal destiny. Similarly to Dolgorukov’s ode, the lyric voice in Karamzin’s
poem appears as a concrete individual defined by their relationships and values. In effect, the
voice confers a long-lasting memory upon the deceased, whose good reputation within his
community based on his feelings and actions is upheld through the power of lyric poetry.

Conclusions
Throughout the chapter I have demonstrated how, after taking place, death contributes to
an overturned perspective that re-evaluates the human dimension and further individualizes lyric
voices. By delineating the biography of the deceased, these voices acquire ever more defined
characters. As several thinkers from Epicurus onward have observed, death is a unique moment
about which one cannot talk in the present tense but only in the future or past tenses. Fuss also
notes that “[l]ast-word poems thus look either backward or forward, capturing the dual
temporality of the deathbed itself, poised on the threshold between two worlds.”
463
When the
future tense prevails, death becomes a presence-absence that looms over human beings,
reminding them of their finite nature. This fosters fear of death and hope of eternal salvation,
from which the individual’s self-awareness and the lyric personae’s self-expression spring.
When the past tense prevails, death transforms awareness in the transitory nature of the
human condition as an opportunity to analyze the earthly existence of the deceased. Considering
human life as a unique whole leads the lyric speakers to confer upon it specific meanings and
values—to attribute to it glory, and in particular, an earthly immortality that is the human
equivalent to heavenly immortality. The process starts by analyzing the lives of deceased
sovereigns. The first poems on the death of Russian sovereigns are placed within the funeral

463
Fuss, Dying Modern, 12.
153
ceremony, with which they share their political function. Their public nature causes indirect
presences of the lyric personae, situating these works on the path of the development and
expression of lyric subjects in East Slavic literature. This type of poem, composed for the
sovereigns’ funerals, bears “an important integrative function” for the community.
464
Through
the funerary celebration the community recovers from its trauma and confirms its existence, and
each member plays one’s own established role. A similar process occurs among the poetic
voices. Celebrating the sovereigns after their death and determining their immortal glory on earth
during their funerals allow the voices to publicly define their identity and their social status. I
noted this phenomenon in Karion’s epitaph for Natal’ia Kirillovna, in Trediakovskii’s Elegy for
the death of Peter the Great, and in the opening of Antiokh Kantemir’s Petrida.
The right to be glorified then comes to encompass other prominent people, such as men
of the Church and men of culture, who were often one and the same until the turn of the
seventeenth century in Russia. In Sil’vestr Medvedev’s epitaph for Simeon Polotskii, the
speaking voice identifies with the celebrated person in terms of their shared social and cultural
roles; by talking about Simeon, the persona actually talks about themself. The same occurs in
Lomonosov’s epitaph for Dmitrii Rostovskii through a series of cultural, religious, and political
references. In Karion’s Panegyric, the speaking voice fully appears and expresses his role as a
poet. Upon recollecting the royal lineage of the future Tsar Peter the Great, the lyric speaker
expresses themself in the first person and explicitly claims their identity and participation in the
divine plan of spreading wisdom.
After sovereigns, men of the Church, and men of culture, noble people are considered
worthy of eternal glory. The personae commemorate the nobility for a variety of reasons—from

464
Huntington, Metcalf, Celebrations of Death, 138.
154
their merits in the court, to their scientific achievements to their military deeds. Here, a process
resembling the one observed in poems dedicated to sovereigns, Churchmen, and men of culture
takes place. The poetic voices in exclusively encomiastic poems do not affirm their presences
directly, but appear as part of a group. We can grasp their presences in the stylistic devices used,
which are also manifest in poems composed for public occasions. This dynamic appears in Petr
Buslaev’s “Spiritual Vision,” in which the persona represents Superior Baroness Maria
Strogonova’s assumption into heaven as a court ceremony. On the other hand, when the speaking
voices have personal bonds with the deceased noble people and characterize them by their
biographical traits and by the events that they experienced in life, the lyric personae appear more
explicitly. In paying public homage to the deceased, the lyric voices speak in the first person and
express their own ideas, values, and emotions. This occurs in Gavrila Derzhavin’s poem, “On the
Death of Countess Rumiantseva.”
I ended the chapter with Ivan Dolgorukov’s ode, “On the Death of Gorich,” and Nikolai
Karamzin’s poem, “On the Death of Prince A.G. Khovanskii.” In commemorating Ivan Gorich,
who died as a general during the seizure of the city of Ochakov, Dolgorukov testifies to the fact
that, even when far from institutions like the Church or the court, death can confer upon life the
merit of glory and hand memories down to the future generations. Finally, Karamzin’s poem
proves that everyday qualities can also secure the individual’s good reputation within the
community, making them worthy of commemoration. As a result, the lyric speaker triumphs by
publicly proclaiming their role as a witness and mediator between the living and the dead for
every human being.

155
Chapter Three:
When Their Worlds Fall Apart, the Personae Come Out in the Open

In this chapter I show how, in poems dedicated to the death of people who are dear to
poets, lyric voices go one step further in defining their presence and identity. The lyric voices
that I delineated in the previous chapters—the universal and the public personae, respectively—
will become singular voices in this chapter and the one that follows. In this chapter I identify
private personae who manifest their singular nature when deaths of dear ones throw them and
their worlds into crisis. In Russian literature, lyric poetry began to center on these intimate
themes in the second half of the eighteenth century as a result of poets’ close contact with
Western European literatures, the region’s social and cultural development, and the evolving
figure of the poet in Russia. This tendency is also a product of literary developments in the first
half of the eighteenth century, during which certain authors attempted to create a specific
language for writing about their personal lives in lyric poetry. Poems on the death of dear ones
exemplify this process. Because their deaths directly concern the lyric voices themselves, they
come into the open in these lyric poems to a more significant degree. In these compositions, the
public glorification of earthly deeds that we also saw in the second chapter leaves room for the
personal reactions of lyric speakers after losing dear ones. Managing sorrow and their memories,
the lyric personae in these poems present the life of every person—even common people—as
unique and worthy of remembrance. In turn, they initiate the democratization of the right to be
remembered, which extends to family, friends, and anyone belonging to the “I’s” private
156
sphere.
465
As earthly events and confrontations with death in the speaker’s life acquire new
meaning, both the deceased and the lyric “I” permanently emerge from anonymity.
The mythological archetype for this type of lyric voice who sings of love and death is the
legendary figure of Orpheus. Through his song, Orpheus persuades the Deities of the
Netherworld that they should allow his dead wife, Eurydice, to come back to life. After
successfully persuading them, however, Orpheus disobeys the Deities’ order not to look at
Eurydice before exiting the Netherworld. As a result of his action, Orpheus loses her forever, and
his resulting songs over his loss bring anyone who listens to them to tears. As Charles Segal
notes regarding the fourth book of Virgil’s Georgics, “[o]n the one hand, Orpheus embodies the
ability of art, poetry, language—‘rhetoric and music’—to triumph over death; the creative power
of art allies itself with the creative power of love. On the other hand, the myth can symbolize the
failure of art before the ultimate necessity, death.”
466
The poems considered in this chapter
emphasize yet another aspect of lyric poetry that is present in the myth of Orpheus—that lyrics
are “centered… upon the personal emotion of the poet, prodigally passionate.”
467
This confirms
the presence of a singular link between the death of a dear one and the self-expression of the
lyric persona.
The death of dear ones makes lyric voices emerge in two distinct ways. On the one hand,
their death causes the collapse of the world that the personae have created with their dear ones
and, on the other, it unveils the mortality of both the dear one and the lyric voice. When a dear

465
While the concept of the private and public spheres in the eighteenth century recalls Jürgen Habermas’ theories, I
define the private sphere in terms of the personal relationships that poets have with the people who are dear
to them, such as family and friends. By public sphere, I speak of the formal relationships that poets have
with people including sovereigns and social and intellectual élites.
466
Charles Segal, Orpheus. The Myth of the Poet (Baltimore, London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989),
2.
467
Ibid., 22. On the history of emotions, check Daniel M. Gross, The Secret History of Emotion: From Aristotle’s
Rhetoric to Modern Brain Science (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006).
157
one dies, death is no longer a topic of theoretical or religious meditations; as Roland Barthes
commented after his mother’s death: “what I have lost is not a Figure (the Mother), but a being;
and not a being, but a quality (a soul): not the indispensable, but the irreplaceable.”
468
Death is a
concrete event that perturbs the survivor and calls into question theories and systems of ideas, as
seen with Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida.
469
When a close one dies, two especially human
characteristics emerge and merge, which Paul Landsberg defines as “a spiritual personalisation
and a personal love for one’s friend.”
470

These two elements are at play in the lyric compositions dedicated to the death of dear
ones that I consider in this chapter. We start with the “Epitaph to the Newly Deceased
Archdeacon Adam” (1734) by Feofan Prokopovich. Two of Feofan’s compositions are featured
in previous chapters; broadly speaking, the author exemplifies the transition from early modern
East Slavic to modern Russian literature.
471
His 1734 epitaph provides us with one of the first
instances of lyrics dedicated to the death of a dear one and, given the friendly and collegial bond
between the celebrated and the celebrator, the epitaph is situated between the public and the
private spheres. Next, we have two elegies by Aleksandr Sumarokov (1717-77), one of the
eighteenth-century authors who most deliberately intended to develop a literary system and
introduce several types of lyric compositions practiced by classical and Western authors into
Russia.
472
These works are dedicated to friends and colleagues from the Imperial theater, “To

468
Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida. Reflections on Photography, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Hill and
Wang, 1981), 75.
469
See Introduction.
470
Paul-Louis Landsberg, The Experience of Death. The Moral Problem of Suicide, transl. Cynthia Rowland (New
York: Philosophical Library, 1953), 13.
471
Panchenko, Russkaia sillabicheskaia poeziia, 390. Feofan Prokopovich, Sochineniia, ed. I.P. Eremin (Moskow:
Izd-vo Akademiia nauk SSSR, 1961), 486. I.A. Chistovich, Feofan’ Prokopovich’ i ego vremia (St.
Petersburg: Imp. Tip. Akademii Nauk, 1868), 640.
472
On the literary achievements of Sumarokov and on his theory of genres, see S.D. Chrostowska, Literature on
Trial: The Emergence of Critical Discourse in Germany, Poland & Russia, 1700-1800 (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 2012). Amanda Ewington, A Voltaire for Russia: A.P. Sumarokov’s Journey
158
Mr. Dmitrevskii on the Death of F.G. Volkov” (1763) and “To Mr. Dmitrevskii on the Death of
Tat’iana M. Troepol’skaia, the First Actress of the Imperial Court Theatre” (1774). While the
former was first published in Mikhail Kheraskov’s journal, “Free Hours,” the latter—consistent
with its focus on theater—was published for the first time at the beginning of Sumarokov’s
tragedy, Mstislav (pub. 1774), in which the actress once played the lead female role.
473

Characterizing these elegies is the fact that both commemorated people who were both friends
and colleagues of the lyric voice. Like Feofan’s epitaph, they operate both in the public and
private spheres and highlight the transition from the public to the private “I.”
The other poems examined in this chapter operate in the private sphere. The third elegy
by Sumarokov, “On the Death of the Author’s Sister E.P. Buturlina” (1759), deals with the death
of Sumarokov’s sister, with whom the poet was allegedly very close.
474
I then analyze the
“Epitaph” (approximately 1783) by Aleksandr Radishchev (1749-1802) on the death of his first
wife, A.V. Rubanskaia. Gary Hamburg has named Radishchev “perhaps the most intrepid figure

from Poet-Critic to Russian Philosophe (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2010), 28-73. Grigorii
A. Gukovskii, Russkaia poeziia XVIII veka (Leningrad: Academia, 1927), 9-47. K.B. Jensen and U. Møller,
“Paraphrase and Style: A Stylistic Analysis of Trediakovskij’s, Lomonosov’s and Sumarokov’s
Paraphrases of the 43
rd
Psalm,” in Scando-Slavic 16 (1970): 57-63. Joachim Klein, “Sumarokov und
Boileau. Die Epistel ‘Über die Verskunst’ in ihrem Verhältnis zur ‘Art poétique’: Kontextwechsel als
Kategorie der vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft,” in Zeitschrift für slavische Philologie 50, (1990)2:
254-304. “Russkii Bualo? (Epistola Sumarokova ‘O stikhotvorstve’ v vospriiatii sovremennikov),” in XVIII
vek (1993)18, 40-58. D.M. Lang, “Boileau and Sumarokov. The Manifesto of Russian Classicism,” in The
Modern language review 43, (1948)4: 500-506. Marcus C. Levitt, “Sumarokov’s Reading at the Academy
of Sciences Library,” in Early Modern Russian Letters: Texts and Contexts (Boston: Academic Studies
Press, 2009), 22-43. “Censorship and Provocation: The Publishing History of Sumarokov’s ‘Two
epistles’,” in Early Modern Russian Letters: Texts and Contexts, 44-63. A.B. Shishkin, “Poeticheskoe
sostiazanie Trediakovskogo, Lomonosova i Sumarokova,” in XVIII vek (1983)14: 232-246. Svetlana
Skomorokhova, “Plating ‘Russian Gold’ with ‘French Copper’: Aleksandr Sumarokov and Eighteenth-
Century Franco-Russian Translation,” in French and Russian in Imperial Russia: Language Attitudes and
Identity, eds. Derek Offord, Lara Ryazanova-Clarke, Vladislav Rjeoutski, and Gesine Argent (Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press, 2015), 2:48-63. Viktor M. Zhivov, Language and Culture in Eighteenth-
Century Russia, trans. Marcus C. Levitt (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2009), 190-198, 200-205, 215-
216, 234-237, 242-244, 255-272, 280-286, 291-294, 336-338.
473
Aleksandr P. Sumarokov, Izbrannye proizvedeniia (Leningrad: Sovetskii pisatel’, 1957), 532-533.
474
Pavel N. Berkov, “Neskol’ko spravok dlia biografii A.P. Sumarokova,” in XVIII vek (Moscow, Leningrad)
(1962)5: http://az.lib.ru/s/sumarokow_a_p/text_0500.shtml (Last access: 18 January 2021).
159
in late eighteenth-century Russia” and associated him with the “radical” Enlightenment, as
theorized by Margaret Jacob and Jonathan Israel.
475
Following, I analyze Derzhavin’s poem “The
Swallow,” which was published in the “Moscow Journal” in 1792 and then modified with the
addition of two final verses after his first wife, E.Ia. Bastidon, died on the 15
th
July 1794.
476
I
have decided to analyze “The Swallow” instead of the contemporaneous epitaph, “On the Death
of Katerina Iakovlevna” (1794); while the latter perfectly exemplifies the features of the
epitaphic genre, “The Swallow” overcomes them through an original lyric structure and shows a
multi-layered, dynamic lyric persona. Next, I examine Dolgorukov’s poem, “On the Death of My
Daughter, Princ. M… I….” We already observed the emergence of the lyric persona in
Dolgorukov’s poem, “On the Death of Gorich” in the second chapter. In the composition
considered here, a further defined lyric voice appears. The date of composition of Dolgorukov’s
poem is uncertain, but the lyric appeared in Dolgorukov’s collection, The Being of My Heart, in
1817, and it is likely that Dolgorukov wrote the poem around 1808 after the death of his
daughter, Maria, that year.
477
Finally, I include a text by Nikolai Karamzin (1766-1826), whom
many consider the father of Russian Sentimentalism and who constitutes one of the key figures
in the transition from eighteenth- to nineteenth-century literature, along with Radishchev and
Derzhavin.
478
Karamzin’s text, A Little Flower on the Grave of My Agathon (1793), is somewhat

475
Aleksandr N. Radishchev, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, v. 1 (Moscow, Leningrad: Izd-vo Akademii Nauk SSSR,
1938), 456. Gary M. Hamburg, Russia’s Path toward Enlightenment. Faith, Politics, and Reason, 1500-
1801 (New Haven, London: Yale University Press, 2016), 628, 634. Margaret C. Jacob, The Radical
Enlightenment: Pantheists, Freemasons, and Republicans (London: George Allen & Unwin: 1981), 20-29.
Jonathan Israel, A Revolution of the Mind. Radical Enlightenment and the Intellectual Origins of Modern
Democracy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), vii-xiv, 199-241.
476
The poem’s first edition was published on the Moscow Journal, (1792)12, 193. The edited version, with the
addition of the final couplet, was published in the 1798 edition of Derzhavin’s works at p. 296. Gavrila R.
Derzhavin, Stikhotvoreniia, comm. V.A. Zapadov (Leningrad: Sovetskii pisatel’, 1957), 410-411.
477
Ivan M. Dolgorukov, Bytie serdtsa moego, v. 1 (Moscow: Un-tskaia tipografiia, 1817). AA.VV., Slovar’ russkikh
pisatelei XVIII veka, v. 1 (Leningrad: Nauka, 1988), 279-283.
478
Hamburg, Russia’s Path toward Enlightenment, 698, 734-736.
160
of an exception because it is written in prose, but is nevertheless defined by Iurii Lotman as a
“lyric fragment.”
479
I incorporate it in my dissertation because it presents the stylistic and
thematic characteristics that distinguish the lyric voice.
In examining these poems, I demonstrate how a language that is able to express
individuality and affection establishes itself in Russian lyrics in the eighteenth century. Titles,
epigraphs, and names designating the deceased already suggest a distinct cultural climate, in
which the private lyric “I” is individualized at the personal and emotional levels. Analyzing these
lyrics’ structures and figures of speech—mainly aposiopeses, apostrophes, exclamations, and
anaphors—allows me to show the difficulty that the lyric “I’s” face to acknowledge that a dear
one has passed away. For the personae, such news breaks off a part of their world and they lack
preparation to deal with their loss. As a result, the lyric persona goes through a mourning process
while simultaneously respecting the distinct identity of the deceased. I thus examine different
instances of grieving processes, focusing on how memory functions in these poems and on use of
devices like prosopopoeia. In addition, the poems by Radishchev and Dolgorukov allow me to
highlight the philosophic individualization of the lyric speaker, through which the private is
placed within the universal dimension.

Voices of Mourning, Voices of Change
The lyrics in this chapter span about seventy-four years, starting with Feofan’s epitaph,
composed in 1734, and ending with Dolgorukov’s poem, composed around 1808. Feofan first
wrote his “Epitaph” in Latin, a language that he studied and used in many instances of funerary
poetry such as elegies and epitaphs, and then translated it into Russian. This is the only lyric

479
“лирический отрывок.” Nikolai M. Karamzin, Stikhotvoreniia (Leningrad: Sovetskii pisatel’, 1966), 385.
161
considered in this chapter that was composed in the first half of the eighteenth century; the other
poems were written in the century’s second half, when Russian poets had more experience
employing a lyric language that expresses the emotional and philosophic depth of their private
lyric personae.
During the long period of time covered in this chapter, many changes took place that
established a cultural context ideal for composing lyrics on the death of dear ones. Eternal
salvation is no longer the prevailing theme, as it was in the poems on the death of everyman
composed at the turn of the century. In the eighteenth century, the understanding of death shifts
from an event that frees one from the burdens of earthly life to a sorrowful separation from life
and dear ones. Similar to the lyrics presented in the second chapter, the human earthly existence
is considered after the death of another person has already taken place—in this case, the death of
a dear one. In this way, being human reverses the perspective that prevailed in chapter one: in
chapter three, death is evil and earthly life is a good whose loss causes grief. Yet in contrast to
earlier perspectives, such as those featured in the poem by Feofan in this chapter, the other works
included here are not permeated with disdain for worldly life and its vanities. Rather, each of the
poems in this chapter sings the voice’s regret for an interrupted life and celebration of the
deceased’s good deeds and earthly projects. In remembering these dear ones, the personae not
only keep the deceased’s memory alive but also celebrate their own values and memories, which
they connect to those of the deceased.
Between 1734 and 1808, poets elaborated new theories and practices in their lyrics that
were increasingly individualized. These phenomena occurred within the context of eighteenth-
century changes, such as Peter the Great’s 1721 religious reform aimed at secularization and
institution of the Russian empire, as well as the development of public opinion during the reign
162
of Catherine the Great (1762-96).
480
Meanwhile, the reception of classical culture and the
exchanges with Western countries significantly increased. Lev Pumpianskii shares an interesting
perspective on the particular role that classical culture played in this period: “‘Europeanization’
is the product of the labor of Peter the Great; but [it] scarcely explains this matter. What is
important is… that Russia entered a circle of nations which has already… acquired antiquity…
From this time on Russia stands in a direct relationship to the universal source of
enlightenment—the classics.”
481
The reception of classical and Western texts prompted Russian
authors to elaborate a hierarchy of genres whose center of gravity lay first in the high genres and
then in the middle ones. In the 1730s, Vasilii Trediakovskii proposed replacing the syllabic
system—taken from the Polish literary tradition and adapted for Russian language—with the
tonic system—based on classical versification by exchanging vowels’ length with the natural
disposition of accents. Furthermore, inspired by classical and contemporary French poets, he
introduced poetic genres into Russia, including civic odes, epistles, elegies, epigrams, and
madrigals.
482
To Trediakovskii’s feminine rhymes, thirteen-syllable “Russian hexameter,” and

480
James Cracraft, The Petrine Revolution in Russian Culture (Cambridge, London: Belknap Press of Harvard
University Press, 2004), 144-255. Luba Golburt, The First epoch. The Eighteenth Century and the Russian
Cultural Imagination (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2014), 30-113. Hamburg, Russia’s
Path Toward Enlightenment, 245-422, 524-610, 727-743. Isabel de Madariaga, Catherine the Great. A
Short History (New Haven, London: Yale University Press, 1990), 66-79, 91-144, 176-188. Politics and
Culture in Eighteenth-Century Russia (London, New York: Longman, 1998), 15-56, 78-94, 193-295.
Harsha Ram, The Imperial Sublime. A Russian Poetics of Empire (Madison: The University of Wisconsin
Press, 2003), 63-159. Richard S. Wortman, Scenarios of Power. Myth and Ceremony in Russian Monarchy,
v. 1 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 42-109, 171-192, 247-254.
481
“… она [европеизация] есть плод дела Петра Великого… главное в нем есть то, что Россия вступила в
круг народов, уже… реципировавших античность… Отныне Россия находится в прямо м
отношении ко всемирному источнику просвещения—древним.” Lev V. Pumpianskii, “K istorii
russkogo klassitsizma,” in Klassicheskaia traditsiia (Moskow: Iazyki russkoi kul’tury, 2000), 31, 61.
482
Nadezhda Iu. Alekseeva, Russkaia oda: razvitie odicheskoi formy v XVII-XVIII vekakh (St. Petersburg: Nauka,
2005), 109. Mikhail L. Gasparov, Ocherk istorii russkogo stikha. Metrika. Ritmika. Rifma. Strofika
(Moscow: Nauka, 2002), 102. Grigorii A. Gukovskii, Rannie raboty po istorii russkoi poezii (Moscow:
Iazyki russkoi kul’tury, 2001), 14-16. Il’ia Z. Serman, “Trediakovskii i prosvetitel’stvo (1730-e gody),” in
XVIII vek, (1962)5: 101. “Russkaia poeziia nachala XVIII veka. Kantemir. Trediakovskii. Lomonosov,” in
Istoriia russkoi poezii, (1968) I: 63-64. Vladimir N. Toporov, “U istokov russkogo poeticheskogo
perevoda,” in A.D. Koshelev, ed., Iz istorii russkoi kul’tury, vol. IV (Moscow: Iazyki slavianskoi kul’tury,
1996), 617. Boris A. Uspenskii, Iz istorii russkogo literaturnogo iazyka XVII-nachala XVIII veka (Moscow:
163
trochees, Lomonosov in the 1740s opposed masculine rhymes and iambs. Lomonosov elaborated
a system of genres based on the classical distinction between high, middle, and low styles—each
of which corresponded to specific genres and themes. For him, the highest poetic expression was
the solemn ode, inspired by irrational poetic enthusiasm and characterized by high style,
embellishments, and an abundance of figures of speech.
483
This poetics leaves little room for an
individualized lyric persona because “Lomonosov’s poetry… is poetry of the general, poetry of
all-national, all-statal, and all-philosophic questions and representations. In it the particular, the
personal, and the individual are completely subsumed under the general; the empirical and the
concrete are subsumed under the ideal and the right and proper.”
484
Throughout the century, as
Kirill Rogov observes, “poetry resolutely ceases to speak in the language of engravings and
fireworks, it becomes proper literature and not part of the visual-rhetorical whole that panegyric
culture appears to us.”
485
The “fireworks” of panegyrics and solemn odes for sovereigns and
prominent people were followed by Sumarokov’s motto of “poetic simplicity.”
486
Sumarokov in
particular contributed to the elaboration of a lyric system that gravitated toward the middle
genres of elegies, eclogues, idylls, songs, and anacreontic odes, as well as preferred a lyric

Izd-tvo MGU, 1985), 141. Viktor M. Zhivov, Iazyk i kul’tura v Rossii XVIII veka (Moscow: Iazyki russkoi
kul’tury, 1996), 165.
483
Pumpianskii, “K istorii russkogo klassitsizma,” 53. M.I. Shapir, Universum versus. Iazyk—stikh—smysl’ v
russkoi poezii XVIII-XX vekov, 1
st
ed. (Moscow: Iazyki russkoi kul’tury, 2000), 139-141. Stat’i o Pushkine
(Moscow: Iazyki slavianskikh kul’tur, 2009), 220. Vladimir N. Toporov, Poetika. Stikhoslozhenie.
Lingvistika: k 50-letiiu nauchnoi deiatel’nosti I.I. Kovtunovoi (Moscow: Azbukovnik, 2003). Iurii N.
Tynianov, “Oda kak oratorskii zhanr,” in Poetika. Istoriia literatury. Kino (Moscow: Nauka, 1977), 238.
Zhivov, Iazyk i kul’tura, 338.
484
“Поэзия Ломоносова, как и вся литература русского классицизма, это поэзия общего, поэзия
общенациональных, общегосударственных, общефилософских вопросов и представлений. Частное,
личное, индивидуальное в ней целиком подчинено общему, эмпирическое, конкретное —
идеальному, должному.” Il’ia Z. Serman, Poeticheskii stil’ Lomonosova (Moskow, Leningrad: Nauka,
1966), 247.
485
“поэзия решительно перестает изъясняться языком гравюр и фейерверков, становится собственно
литературой, а не частью того визуально-риторического целого, каковым предстает нам
панегирическая культура.” Kirill Rogov, “Tri epokhi russkogo Barokko,” in Tynianovskii sbornik, v. 12,
eds. M.O. Chudakova, E.A. Toddes, Iu.G. Tsivian (Moscow: Vodolei Publishers, 2006), 87.
486
“стихотворная простота.” Aleksandr P. Sumarokov, Stikhotvoreniia (Leningrad: Sov-tskii pisatel’, 1953), 144.
164
language oriented toward spontaneity and spoken language.
487
His poetry created the space for
the private lyric persona to express intimate feelings and emotions. His experimentations,
together with those of poets like Mikhail Kheraskov, paved the way toward Sentimentalism,
exemplified by Karamzin. The evolution of the lyrics continued with Derzhavin, who combined
distinct lyric styles in order to express all the facets of the human dimension: “Derzhavin brings
together all the poetic genres, connects poetry with the reality of everyday life.”
488
Hence,
starting in the 1730s, Russian authors elaborated genre systems, introduced new genres, and
wrote works in order to express their most private thoughts and emotions, thereby shaping the
evolving language and themes of lyric poetry.
In this chapter, I no longer try to identify the traces of an implicit or invisible lyric voice,
as I did in the previous chapters. In the works featured here, the lyric persona’s presence is
evident. Instead, I investigate how lyricists elaborated a literary language that could express the
subjective dimension of the lyric persona and how the trauma stemming from the loss of a dear
one contributes to such individualization. Similarly, I no longer refer to how Western European
culture has contributed to defining the lyric voice in these texts as if it were an external actor.
The Russian poets studied here see themselves part of the larger pan-European literary
ecosystem and speak at least one—if not two or more—Western languages, study or travel
abroad, and/or read classical texts, either in the original or in translation.
489
A good case in point

487
Pavel N. Berkov, V. Trediakovskii, M. Lomonosov, A. Sumarokov (Leningrad: Sovetskii pisatel’, 1935), 39.
Gukovskii, Rannie raboty, 54-55. Levitt, Early Modern Russian Letters: Texts and Contexts. Iurii M.
Lotman, O russkoi literature. Stat’i i issledovaniia (1958-1993). Istoriia russkoi prozy. Teoriia literatury
(St. Petersburg: Iskusstvo SPB, 1997), 165. Pumpianskii, “K istorii russkogo klassitsizma,” 76. Shapir,
Stat’i o Pushkine, 221. Tynianov, “Oda kak oratorskii zhanr,” 242-243.
488
“Державин сближает все жанры поэзии, соединяет поэзию с бытовой реальностью жизни.” Lotman, O
russkoi literature, 159.
489
Itamar Even-Zohar, “Polysystem Studies,” in Poetics Today 11, (1990)1: 1–268.
165
is the epigraph in Karamzin’s A Little Flower on the Grave of My Agathon, which features a
quote from William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and replaces the tradition of the thematic clue.
In the works about the death of dear ones that I consider in this chapter, lyric poetry finds
its own language, as well as its own place within Russian literature, and acquires and adapts
external features to the Russian context, uniquely contributing to the evolution of this expressive
modality.

At the Threshold of the Text Are an “I” and a “You”
Private lyric personae make their appearances at the thresholds, or in the titles, of the
texts considered in this chapter. The titles of many of these poems reveal information that
individualizes the personae from the very beginning, speaking to their relationships with
deceased family members, beloveds, or friends, as well as how they are reacting to their dear
ones’ deaths. In this way, titles disclose personal details about the lyric personae that are
subsequently developed throughout the larger text.
Following Gérard Genette’s terminology, we can define these titles as both thematic and
rhematic.
490
Although the second chapter also includes poems whose titles are thematic, the titles
of works dedicated to the death of people who are politically, socially, or culturally prominent
usually do not indicate the emotional involvement of the speaker. Take, for example, Sil’vestr
Medvedev’s “Epitaph” for Simeon Polotskii and Feofan’s “Epitaph for the Newly Deceased
Archdeacon Adam.” The former title’s tone is objective and shows no emotional attachment,
whereas “newly deceased” in the latter title adds temporal information that suggest that the lyric

490
Gérard Genette, Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation, transl. Jane E. Lewin (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1997), 81-89.
166
voice is still processing Adam’s death when writing the poem.
491
The difference does not hinge
on the amount of information provided. For example, Antiokh Kantemir’s unfinished poem,
Petrida, is followed by the subtitle, “Verse Description of Russian Emperor Peter the Great’s
Death”—a very detailed phrase that points to the composition’s genre and theme, as well as the
protagonist and his political role.
492
However, these details are descriptive, as the subtitle itself
says, and do not reveal any of the lyric persona’s own emotions. On the contrary, Karamzin’s A
Little Flower on the Grave of My Agathon, despite its brevity, openly reveals the lyric persona’s
emotional involvement.
493
Karamzin conveys this with the possessive “my” and the nickname
“Agathon” for his deceased friend. These terms communicate the close connection between the
persona and Agathon, which are reinforced in the personal, sentimental tone that characterizes
the overall text. The titles of Feofan and Karamzin’s works are both thematic and rhematic. They
not only tell us the theme, but also reveal information concerning the event described in the
poem. In doing so, these titles define their speakers as lyric, situate them in the private sphere,
and give us a first glimpse into the relationship between the “I” and the deceased.
Other titles maintain an objective and detached tone but confer upon the composition a
more personal quality by adding meaningful details that individualize the lyric personae.
Consider, for instance, Petr Buslaev’s “Spiritual Vision, Written in Verses, on the Assumption
into Eternal Life of the Excellent Baroness Maria Iakovlevna Strogonova” and Derzhavin’s “On
the Death of Countess Rumiantseva” in contrast to Sumarokov’s “To Mr. Dmitrevskii on the

491
“Эпитафион.” Pavel N. Berkov, Virshi (sillabicheskaia poeziia XVII–XVIII vv.), introd. Ivanov Rozanov
(Leningrad: Sovetskii pisatel’, 1935), 126. “Новопреставлшемуся иеродиакону Адаму эпитафион.”
Aleksandr M. Panchenko, Russkaia sillabicheskaia poeziia XVII-XVIII vv. (Leningrad: Sovetskii pisatel’,
1970), 279.
492
“Петрида, или Описание стихотворное смерти Петра Великого, императора всероссийского.” Antiokh D.
Kantemir, Sobranie stikhotvorenii (Leningrad: Sovetskii pisatel’, 1956), 241.
493
“Цвѣтокъ на гробъ моего Агатона.” Nikolai M. Karamzin, Sochineniia Karamzina, v. 7 (Moscow: Tip. S.
Selivanovskago, 1803): http://az.lib.ru/k/karamzin_n_m/text_1793_tzvetok_oldorfo.shtml (Last access:
January 4, 2021).
167
Death of Tat’iana M. Troepol’skaia, the First Actress of the Imperial Court Theatre” and
Dolgorukov’s “On the Death of My Daughter, the Princess M… I…”
494
Buslaev and
Derzhavin’s titles specify the social status of the noble people they feature in their poems; doing
so is a constitutive part of commemorating figures in the upper echelon of society. In contrast,
the titles in Sumarokov and Dolgorukov’s poems not only identify the composition’s genre and
theme, but also provide key biographical information on the people whose deaths they
commemorate. Furthermore, the title of Sumarokov’s elegy implies a “you” as the voice’s
addressee, establishing a personal tone and dialogism in the paratext that distinguishes lyric
poetry. This type of information individualizes the “I” and establishes the poem’s lyric tone.
This individualizing process does not follow any sort of chronological evolution; Buslaev
and Derzhavin composed their works in 1734 and in 1788, respectively, and Sumarokov and
Dolgorukov wrote their lyrics in 1774 and in 1808, respectively. However, the theme and the
expression of the speakers’ personal involvement in the latter two works stand out in their
creation of personae who are unequivocally lyric and establish their presence openly and
directly. While not all titles function in the way that those of Sumarokov and Dolgorukov do,
many texts considered in this chapter present information in their titles that suggests the
speakers’ lyric nature and their relationship with the dead people who are the object of their
discourse. The lyric “I’s” emotional involvement, hinted at in the above titles, distinguishes
works that are centered on the death of dear ones from other lyric poetry and further
individualizes the lyric voice.

494
“Умозрителство душевное, описанное стихами, о преселении в вечную жизнь превосходительной
баронессы Марии Яковлевны Строгоновой.” Panchenko, Russkaia sillabicheskaia poeziia, 288. “На
смерть графини Румянцовой.” Gavrila R. Derzhavin, Stikhotvoreniia (Leningrad: Sovetskii pisatel’,
1957), 118. “К г. Дмитревскому на смерть Татианы Михайловны Троепольской, первой актрисы
императорского Придворного театра.” Sumarokov, Izbrannye proizvedeniia, 164. “На кончину дочери
моей Княж. М… И…” Dolgorukov, Bytie serdtsa moego, v. 1, 35.
168
A Name for Those Who Die and an “I” for Those Who Speak
The most individualizing element that appears in these titles is the name of the deceased
person that recurs throughout the poem. Earl Miner observes that calling someone by name is
one of the features that identifies the presence of the lyric speaker in Horace’s Odes.
495

Moreover, calling someone by name acknowledges their identity and attributes characteristics to
them that speak to their unique nature and distinguish them from other humans in order to entrust
them to memory. Memory is thus intrinsically connected to the notation, inscription, and writing
of names, as Paul de Man argues. Derrida also specifies this idea, noting that a name is the object
of memory and the single entity that can enact memorization.
496
I have already shown in the
Introduction how, in Derrida’s thought, death—specifically, the death of a dear one—reveals the
proper noun’s function and unique nature within the linguistic system: the proper noun “alone
and by itself forcefully declares the unique disappearance of the unique.”
497
In fact, the
singularity of the proper noun designates the referent as irreplaceable and leads Derrida to
overcome the rejection of the correspondence between signifier and signified, upon which his
philosophy is founded.
498
In pronouncing the name of the deceased in their poems, the lyric
personae secure a place for the deceased in their own memory.
We can identify several strategies in the way in which these authors include names in
their lyrics and define the emotional connection between the “I” and the deceased. For instance,
in Feofan’s “Epitaph for the Newly Deceased Archdeacon Adam” (1734), a fourteen-line
syllabic poem, calling the deceased by name allows the lyric voice to continue a conversation

495
Earl Miner, Comparative Poetics. An Intercultural Essay in Theories of Literature (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1990), 120-121.
496
Derrida, Mémoires pour Paul de Man, 62-64.
497
Jacques Derrida, The Work of Mourning, eds. Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas (Chicago, London: The
University of Chicago Press, 2001), 115.
498
Ibid., 56.
169
with archdeacon Adam that recalls shared memories. Although Feofan initially writes the epitaph
as an address to archdeacon Adam by his religious authority, Samuil Tetski, who was the
seminary’s head, the tone of the conversation clearly reflects the friendly relationship between
the lyric speaker and the addressee. We perceive the tone as even more friendly when we read
the Russian version of the poem, in which Feofan deleted any reference to Samuil Tetski. In the
opening line, the speaker calls Adam’s attention by uttering his name and by recalling what
seems to have been a common experience: “You smiled, Adam, at how the world is full of vain
passions, / And you were somewhat involved in this folly yourself.”
499
Although the memories
that he shares with the deceased archdeacon concern didactic, ethical, and theological questions,
the “I” reveals his old bond with Adam through them, addressing him with a light, playful, and
dialogical tone that evokes their shared experiences. As a matter of fact, Adam was someone
Feofan had great trust in and who worked as his factotum from 1723 until he died in 1734.
500

The playful, even ironic, tone in the poem showcases the speaker and the addressee’s shared
opinion on the vanity of life and death. The “I’s” irony interweaves with his patronizing attitude
toward the interlocutor—an aspect that is reminiscent of another poem by Feofan, “Oh, Vain
Man”—and places the lyric voice between the public and the private spheres. This emerges in
the second part of the above-mentioned couplet, in which the lyric persona underlines
archdeacon Adam’s contradiction in laughing at the world’s vanity when he himself is part of it.
This stance taken by the subject is emblematic of turn-of-the-eighteenth-century literary culture,
wherein the author or the speaker often take on the role of a preacher or erudite imparting lessons

499
“Смеялся ты, Адаме, как мир суестрастный, / и сам его ж дурости быв нечто причастный.” Panchenko,
Russkaia sullabicheskaia poeziia, 279.
500
Prokopovich, Sochineniia, 486. Chistovich, Feofan Prokopovich i ego vremia, 640.
170
on their pupils.
501
By calling his friend by name, the lyric persona thus activates common
memories and acknowledges his relationship with Adam, which appears playful and patronizing,
as it probably was during the archdeacon’s lifetime.
In a later poem by Sumarokov, “On the Death of the Author’s Sister, E.P. Buturlina”
(1759), the lyric persona also deploys the first name when addressing his sister Eliza, although in
a more overt, emotive tone.
502
After affirming his own presence and expressing the poem’s
emotional tone in the first line—“Moan, soul, inside me! Moan, faltering!”—the voice names his
deceased sister in the second line.
503
Lamenting the dead and using emotional expressive
modalities respects the classical conventions of the elegiac genre. The name Eliza appears in the
poem four times in reference to her death, as if it were beating the rhythm of a desolate cry:
“You’re already gone, already gone, dear Eliza!” (l.2), “Eliza, you’re dead!” (l.18), “Eliza,
you’ve been separated from me forever” (l.24), “Eliza, forever, my beloved, farewell!” (l.36).
504

The end of the poem connects with its beginning as the last couplet repeats the structure of the
first. More specifically, the speaker first addresses himself and then remembers his dead sister:
“Be strong, my soul! Try to endure it!”
505
Here, the “I” and the “you” come together both at the
syntactic and semantic levels, building a unity between content and form that strengthens the
feelings expressed in the composition.

501
Marina Kiseleva observes that, in East Slavic early modern literature, the author or the speaker often play roles
such as preachers or erudites and Feofan Prokopovich’s works embody such trend. Intellektual’nyi vybor
Rossii vtoroi poloviny XVII-nachala XVIII veka ot drevnerusskoi knizhnosti k evropeiskoi uchenosti
(Moskva: Progress-Traditsiia, 2011), 224, 330.
502
Levitt, “Sumarokov and the Unified Poetry Book: His ‘Triumphal Odes’ and ‘Love Elegies’ Through the Prism
of Tradition,” in Early Modern Russian Letters, 219-239. Ronald Vroon, “Aleksandr Sumarokov’s ‘Ody
Torzestvennye’: Toward a History of the Russian Lyric Sequence in the Eighteenth Century,” in Zeitschrift
für slavische Philologie 55, (1995)2: 223–263. “Aleksandr Sumarokov’s ‘Elegii Liubovnye’ and the
Development of Verse Narrative in the Eighteenth Century: Toward a History of the Russian Lyric
Sequence,” in Slavic Review 59, (2000)2: 521–546.
503
“Стени ты, дух, во мне! стени, изнемогая!” Sumarokov, Izbrannye proizvedeniia, 156.
504
“Уж нет тебя, уж нет, Элиза дорогая!” “Элиза, ты скончалась!” “Элиза, ты со мной навек разлучена.”
“Элиза, навсегда, любезная, прости!” Sumarokov, Izbrannye proizvedeniia, 156-157.
505
“Крепись, моя душа! Стремися то снести!” Ibid., 157.
171
In the title of Dolgorukov’s poem, the lyric “I” cannot even name the dead woman: “On
the Death of My Daughter, Princ. M… I…” (1808). The “I” provides only the initials of his
daughter’s name—an expression of his sorrow. It seems that the lyric “I” in this poem is so
respectful toward the deceased that he maintains a certain degree of privacy around her untimely
passing. Nevertheless, in the poem’s second section, the voice—absorbed in his memories—
reveals his daughter’s name and nickname: “And while Masha was growing up, I already started
to see in her / The very image of the deity that her mother seemed to be, / When in her soul mine
tasted its own paradise.”
506
Here, he unveils not only his daughter’s identity but also the close
bond that the two shared. The “I” is so shocked by his daughter’s death and by the difficulty of
understanding why such cruel events occur that he cannot preserve her privacy. Instead, he lets
his feelings burst and calls her by her first name, “Maria,” and by another nickname,
“Mashen’ka.” This confirms Derrida’s idea that we cannot separate a name from the memories it
evokes.
507
Although the “I” is overwhelmed by sorrow and affection for his deceased daughter,
he references her full identity in the text, even after maintaining her privacy in the poem’s title.
In contrast, in A Little Flower on the Grave of My Agathon, Karamzin decides to rename
his friend, Aleksandr Petrov (1763-93), who died young after a long illness, calling him
Agathon—a nickname that expresses what the dead person represents to him. This name comes
from Christoph M. Wieland’s Geschichte des Agathon (1766-67), a Bildungsroman of a young
Greek man during the Classical Age. It likely also alludes to the young, brilliant author of tragic
works who was friends with Euripides and Plato and who was renowned in Athens because of

506
“И Машеньку взростя, сталъ видѣть уже въ ней / Томъ образъ божества, что мать ея казала, / Кодга въ ея
душѣ моя свой рай вкушала.” Dolgorukov, Bytie serdtsa moego, v. 1, 37.
507
Derrida, Mémoires pour Paul de Man, 63.
172
his beauty, elegance, and originality.
508
The “I” in this lyric fragment thus wants his deceased
friend to be remembered as a young, handsome man characterized by a unique culture and
sensibility. In this sense, the commemorated man embodies the core principles of Sentimentalist
poetics, in which the “I” becomes a spokesperson. As a result, both the celebrator and the
celebrated represent certain values of end-of-the-eighteenth-century Russian culture, such as
nobility of the heart and emotional intimacy among chosen individuals.
509
Another element
located at the threshold of the text—a quote from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar that serves as the
epigraph—continues the positive description of Agathon: “His life was gentle, and the elements /
So mix’d in him, that Nature might stand up, / And say to all the world; This was a man!”
510

Here, the lyric persona makes Shakespeare’s words his own: Agathon was the highest realization
of a man because of his noble spirit. In Russian culture at this time, every human was
acknowledged as possessing the ability to develop noble feelings and the self and introspection
acquired central roles.
511
By nicknaming his friend and deploying this epigraph, Karamzin
identifies both his friend and the characteristics of the lyric voice—his feelings and interests, as
well as his cultural references and poetics centered around the expression of sentiments and
subjectivity.

508
Agathon appears in Plato’s Symposium and in Aristophanes’ Tesmoforiazusae. Aristotle informs us that Agathon
was the first poet who included choral chants as interludes in his tragedies. He also wrote Anheos, one of
the first theatrical pieces whose plot was not inspired by mythology.
509
Karamzin played a key role in the evolution of Russian culture and literature at the turn of the nineteenth century.
Pivotal studies of his role in this context are Anthony Cross, N.M. Karamzin: a Study of His Literary
Career, 1783-1803 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1971). N.D. Kochetkova, “Tema
‘solotogo veka’ v literature russkogo sentimentalizma,” in XVIII vek, (1993)18: 172-186. Iurii M. Lotman,
Sotvorenie Karamzina (Moskva: Kniga, 1987). Rudolf Neuhauser, Towards the Romantic Age: Essays on
Sentimental and Preromantic Literature in Russia (The Hague: M. Nijoff, 1974). Andreas Schönle, Andrei
Zorin, and Alexei Evstratov, eds., The Europeanized Elite in Russia, 1762-1825: Public Role and
Subjective Self (Cornell: Cornell University Press, 2016).
510
http://az.lib.ru/k/karamzin_n_m/text_1793_tzvetok_oldorfo.shtml (Last access: 5 January 2021).
511
Interesting accounts of this critical period in Russian culture are Andreas Schönle, “The Scare of the Self:
Sentimentalism, Privacy, and Private Life in Russian Culture, 1780-1820,” in Slavic Review 57, (1998)4:
723–746. Andreas Schönle, Andrei Zorin, “The Radical Bifurcation: The Way to Europe and to the
Convent,” in The Europeanized Elite in Russia, 277-317.
173
In Derzhavin’s “The Swallow,” a fifty-line poem in iambic tetrameter divided into
quartets and a final sestet with alternating rhymes and a final couplet, the lyric speaker also
renames his first wife, E.Ia. Bastidon, “Plenira.”
512
Similarly to what we observed in Karamzin’s
text, the persona in Derzhavin’s poem does not employ the deceased’s first name but her
nickname. This allows the voice to realize the discourse’s lyric tone by enacting a Provençal
lyric technique called “senhal,” a figure of speech that attributes a fictional name to characters
whose true identities shall not be revealed.
513
Thus, the “I” elaborates a lyric language that is
capable of expressing emotions such as sorrow and mourning by combining an intimate tone
with highly literary language.
The lyric personae in the other two elegies by Sumarokov adopt a completely different
technique as they mourn Fedor Vokov and Tat’iana Troepol’skaia, respectively. Generally
considered the founder of the Russian theater, Fedor Volkov (1729-63) was named court actor by
Empress Elizabeth and directed the pageant, Triumphant Minerva, for the inauguration of
Catherine the Great’s cultural policy. Sumarokov wrote the choruses for the pageant and during
its performance Volkov got sick.
514
Tat’iana Troepol’skaia (1744-74) was one of the first
professional actresses in Russia whose contemporaries praised her as a great interpreter of tragic
plays. She is remembered especially for her role of Il’mena in Sumarokov’s Sinav and Truvor
(1750) and died—probably of heart failure—in her dressing room prior to the performance of

512
“Пленира.” Derzhavin, Stikhotvoreniia, 209.
513
During the Middle Ages, William I, Duke of Aquitaine, called his beloved “good neighbor” (bon voisin), while
Sordel de Goit called her “sweet enemy” (dolza enemia) or “solace” (restaur). During the Humanist period,
Petrarch referred to his beloved Laura with names that are sound similar but possess different meanings: air
(l’aura); laurel, the sacred plant for Apollo and poets (lauro).
514
Sumarokov, Izbrannye proizvedeniia, 532. M.N. Liubomudrov, K.F. Kulikova, “Rossiiskogo teatra pervyi
komediant,” in Rossiiskogo teatra pervye aktery (Leningrad: Lenizdat, 1991), 19-59.
174
Sumarokov’s Mstislav (1774).
515
In both elegies, the lyric personae name the two actors only by
their last names, thus emphasizing their public role. This occurs at ll.1, 14, and 20 in the elegy on
Volkov’s death and at ll.4 and 6 in the elegy on Troepol’skaia’s death. The speaker also
addresses Ivan Dmitrevskii, his declared interlocutor within the poems, by his last name.
Dmitrevskii was friends with Sumarokov and interpreted Mstislav in the eponymous play:
“What, Dmitrevskii, can we do now about this turn of fate?”
516
The three last names—that of the
deceased interpreter, the interlocutor, and the poet—create an ideal community in early Russian
theater and identify the poem’s author as the writer of theatrical pieces. As Irina Reyfman writes,
one of the goals of Sumarokov’s activity consists exactly in elevating the importance of literature
and theater among his contemporaries and receiving acknowledgement for doing so.
517
In fact, in
naming Troepol’skaia and Volkov, the lyric voices recall the two actors’ major achievements—
their collaborations with Sumarokov, which include Troepol’skaia’s performance in Mstislav and
Volkov’s directorial work for Triumphant Minerva. The lyric voices commemorate the deaths of
two of their closest collaborators and call them by their last names. They frame their
commemoration within what appears to be a personal dialogue with their deceased friend. Again,
this places the two elegies within a literary space that is both private and public. Doing so
corresponds to one of the recurring features in Sumarokov’s literary works (his “authorial
behavior… negotiated between the public and the private spheres”), and to one of the defining
characteristics of the broader literature on death: as Derrida and Laura Davis observe, “[the]

515
Sumarokov, Izbrannye proizvedeniia, 533. Pavel I. Sumarokov, “O rossiiskom teatre, ot nachala onogo do kontsa
tsarstvovaniia Ekateriny II,” in Otechestvennye zapiski, 1822: 32; 1823: 35. Andrei A. Sirotinin, “Tat’iana
Troepol’skaia. Biograficheskii ocherk,” in Russkii arkhiv, 1887, kn. 3, vyp. 11, 424-437.
516
“Что, Дмитревский, зачнем мы с сей теперь судьбою?!” Sumarokov, Izbrannye proizvedeniia, 158.
517
Irina Reyfman, Rank and Style. Russians in State Service, Life, and Literature (Boston: Academic Studies Press,
2012), 12, 22.
175
‘language about death’… operates ‘on the border’ between ‘public’ and ‘private.’”
518

Sumarokov’s intention to commemorate himself as a writer and a theater director emerges
clearly in both elegies, so that naming the other becomes a means for the lyric personae to talk
about themselves.
Although it varies across the poems, naming their deceased friends and family members
is an attempt by the lyric voices to preserve memories of the deceased and reaffirm their
relationships with them. While death demonstrates the identifying power of the deceased’s
names, the ways in which the lyric personae use the first names of their dear ones in texts by
Dolgorukov, Karamzin, Derzhavin, and Sumarokov on the death of his sister move the act of
mourning from the public to the private sphere. In contrast, in Sumarokov’s poems for Volkov
and Troepol’skaia, the public sphere overlaps with the private one. Highlighting their personal
sorrow for the deaths of Volkov and Troepol’skaia, the lyric voices honor their deceased friends
and celebrate their shared work in theatre. Notably, the lyric voices in these poems do not speak
on behalf of the community, like in the poems dedicated to the death of sovereigns and of other
prominent figures. Instead, they speak on their own behalf. The personae identify the dear ones
with the names that designated them when they were alive—in the way that the speakers want to
remember them.

The Death of a Dear One Leaves the “I” Speechless
The syntactic and lexical choices in these poems are marked by an overt subjectivity that
expresses the extraordinary nature of the event of death. Death is “like a challenge to logic… the

518
Ibid., 22. Jacques Derrida, Aporias: Dying-Awaiting (One Another at) the “Limits of Truth,” trans. Thomas
Dutoit (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993), 74. Laura Davis, “Samuel Johnson and the Grammar of
Death,” in Narrating Death: The Limit of Literature, D.K. Jernigan, W. Wadiak, and W.M. Wang, eds.
(New York: Routledge, 2018), 107-125.
176
profundity of death is a profundity of nonsense.”
519
The dates when the texts considered in this
chapter were composed—are all known, apart from that of Dolgorukov’s poem—suggest that
they were written in the aftermath of the dear ones’ deaths. In this way, they constitute an act of
mourning, along with crying, screaming, or tearing one’s hair out. In this sense, they follow John
Austin’s notion of “speech acts”: they “do not ‘describe’ or ‘report’ or constate anything at all,
are not ‘true or false’; [they are], or [are] a part of, the doing of an action.”
520
Sometimes the
voices in these poems are unable to articulate themselves and are rendered speechless and silent.
The lyric “I” in Dolgorukov’s poem consciously expresses this difficulty: “you… / … drew me
into the abyss of disgraces, for which there are no words.”
521
When a dear one dies “there are no
words,” but only hard-earned, tormented, incomplete ones. This is when the devices typical of
lyric poetry, which Northrop Frye calls “babble and doodle,” intervene and help the voices find
the words to express their feelings.
522
These “sound-associations… rhythmical initiative [and]
sketches of verbal design” arrange words, lines, and stanzas on the page.
523

Often, the lyric personae are so overwhelmed with sorrow that they cannot even start
talking. We observe this in Sumarokov’s “On the Death of the Author’s Sister E.P. Buturlina,”
an elegy divided in nine quatrains in iambic hexameter with masculine and feminine rhyming
couplets. In the first six lines, the lyric persona seems to be stumbling. Sentences are short and
broken up by punctuation as if the speaker were sobbing, and the lines are acatalectic, expressing
the unbearable anguish experienced by the subject. These lines also feature a sequence of
repetitions (“Moan,” “You’re no longer here”), vocatives (“soul,” “dear Eliza!”), and

519
“comme un défi au logos.” “la profondeur mortelle est un profondeur de non-sens.” Vladimir Jankélévitch, La
mort (Paris: Flammarion, 1966), 54, 63.
520
John L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words, eds. J.O. Urmson, Marina Sbisà, 2
nd
ed. (Oxford: Clarendon,
1975), 5.
521
“ты… / … бѣдъ, какимъ нѣтъ словъ, влекла меня въ пучину.” Dolgorukov, Bytie serdtsa moego, v. 1, 37.
522
Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015), 275.
523
Ibid., 275, 278.
177
exclamations (three in two lines).
524
In addition, the speaker repeats the second-person pronoun
in these opening couplets, although it refers to different entities each time—first to the speaker’s
soul, then to Eliza, the author’s commemorated sister, and finally to the speaker’s interlocutor.
Such ambiguity conveys the tense emotions felt by the lyric “I.” This “I” continues forefront his
feelings; in the following distich, a masculine rhyme links “took away” and “tears,” noting the
cause and the effect of his grief.
525
Then, in the fourth and sixth lines, there are two exclamations
with vocatives (“Oh, day of most bitter tears!” “Oh, sad news!”), underscoring the voice’s
sadness through metric stress.
526
In almost every line, terms that bear negative meanings further
enhance this grief: “exhausted,” “death,” “farewell,” “sorrow,” “unhappy,” “torment,” and “evil
fate.”
527
In this way, the lyric persona expresses that his linguistic and creative means are not
sufficient for conveying the annihilation that a dear one’s death brings about or the anguish that
prevents him from exerting any control over his poetic means.
In the poem for the death of Volkov, the lyric “I” expresses his difficulty in putting into
words his grief by addressing multiple interlocutors. This elegy includes five quatrains and a
final five-line stanza in iambic hexameter organized in enclosed rhymes and couplets with
masculine and feminine endings. It starts with a narrative statement, in which a lexical and
semantic element anticipates the lyric voice’s mood: “The clock stopped Volkov’s acting
role.”
528
The stopping of the clock evokes the end of Volkov’s activity as an actor and foretells
that something in the usual order of things has forever changed. In fact, the following line
presents a full realization of stress that makes the iamb’s ascending rhythm all the more insistent,

524
“Стени.” “Уж нет тебя.” “дух.” “Элиза дорогая.” Sumarokov, Izbrannye proizvedeniia, 156.
525
“унес.” “слез.” Ibidem.
526
“О день горчайших слез!” “О злая ведомость!” Ibidem.
527
“изнемогая.” “смертью.” “прости.” “жалость.” “несчастный.” “мученье.” “напасть.” Ibid., 156-157.
528
“Котурна Волкова пресеклися часы.” Ibid., 156.
178
whereas the subsequent couplet includes pyrrhics that slow down the rhythm and imperatives
and exclamations express how difficult this moment is for the speaker: the harmony of text is
definitely broken. The lyric persona, then, leans on several interlocutors: the dead friend himself,
to whom the “I” says goodbye (l.2); the Muse of tragedy, Melpomene, whom he invites to cry
and to tear her hair out (ll.3-4); the Russian people (l.7); and his friend, actor Dmitrevskii, whom
he calls to mourn together (“Cry, cry for our friend with me” (l.16)).
529
As a consequence of
Volkov’s death the “I” feels the world falling down and musters up his creative energies by
referring to Hippocrene, the spring sacred to the Muses (l.6); and to Racine, the great author of
tragedies from whom Sumarokov drew inspiration to the point that he was called the “Russian
Racine” (l.7).
530
Finally, the lyric “I” invites Dmitrevskii to say goodbye to the deceased Volkov
with the same words that the former told the latter in the last performance of Sumarokov’s
tragedy, Semira (1768), in which Dmitrevskii played Rostislav and Volkov played Oskol’d:
Say goodbye to Volkov for the last time,
As you said goodbye to him during the last performance,
And today tell him, as you told Oskol’d then,
Letting the bitter streams from troubled eyes go:
‘People are subject to such bitter sorrows!
Sleep, dear friend, farewell, my friend, forever!’
531

529
“Оплачь, оплачь со мной ты друга своего.” Ibid., 157.
530
On Racine in Russia and his role in the development of Sumarokov’s poetics, see Ewington, A Voltaire for
Russia. Grégoire A. Gukovskii, “Racine en Russie au XVIIIe siècle: la critique et les traducteurs,” in Revue
des études slaves 7, (1927)1: 75–93. “Racine en Russie au xviii e siècle: les imitateurs,” in Revue des
études slaves 7, (1927)3/4: 241-260. Kirill Ospovat, Terror and Pity: Aleksandr Sumarokov and the
Theater of Power in Elizabethan Russia (Brighton: Academic Studies Press, 2016).
531
“Простися с Волковым уже в последний раз, / В последнем как ты с ним игрании прощался, / И молви,
как тогда Оскольду извещался, / Пустив днесь горькие струи из смутных глаз: / ‘Коликим
горестям подвластны человеки! / Прости, любезный друг, прости, мой друг, навеки!’” Sumarokov,
Izbrannye proizvedeniia, 157.
179
Here, too, the lyric subject brings together the theatrical community in remembering and saying
goodbye to one of its members. While the theatrical piece provides the words to represent a
death, life continues in the lyric, allowing the voice to make his conversation with Volkov last
forever.
The elegy on the death of Tat’iana Troepol’skaia, consists of four quatrains in iambic
hexameter in masculine and feminine couplets. Here, the lyric “I” appears so overwhelmed by
the news of the actress’ death that he hesitates to utter her name. In the first four lines, the metric
stress always falls on terms that affirm her absence: “she’s not here now” at l.1 and “not” at l.4.
The voice announces the event of death with different expressions: “she’s dead” (l.1), “her young
limbs already grew cold” (l.2), and “Troepol’skaia is not here” (l.4).
532
In the second line the “I”
indirectly names the deceased through two appositions, “most beautiful woman and
Melpomene’s daughter,” while he utters her name only in the fourth line.
533
At this point, the
speaker contrasts her with the actress who replaces her in the Imperial Court Theatre, E.F.
Ivanova: “And Troepol’skaia is not here, this new Il’mena.”
534
The lyric speaker deploys a
strategy similar to the one observed in the elegy on the passing of Volkov: in order to talk about
the dead actress, he involves other people. Apart from Eliza Ivanova, he addresses his “loyal
friend” Dmitrevskii in the last two stanzas, inviting him to mourn Troepol’skaia’s death
together.
535
The subject apparently needs to talk with the theatrical community, so that they can
mourn Tat’iana Troepol’skaia and so that he can remember her properly.
In Radishchev’s epitaph for his first wife and in Dolgorukov’s poem on the death of his
daughter, the lyric speaker expresses his difficulty in talking about the dear one’s death calmly

532
“скончалася.” “охладели уж ея младые члены.” “Троепольской нет.” “нет ея теперь.” “и нет ея.” Ibid., 164.
533
“Прекрасна женщина и Мельпомены дщерь.” Ibidem.
534
“И Троепольской нет, сей новыя Ильмены.” Ibidem.
535
“верный друг.” Ibidem.
180
and rationally. In both compositions the lyric voices first reflect on theological and philosophic
topics, as if they wanted to understand what occurred to them and why, and then express their
individual grief, which they are unable to control. For instance, at the beginning of Radishchev’s
“Epitaph,” an unusual four-quatrain poem with iambs of various length and a changing rhyming
system, the voice affirms the hypothesis of life after death: “Oh! If it is not false / That we will
live after death… / I wait for death like a nuptial day.”
536
The rational tone is, however,
counterbalanced by the lyric “babble and doodle,” which, in this case, take the shape of an
irregular metric structure. The first stanza in particular is highly irregular, since each line has a
different length: three, four, five, and six syllables. The stanza also starts with two spondees in
the first two lines’ first foot, contributing to convey the unsettling meditation that is unfolding.
Things change in the following stanzas, where the voice erupts in his sorrow and expresses his
difficulty in accepting the cruel reality that his wife has passed away forever: “But if this is a
dream, which flatters the heart by reassuring, / And hateful fate took you away forever, / Then
there are no joys, but rivers of tears flow.”
537
In this case, the rhyme in the last couplet links
“forever” with “rivers of tears” and emphasizes the subject’s anguish. The elegy’s logical

536
“О! если то не ложно, / Что мы по смерти будем жить… / Я смерти жду, как брачна дня.” Radishchev,
Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, v.1, 123. On Radishchev, see Hamburg, Russia’s Path toward Enlightenment,
628-674. Andrew Kahn, “Self and Sensibility in Radishchev’s Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow:
Dialogism, Relativism, and the Moral Spectator,” in Self and Story in Russian History, Laura Engelstein
and Stephanie Sandler, eds. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000), 280-304. Georgii P. Makogonenko,
A.N. Radishchev i literatura ego vremeni (Leningrad: Nauka, 1977). David Marshall Lang, The First
Russian Radical: Alexander Radishchev, 1749-1802 (London: Allen & Unwin, 1959). Allan McConnell,
“Radishchev and Classical Antiquity,” in Canadian American Slavic Studies (1982)16: 469-490. A Russian
Philosophe, Alexander Radishchev, 1749-1802 (Westport: Hyperion Press, 1982). Vladimir Orlov,
Radishchev i russkaia literatura, 2
nd
ed. (Leningrad: Sovetskii pisatel’, 1952). V.I. Pokrovskii, Aleksandr
N. Radishchev ego zhizn’ i sochineniia. Sbornik istoriko-literaturnykh statei (Moscow: V. Spiridonov i A.
Mikhailov, 1907). Pavel S. Shkurinov, A.N. Radishchev: filosofiia cheloveka (Moskva: Izd-vo Mosk-go un-
ta, 1988). V.A. Zapadov, “Byl li Radishchev avtorom ‘Besedy o tom, chto est’ syn otechestva’?” in XVIII
vek (1993)18: 131-155.
537
“Но если ж то мечта, что сердцу льстит маня, / И ненавистный рок отъял тебя на веки, / Тогда отрады нет,
да льются слезны реки.” Radishchev, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, v.1, 123.
181
organization and stylistic structure reveal that the lyric persona is attempting to control his
emotions. Nevertheless, his efforts are destined to fail because grief prevails in the final stanzas.
Similarly, the lyric voice in Dolgorukov’s poem starts by professing his faith in the order
of the universe and in divine goodness, which culminates in a statement of worship for “God, for
Whom I always live and breathe, / God of peace and bounty, Whom I revere…”
538
The
composition’s rhetorical and stylistic structure speaks to its theological theme and discursive
tone. The composition is divided into two long stanzas of thirty and fifty-two lines, and the word
order and the syntax mimic an oral discourse: the lines follow one another without any
interruption and the long, complex sentences reproduce the speaker’s reflections. In the poem’s
second part, however, the lyric “I” is unable to continue a rational tone and erupts in an outburst
of heartbroken sorrow that he expresses through questions, exclamations, and recollections: “He
ordered the family around me to die, / And me to survive everything, and not to dry my tears.”
539

Many literary critics and poets, like John Keble, have claimed that “only the controlling power of
versification can ‘regulate and restrain’ strong emotions like mourning.”
540
In Dolgorukov’s
poem, the lyric voice realizes this through versification, a philosophic reflection that takes up
half of the composition, and a postponed reference to his dear one’s death the text’s final portion,
in which the voice expresses his true sentiments of despair in an ever stronger way.

538
“Богъ, которымъ я живу, дышу всегда, / Богъ мира и щедротъ, предъ Кѣмъ благоговѣю.” Dolgorukov,
Bytie serdtsa moego, v. 1, 36-37. On Dolgorukov, see Mikhail A. Dmitriev, Kniaz’ Ivan Mkhailovich
Dolgorukoi i ego sochineniia (Мoscow: Tip. L.I. Stepanovoi, 1863). M. Longinov, “Khronologiia
stikhotvorenii kniazia Ivana Mikhailovicha Dolgorukova,” in Russkii arkhiv, 2
nd
ed., Moscow, 1866, 968-
971. V.P. Stepanov, “Neizdannye teksty I.M. Dolgorukova,” in XVIII vek, ed. N.D. Kochetkova, (2002)22:
409-430.
539
“Велѣлъ вокругъ меня семейству умирать, / А мнѣ все пережить, и слезъ не осушать.” Dolgorukov, Bytie
serdtsa moego, v. 1, 36.
540
In this quote, Diana Fuss paraphrases Keble’s ideas. Diana Fuss, Dying Modern: A Meditation on Elegy
(Durham: Duke University Press, 2013), 11.
182
The lyric “I” in Derzhavin’s “The Swallow” also expresses his difficulty in talking about
mourning by deploying a particular linguistic device—silence. This distinguishes “The Swallow”
from the almost contemporary epitaph, “On the Death of Ekaterina Iakovlevna.” In the epitaph,
the lyric “I” explicitly refers to death multiple times, such as in the second stanza’s third line:
“Ah! Her dead body is lying,” and in the fifth stanza:
My eternal friend is no more,
My good wife is no more,
My priceless companion is no more,
Ah, they are all buried with her.
541

On the contrary, the lyric “I” in “The Swallow” never mentions death directly because it would
be too painful. The entire poem centers on the eternal, reoccurring cycles of nature, in which
death and rebirth follow one another. It is only in the poem’s conclusion that the speaker declares
the topic of his meditation, albeit indirectly: “in the abyss of the ether / Will I see you,
Plenira?”
542
Structuring his reflection this way allows the lyric persona to express how important
the deceased is for him by including his own experience within the universal order and by
conveying his desire not to say goodbye to her and to see her again in another life.
The lyric voices in the poems by Sumarokov, Radishchev, Dolgorukov, and Derzhavin
adopt differing expressive modalities—exclamations, repetitions, apostrophes, silence, and
philosophic reflections. Despite their variety, they all effectively communicate the speakers’
difficulty in talking about their mourning processes, demonstrating lyrics as “the genre of the
radical presence” to borrow from Miner, which allows the personae to talk about grief as they
experience it.
543
These lyrics also show that, facing the difficult theme of death, lyric speakers

541
“Ах! лежит ее тело мертвое.” “Уж нет моего друга верного, / Уж нет моей доброй жены, / Уж нет
товарища бесценного, / Ах, все они с ней погребены.” Derzhavin, Stikhotvoreniia, 207.
542
“в бездне эфира / Увижу ль тебя я, Пленира?” Ibid., 209.
543
Miner, Comparative Poetics, 87.
183
turn to introspection and self-examination, expressed through philosophic meditations and
intense imagery. Lyrics are thus not only an expression of one’s inner life, but a linguistic act
through which one creates one’s own inner life.

The Death of the Other is the “End of the World”
The death of a family member or a friend catalyzes an outburst of despair and the
emergence of subjectivity. Confronting such an event, the subject now comprehends firsthand
the teachings of end-of-the-seventeenth-century poets and men of the Church, like Simeon and
Evfimii, as well as artistic representations of death, like danses macabres and the triumph of
death: death is unforeseen and hits everybody anyway. This occurs because the death of a dear
one is “the first death [and] affects me more than my own.”
544
These experiences are a symbolic
coup de grâce for the personae: something in them dies and the loss involves their entire being.
The poems considered in this chapter demonstrate how eighteenth-century lyricists shaped a
poetic language that is able to discuss this type of death.
In these poems, lyric personae are acutely hit by their dear ones’ sudden deaths, which
appear to them “in a certain sense premature,” in the words of Vladimir Jankélévitch.
545
The
lyric speaker in Feofan’s epitaph confides to his friend Adam exactly this: “And we mourn you
bitterly, inconsolably, / Because death found you so soon, so hastily.”
546
The symmetric structure
of the end of these two lines links the characteristics of the persona’s cry (“bitterly,
inconsolably”) with those of Adam’s death, which has arrived “so soon, so hastily.” In effect,

544
Emmanuel Lévinas, God, Death, and Time, transl. Bettina Bergo (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000),
105.
545
“en un senso prématurée.” Jankélévitch, La mort, 255.
546
“А мы плачем о тебе горко, неутешно, — / что на тебе нашла смерть так рано, так спешно.” Panchenko,
Russkaia sillabicheskaia poeziia, 280.
184
they emphasize the irreparable nature of the latter’s passing and the tight bond between the living
and the dead. This is taken a step further in Sumarokov’s elegy on his sister’s death: “Oh, fierce
misfortune! Most unfortunate day! / Oh rumor! Horrible rumor! Terrible news! / Speak false.”
547

The event is so terrible for the lyric voice that he is in disbelief. In contrast, the speaker in
Dolgorukov’s poem is unable to conceive a higher order that justifies his dear ones’ deaths: “No!
I don’t want to believe it, I never will.”
548
In these poems, the lyric “I” grasps what Devaleena
Kundu calls the “gap between the Actual World of the survivors and the Possible World of the
dead,” which they find difficult to fill, unable to understand or accept what has happened.
549

Facing an existential crisis, these personae directly question the order of things. As most
philosophers after Epicurus have maintained, the subject cannot experience death in the first
person; therefore, the death of a dear one prompts the personae to consider their own death in the
future. The personae tend to include their close ones in their understanding of death as a future
occurrence, so they are dismayed when their dear ones die. The lyric speaker in Sumarokov’s
elegy on his sister’s death very clearly expresses this tendency: “You left everybody, you left
me, / Transforming my love for you into torment.”
550
Unbearable anguish leads the voice to
accuse his sister for being dead and for determining his emotional state. The lyric speaker is so
unfiltered when expressing his most private feelings that they appear unseemly. The persona in
Dolgorukov’s poem is also disheartened by his daughter’s death to the point that he even accuses

547
“О лютая напасть! презлополучный день! / О слух! противный слух! известие ужасно! / Пролгися.”
Sumarokov, Izbrannye proizvedeniia, 157.
548
“Нѣтъ! Вѣрить не хочу, не буду никогда.” Dolgorukov, Bytie serdtsa moego, v. 1, 36.
549
Devaleena Kundu, “The Paradox of Mortality: Death and Perpetual Denial,” in Death Representations in
Literature: Forms and Theories, ed. Adriana Teodorescu (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publisher,
2015), 12.
550
“Оставила ты всех, оставила меня, / Любовь мою к себе в мученье пременя.” Sumarokov, Izbrannye
proizvedeniia, 156.
185
God for the terrifying event: “What, Heaven, do I owe you apart from sorrow?”
551
Then, he asks
metaphysical questions about how God and death can co-exist:
Is it possible not to consider you cruel,
When you order me to bury my wife and child,
When you tear apart the sacred union of love,
You, pitiless, deprive the father of his children?
552

The voice finds it unconceivable for God to be cruel, but he cannot explain the death of his dear
ones in any other way. These deaths appear to him as an injustice against the sacredness of love
while a daughter who dies before her father seems to go against the laws of nature. The lyric
voice’s position exemplifies anthropologist Nancy Scheper-Hughes’ claim that “the one thing
humans seem unable to accept is the idea that the world may be deficient in meaning.”
553
The
universe is no longer an ordered system for the lyric speakers while their protests remain unheard
and their questions unanswered.
The death of a dear one compels the lyric “I” to realize in a tragic way the transitory
nature of earthly existence. In Sumarokov’s elegy, when Troepol’skaia dies, the voice is aware
that “all the roles in the world are ended” for her.
554
This transience does not only implicate the
one who has died, but also the subject who is still alive. The lyric speaker in Sumarokov’s elegy
on Volkov’s death points to this fact:
My whole spirit is in turmoil, melancholy torments me,
Pegasus’ spring freezes before me…
Goddess [Melpomene], I built a magnificent temple to you,
But now that temple will fall into oblivion.
555

551
“Чѣмь, Небо, должень я тебѣ кромѣ печали?” Dolgorukov, Bytie serdtsa moego, v. 1, 37.
552
“Возможно ли тебя жестокимъ намъ не чтить, / Когда велишь жену и чадо хоронить, / Когда любви союзъ
священный расторгаешь, / Безь жалости отца дѣтей его лишаешь?” Ibid., 36.
553
Quoted in Lisa Dickson, Maryna Romanets, eds., Beauty, Violence, Representation (London: Routledge, 2014),
19.
554
“роли все на свете окончались.” Sumarokov, Izbrannye proizvedeniia, 164.
555
“Мой весь мятется дух, тоска меня терзает, / Пегасов предо мной источник замерзает. / … / Богиня, а тебе
поставил пышный храм; / В небытие теперь сей храм перенесется.” Ibid., 158.
186
Here, the spirit is tormented, anguished, melancholic, and unable to create anything new.
Emmanuel Lévinas describes the spirit’s emotional state as such: “The death of the other who
dies affects me in my very identity as a responsible ‘me’ (moi)… Dying, as the dying of the
other (l’autre), affects my identity as ‘I’ (Moi).”
556
Building on Lévinas, Derrida notes that the
death of another, especially when we love him or her, is “the end of the world.”
557
This latter
sentiment is directly experienced by the “I” in Sumarokov’s poem for Volkov. In this poem,
Hippocrene’s freezing, a metonymy symbolizing poetry, stands for the emotional and creative
block that the lyric “I” faces after Volkov’s passing. The “I” sees only “nonexistence” before
him and denounces a sense of loss that encompasses his entire being—his soul, emotions, skills,
and successes (particularly those related to his work in theatre). The subject and object in this
poem are linked in their theatrical careers, as is the addressee of the composition. With Volkov’s
death, the nascent Russian theater so central to the persona’s pride risks collapse: “These are the
fruits of my mind and work, / These are the labors and the diligence of this whole age!”
558
The
subject is so worried about the future of the Russian theater that he comes to the conclusion that
“there will be no more theater.”
559
If we consider Sumarokov’s overall corpus, we find this to be
a recurring statement in his texts, including in his last published poem, “Parting with the Muses”
(1759), in the journal “Industrious Bee”: “Farewell, Muses, / I won’t write anymore.”
560

However, in the elegy for Volkov, this statement is hyperbolic, given that the “I” addresses the
poem to Dmitrevskii, who is an actor that is still alive. In the poem for Troepol’skaia Dmitrevskii

556
Lévinas, God, Death, and Time, 12-13.
557
Derrida, The Work of Mourning, 95.
558
“Се смысла моего и тщания плоды, / Се века целого прилежность и труды!” Sumarokov, Izbrannye
proizvedeniia, 158.
559
“теятра уж не будет.” Ibidem.
560
“Прощайте, музы, / Я более писать не буду никогда.” Ibid., 297.
187
is also exhorted: “Try not to let our theater fall forever.”
561
Still, these lines confirm that the
death of a person whom we love is often experienced as the end of the world as we know it.
In the works by Karamzin and Dolgorukov, the lyric voices strongly affirm their presence
in order to denounce the existential condition produced by loss. In Karamzin’s fragment,
Agathon’s passing collapses the voice’s personal world, especially the private sphere within
which he makes his decisions and carries out his education. Agathon was “a man, to whom I
could reveal all my sweet hopes, all my secret hesitations… In the most flourishing years of our
lives, we met and came to love each other.”
562
Subsequently, the “I” states: “I have friends of the
heart, who love me and who are dear to me above everything; but my spirit has been deprived of
its dearest brother and inmate, whom no-one, no-one can ever replace!”
563
The lyric persona
perceives Agathon’s death as the end of his world precisely because the deceased was part of the
world that they had created together.
In contrast, the lyric speaker in Dolgorukov’s poem cries about the ruin of the familial
sphere:
You deprived me of my father, – I came to know that I am an orphan;
You took away my sister, – I groaned in friendship;
That was not enough – …
… Suddenly I saw my child in the grave!
564

In mourning the people who constituted his familial world, the voice also mourns himself: “The
awareness of the necessity of death is only provoked by participation, by the personal love in

561
“Старайся, чтобы наш театр не пал навек.” Ibid., 164.
562
“человѣка, которому могъ я открывать всѣ милыя свои надежды, всѣ тайныя сомнѣнія.” “Въ самыхъ
цвѣтущихъ лѣтахъ жизни нашей мы увидѣли и полюбили другъ друга.”
http://az.lib.ru/k/karamzin_n_m/text_1793_tzvetok_oldorfo.shtml (Last access: 16 January 2021).
563
“Я имѣю друзей сердца, которые меня любятъ, и которые мнѣ всего на свѣтѣ милѣе; но духъ мой
лишился любезнѣйшаго своего брата и совоспитанника, котораго никто, никто замѣнить не
можетъ!” Ibidem.
564
“Лишила ты отца, —я сирымь бытъ узналъ; / Сестру ты отняла, —я въ дружбѣ возстеналъ; / Все мало– …
/ … вдругъ свое дитя в могилѣ я узрѣлъ!” Dolgorukov, Bytie serdtsa moego, v. 1, 37.
188
which the whole experience is bathed. We constituted a ‘we’ with the dying man.”
565
The “we”
that Landsberg mentions constitutes the voice’s understanding of the world, which falls apart
when the one closest to him dies. Consequently, the lyric persona comes to the fore to celebrate
the deceased and reaffirm the relationships and the values that he now perceives as threatened.
As we have already seen, the lyric speaker in Derzhavin’s “The Swallow” affirms and
celebrates the ties with the world he built with the deceased through silence. Because of the
linguistic device adopted, readers of the poem do not know which part of the speaker’s world
was destroyed by death. These aspects are “things about which silence… / Is just as seemly,”
since the “I” links the joy of resurrection with the opportunity to recreate his previous world.
566

In fact, recognizing the relationship he had with his wife leads the voice to perceive earth as
wonderful. He portrays the earth from a birds-eye view, as if his soul could already fly over the
earth like a swallow.
Analyzing the works by Feofan, Sumarokov, Karamzin, Dolgorukov, and Derzhavin has
allowed me to demonstrate how the physical death of a dear one always implies the spiritual
death of part of the lyric speakers’ world. This realization threatens them existentially and is
experienced as the end of the world as they know it. As humans, we tend to create a shared world
with our closest relations. In turn, when one of them dies, a part of our world disappears: the
artistic world, as in Sumarokov’s elegies; the friendly one, as in Karamzin’s fragment; the
familial one, as in Dolgorukov’s poem; or the marital one, as in Derzhavin’s composition. As
they mourn, the personae in these lyrics acknowledge the importance of these worlds, from
which they themselves emerge as subjects.

565
Landsberg, The Experience of Death, 14.
566
Dante Alighieri, Divine Comedy, Hell, IV: 104-105: https://digitaldante.columbia.edu/dante/divine-
comedy/inferno/inferno-4/ (Last access: 2
nd
July 2021).
189
From Absence to a New Presence
The deceased in these poems are not only reference points, but oftentimes addressees.
The lyric voices reject their close ones’ deaths and aim to continue cultivating their relationships
with them. In lyric language, this process takes place through a figure of speech called
prosopopoeia. Through prosopopoeia, the personae address the deceased as if they were still
alive and able to reply. In turn, those who have died become the speakers’ interlocutors.
The word, “prosōpopoiía,” comes from ancient Greek and links “prōsopon” (face, person)
with “poiēo” (I make, I create). In effect, “prosōpopoiía” means “creating a person.”
567

According to Dante, this “is a figure of speech, when one talks to inanimate things, that
rhetoricians call prosopopoeia, and poets use it often.”
568
Likewise, Paul de Man describes
prosopopoeia as the fiction of an apostrophe that is addressed to an absent, deceased, or voiceless
entity.
569
Jonathan Culler situates it among figures of speech that create the hyperbolic quality
that distinguishes lyrics from other poetic forms.
570
Scholars often understand prosopopoeia
similarly to the way they define figures of speech such as personifications and apostrophes.
However, as Pierre Fontanier and J. Douglar Kneale note, prosopopoeia differs from these other
devices because it “consists in staging, as it were, absent, dead, supernatural, or even inanimate
things. These are made to act, speak, answer as is our wont.”
571
Although Diana Fuss and other
scholars see prosopopoeia only as the “rhetorical animation of the dead,” in this study I
understand it as an extended apostrophe and a dialogic relationship that includes a missing, dead,
supernatural, or inanimate being as if she, he, or it could respond or act or that makes her, him, or

567
AA.VV., The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, 4
th
ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
2012), 1120.
568
“Ed è una figura questa, quando alle cose inanimate si parla, che si chiama dalli retorici prosopopea, ed usanla
molto spesso li poeti.” Dante Alighieri, Tutte le opere (Firenze: Barbera edizioni, 1965), III, IX: 2, 308.
569
Paul De Man, The Rhetoric of Romanticism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985).
570
Jonathan Culler, Theory of the Lyric (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2015), 37.
571
Quoted from AA.VV. The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry, 1121.
190
it directly respond or act.
572
In turn, prosopopoeia is a recurring device in funerary texts, in
which the voices speak to dead people or make dead people speak. Prosopopoeia comprehends
the dialogic aspect at the heart of lyric poetry and which enhances the “I.” It is also key to
literary lyrics that build a dialogue with people who are no longer living.
The dialogic situations in these texts differ intrinsically from the ones that we saw in the
poems in chapter one. The voice in Simeon’s poem speaks to a generic “you”; in Evfimii’s
verses, the speaker employs the apostrophe, “oh man.” Both poems address the “you” and the
“man” as if they were people living in the here and now. However, as their poems continue this
conversation is not sustained; rather, their communication is one-way, resembling a Church
sermon that is directed to believers in order to educate them. Feofan’s epitaph begins similarly
with the apostrophe: “You smiled, Adam.”
573
Nevertheless, the lyric voice here addresses an
interlocutor who is dead in real life and is building a dialogue with him. In fact, the speaker even
imagines what Adam’s reactions would be when talking to him: “Called to the heavenly
mountains, / You started to scold our nonsense as even more ridiculous.”
574
In the final couplet,
the lyric “I” responds to one of Adam’s imagined reactions: “Since you began to laugh at this,
too, / Then we will already stop crying for you.”
575
Here, the persona ascribes to the deceased the
ability to act (“to laugh”), according to the behavior of this person when he was still alive. In
bringing the deceased back to life, the “I” understands Adam as scorning earthly vanities—in
this case, the way that his friends are crying over his death. The voice thus defines the Adam’s
personality. As a dead person, he behaves with his friends as if he were still alive, stopping their
laments over his death. This demonstrates that in poems in which the speaker mourns the death

572
Fuss, Dying Elegy, 68.
573
“Смеялся ты, Адаме.” Panchenko, Russkaia sillabicheskaia poeziia, 279.
574
“Позван ж в небесныи горы, / еще смешняе начал ругать наши здоры.” Ibidem.
575
“Да ты стал и на сие смехотворно вракать, / и мы ж уже по тебе перестаем плакать.” Ibid., 280.
191
of a dear one, prosopopoeia is a tool by which the lyric persona can preserve the relationship that
once connected the living and the dead, as if a fictional dialogue could keep the deceased alive
and allow him to interact with the voice.
By means of prosopopoeia, lyric personae express a two-fold impulse that takes place
when dear ones die: on the one hand, the voices experience and convey a strong desire to keep
engaging with the dead people who were part of their world; on the other, they further
individualize and distinguish themselves from the deceased. We observe this dual impulse in
Sumarokov’s elegy on the death of his sister. Here, the speaking voice understands himself as an
individual who survives the death of another. In addressing his sister, the “I” is aware that his
relationship with her, which was an important component of his private world, is no longer part
of his real life. He knows that “my [fate] is to say ‘farewell’ and never see you again” and that
“[w]ithout solace I am anguished and sob; / But you will never know how I suffer.”
576
Following
Derrida, these lines help us to understand how the loneliness caused by the other’s death builds
the relationship with oneself that we call “me.”
577
Thanks to their relationships with deceased
others, the personae define their essence as distinct from that of their close ones and deepen their
relationships with themselves. Meanwhile, the deceased continue communicating with the lyric
voices: “You are placed in my heart sensitively, / And are depicted in my memory vividly: / I
hear your voice, and I see your shadow.”
578
In this elegy, Eliza is dead, but remains part of the
speaker’s essence because she exists in his heart. The lyric speaker thus needs to converse with
Eliza through the elegy, since her death ontologically distinguishes her from him.

576
“мой [рок] сказать ‘прости’ и ввек тебя не зреть.” “Без утешения я рвуся и рыдаю; / Но знать не будешь
ты вовек, как я страдаю.” Sumarokov, Izbrannye proizvedeniia, 156.
577
Derrida, Mémoires pour Paul de Man, 77.
578
“Чувствительно в мое ты сердце положенна, / И живо в памяти моей изображенна: / Я слышу голос твой,
и зрю твою я тень.” Sumarokov, Izbrannye proizvedeniia, 157.
192
The deaths of dear ones are occasions for the lyric personae to preserve their relationships
and overcome any monological impulses. The lyric word becomes a relational action because it
stems from the personae’s desire to cross the unsurmountable distance that exists between
themselves and their dear ones. The voices are able to do so by ascribing both faces and voices to
their interlocutors.
579
In the real world, any attempt at a conversation with a deceased person is
destined to fail; however, in lyric texts, the speakers create a space in which they can converse
with the dear ones who passed away. In this dialogue, the tensions between the “I” and the
“you”—between the relationship that connects them and the distance that separates them—are
maintained. In Sumarokov’s elegy on Volkov’s death, the lyric persona employs prosopopoeia
after announcing the actor’s death: “Farewell, my friend, forever, farewell, my amiable
friend!”
580
The lyric speaker thus creates a space where he can connect with the deceased while
acknowledging the tension between his presence and the other’s absence: the apostrophes and
the adjective “amiable” convey the emotional closeness between the voice and Volkov, but
“farewell,” which is repeated twice and is located between the two apostrophes, breaks down this
established contact and speaks to the impossibility of this relationship. Hence, prosopopoeia
becomes the means of engaging with the other; it presents a new communicative possibility for
the lyric voices who recognize that despite the impossibility of a dialogue with the deceased in
the real world, it remains actualizable within the poem.
Sometimes the lyric personae do not limit themselves to addressing the deceased as their
interlocutors but yield to them. This occurs in Karamzin’s A Little Flower on the Grave of My

579
Paul de Man explains that prosopopoeia attributes “voice or face by means of language.” AA.VV. Princeton
Encyclopedia of Poetry, 1121.
580
“Прости, мой друг, навек, прости, мой друг любезный!” Sumarokov, Izbrannye proizvedeniia, 157.
193
Agathon, which also features prosopopoeia: “Dearest Agathon!”
581
This instance of
prosopopoeia differs from others in that it appears only at the end of the text. The lyric “I” needs
one last moment of privacy with his dearest friend to say goodbye to him forever. In this case
prosopopoeia works retroactively, refashioning earlier statements into a dialogue between the
voice and his friend. Moreover, the speaker yields to the deceased Agathon, referring the latter’s
exhortation at a crucial moment in their friendship: “Hurry, he said, Hurry where the longing of
your spirit draws you, and return to us safely, with the same heart with which you departed from
us!”
582
By letting the dead person speak, the lyric voice marks the difference between himself
and his friend and realizes prosopopoeia in its highest form, creating a person by empowering
them with the ability to talk.
Derzhavin’s “The Swallow” also includes a peculiar case of prosopopoeia. Used only in
the conclusion, prosopopoeia here is extraordinarily powerful strength. From the title until the
penultimate line, we do not suspect that the lyric is meant to be a farewell to the voice’s recently
deceased wife. After describing the swallow’s flight, the “I” introduces the poem’s theme in the
forty-sixth line, in which the prosopopoeia: “My soul!” pivots to the topic of resurrection.
583

Then, in the last, fiftieth line, the speaker brings his dead wife back to life through prosopopoeia:
“Will I see you, Plenira?”
584
In this final address, the persona expresses love for his wife and
faith in the afterlife, when he will be able to see her again. Hence, through prosopopoeia, the “I”
communicates his beliefs and characterizes his wife as an autonomous, authoritative presence in
the poem, as well as the beloved interlocutor in his meditations.

581
“Дражайшій Агатонъ!” http://az.lib.ru/k/karamzin_n_m/text_1793_tzvetok_oldorfo.shtml (Last access: 16
January 2021).
582
“Спѣши, сказалъ онъ, спѣши, куда влечетъ тебя стремленіе твоего духа, и возвратись къ намъ
благополучно, съ тѣмъ же сердцемъ, съ которымъ отъ насъ ѣдешь!”
http://az.lib.ru/k/karamzin_n_m/text_1793_tzvetok_oldorfo.shtml (Last access: 16 January 2021).
583
“Душа моя!” Derzhavin, Stikhotvoreniia, 208.
584
“Увижу ль я тебя, Пленира?” Ibid., 209.
194
As Feofan, Sumarokov, Karamzin, and Derzhavin’s texts show, when dear ones die, the
lyric voices are responsible for maintaining their relationships with the deceased and for
respecting the latter’s individuality. As a result, the personae re-locate themselves within the
texts and acquire a new ethical role. They must not only preserve the memories of the deceased
but also save the latter from oblivion by respecting both their shared worlds and the distance and
detachment that now exists between them. Lyrics are the places in which the personae carry out
this ethical role and are therefore prosopopoeiae themselves, which save from death and give
new lives and voices to Adam, Eliza, Volkov, Agathon, and Plenira. As Culler writes, “when…
poems… effectively imagine and animate an otherness to which we can lend credence, however
briefly, fulfill a long-standing lyric task of making a planet into a world.”
585
Even if they are not
present in the real world, Adam, Eliza, Volkov, Agathon, and Plenira lie at the origins of the
lyric word. They allow the speaking voices to welcome them in their compositions by nullifying
and detaching themselves from the speakers, who in turn are able to function as the lyric “I.”

An Inconsolable “I” Celebrates an Irreplaceable “You”
In the lyrics on the death of dear ones, language realizes what Freud calls the “work of
mourning.”
586
Following Freud, the grieving process is completed when the subjects are
“persuaded… to sever [their] attachment to the object [by choosing of] being alive” and by
choosing another object for their love.
587
By moving beyond mourning, however, the subject
annihilates the object. Derrida describes this annihilation as an obsessive triumph and
emphasizes that, because the deceased have become part of the subject and no longer exist by

585
Culler, Theory of the Lyric, 241-242.
586
Freud, “Mourning and Melancholia,” in On the History of the Psycho-Analytic Movement, v. XIV, 245.
587
Ibidem.
195
themselves, annihilation may require their nullification as a distinct individual and to their
inclusion in the subject’s inner world.
588
In order for the grieving process to take place in a
respectful manner, the deceased need to maintain a unique, separate identity but also be held
within and above the subject’s memory—they constitute it, go through it, go beyond it, and
challenge any attempts at appropriation.
589
In lyric compositions, the personae undergo different
ways of mourning the dear ones who have passed away.
In Sumarokov’s elegy on the death of his sister, we see the lyric “I” grieve at the very
moment of writing. He laments his emotional state: “My thought is mortally grieved by you.”
590

The wound generated by his loss is still open and aching: “your life has flown with my hope. / …
you are forever separated from me.”
591
The lyric voice alternates between accusing his dead
sister (“you have wounded me to the quick,” l.13) and feeling guilty (“My thoughts did not
threaten me with your death,” l.5).
592
Moreover, he realizes how impossible it is to predict the
course of human life:
When I left the walls of Moscow behind and rushed to the Neva,
I cried over you, but I took comfort,
And tempered my grief with the thought that
I was fated to see you again someday…
As we said goodbye, we did not think then,
That we would never see each other again.
593

Here we note a recurring motif in death poems in which the speaker remembers the last time
when they met with the recently deceased. However, in this poem, this recollection does not
comfort the “I” but rather causes regret and repentance. The result of the voice’s battle against

588
Derrida, Mémoires pour Paul de Man, 71-72.
589
Ibid., 62-72.
590
“Смертельно мысль моя тобой огорчена.” Sumarokov, Izbrannye proizvedeniia, 156.
591
“жизнь твоя с моей надеждою промчалась. / … ты со мной навек разлучена.” Ibidem.
592
“ты грудь мою расшибла.” “Твоею мысль моя мне смертью не грозила.” Ibidem.
593
“Как я Московских стен, спеша к Неве, лишался, / Я плакал о тебе, однако утешался, / И жалость умерял
я мысленно судьбой, / … / Как мы прощалися, не думали тогда, / Что зреть не будем мы друг друга
никогда.” Ibidem.
196
sorrow is still uncertain and it is unclear how his relationship with his sister will evolve. The
persona foretells that Eliza will remain in his memory: “you already dwell in my thoughts / And
present yourself to my confused mind.”
594
However, the “I” has only just started the process of
internalization, which leads him to exhort himself in the conclusion: “Be strong, my soul!”
595

The persona anticipates days in the future when he will still torment himself about the tragedy of
his sister’s death. Therefore, he needs to muster up his energy to continue the work of mourning.
A Little Flower on the Grave of My Agathon presents a fully accomplished mourning
process and fully developed linguistic mastery, although the individualization of the lyric “I” is
limited by his idealization of the characters’ noble spirit and feelings. In this fragment, the “I”
deals with the grievous loss of his dearest friend by employing rhetorical and thematic
commonplaces as strategies of mourning in the lyric text. The speaker informs us of Agathon’s
death in the beginning of the poem: in the first sentence of the epigraph, which uses past tense to
indicate a fully lived life (“His life was gentle”), and in the text’s opening lines, which make an
explicit statement about his loss in the present tense (“Agathon is no more!”).
596
Before paying
tribute to Agathon, the “I” carries out another meta-poietic action and selects as his addressees
the most of noble souls—a widely used strategy in love lyrics, such as the works of, Dante and
Petrarch, two of the fathers of Western lyrics. For instance, the “I” in Dante’s Vita Nova
addresses “[l]adies who have intelligence of love,” and that in Petrarch’s Scattered Rhymes
addresses “anyone who knows love through its trials.”
597
In Karamzin’s fragment, the voice
directs his apostrophe “to anyone with a gentle heart, to anyone who loves humanity and who

594
“уже в моей ты мысли обитаешь / И представляешься смятенному уму.” Ibid., 156-157.
595
“Крепись, моя душа!” Ibid., 157.
596
“Нѣтъ Агатона!” http://az.lib.ru/k/karamzin_n_m/text_1793_tzvetok_oldorfo.shtml (Last access: 16 January
2021).
597
Dante Alighieri, Dante’s Vita Nuova, trans. Mark Musa (Bloomington, Indianapolis: Indiana University Press,
1973), 32. Petrarch, Petrarch: The Canzoniere, or Rerum Vulgarium Fragmenta, trans. Mark Musa, introd.
Mark Musa, Barbara Manfredi (Bloomington, Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1999), 40.
197
can treasure it.”
598
By so doing, the voice characterizes himself as gifted with a tender heart and
as someone who loves humanity and locates his work within the lyric tradition, love poetry, and
Russian Sentimentalism.
After addressing “anyone with a gentle heart,” friendship “sheds tears, and will shed them
forever.”
599
Friendship here metonymically stands for the lyric “I,” who then takes the floor and
declares in the first person: “I consider it my duty, my most sacred duty, to say… that in our cold
Northern country… was born and lived such person, whose soul would have been a decoration to
Greece itself.”
600
This statement does not exclusively necessitate commemorating the life of a
great individual on the occasion of his death, but represents the foundation of the lyric persona as
speaker, actor, and witness. As Jankélévitch

reminds us, when a dear one dies, “the
inconsolable… cries for… the irreplaceable.”
601
The “I” perceives the other’s death as
threatening to his being and strongly affirms the world of which the other was a key constituent.
Thus, in celebrating the other, the “I” pays simultaneously homage to another and realizes
himself as an individual and his own lyrics as his legacy. The voice states that he will stop
heeding his melancholy for the loss of his friend in order to venerate the “golden idols of human
delusions [only w]hen my heart turns to stone; when the fire of feeling extinguishes itself in my
breast.”
602
The lyric “I” rationalizes ad absurdum to claim that mourning is intrinsic to his being;
he presents his emotions as key elements to his being and as the driving forces of his writing.

598
“всякому нѣжному сердцу, всякому, кто любитъ человѣчество, и кто умѣетъ цѣнить его”
http://az.lib.ru/k/karamzin_n_m/text_1793_tzvetok_oldorfo.shtml (Last access: 16 January 2021).
599
“проливаетъ слезы, и вѣчно проливать, будетъ.” Ibidem.
600
“за долгѣ, за самый священный долгѣ почитаю я сказать… что въ нашемъ хладномъ сѣверномъ
отечествѣ… родился и жилѣ такой человѣкѣ, котораго душа была бы украшеніемъ самой Греціи.”
Ibidem.
601
“l’inconsolable… pleure… l’irremplaçable.” Jankélévitch, La mort, 27.
602
“златыми кумирами человѣческихъ заблужденій… Когда сердце мое превратится въ камень; когда огнь
чувства угаснетъ въ груди моей.” http://az.lib.ru/k/karamzin_n_m/text_1793_tzvetok_oldorfo.shtml (Last
access: 16 January 2021).
198
The voice then praises the dear one—a necessary topos in commemorative texts in which
the deceased is required to appear as a unique person. In celebrating the qualities of the dead
person, the lyric “I” proves his own worth as well. Agathon was a “treasure, a special gift from
Heaven, which not every mortal is fated to obtain.”
603
The “I” applauds Agathon’s distinguishing
characteristics: “Agathon, the wise youth, whose mind was adorned with the best human
knowledge and whose heart was formed by the gentle hand of the Muses and the Graces.”
604
He
also praises what Agathon represented for himself at a private level: “I found in him what since
my childhood had been the loveliest dream of my imagination–a man, to whom I could reveal all
my sweet hopes, all my secret hesitations; who could reason and feel with me, show me my
errors.”
605
The “I” ends his presentation of Agathon by acknowledging what an important role
his friend played in his own life: “the time of our acquaintance, of our friendship, will forever be
the most important period of my life.”
606
The persona fixes the key moments of his friendship
with Agathon on the page—their shared passions, favorite authors, and the places and the
moments during the day when they were together. These moments determined the voice’s own
education and strengthened his identity, allowing him to make meaning out of the life of his
friend, to locate it in his own personal history, and to share it with his readers:
we loved books, and did not think about society; we did not have much, and we
were satisfied with not much… The delights of the mind, the delights of the soul
seemed to us the most amiable… not rarely we would sit through half of the
winter nights reading Ossian, Shakespeare, Bonnet… and often the morning dawn

603
“сокровище, особливый даръ Неба, который не всякому смертному въ удѣлъ достается.” Ibidem.
604
“Агатонѣ мудраго юношу, котораго разумъ украшался лучшими знаніями человѣчества; котораго сердце
образовано было нѣжною рукою Музъ и Грацій.” Ibidem.
605
“я нашелъ въ немъ то, что съ самаго ребячества было пріятнѣйшею мечтою моего воображенія—
человѣка, которому могъ я открывать всѣ милыя свои надежды, всѣ тайныя сомнѣнія; которой могъ
разсуждать и чувствовать со мною, показывать мнѣ мои заблужденія.” Ibidem.
606
“время нашего знакомства, нашего дружества, будетъ всегда, важнѣйшимъ періодомъ жизни моей.”
Ibidem.
199
colored the Eastern sky, when I parted from Agathon, and returned home with a
calm soul, with new knowledge, or with new ideas.
607

Apart from commemorating the untimely death of his friend and their shared experiences,
the persona affirms what Agathon taught him (we do not know what the “I” taught Agathon, as
this is not his goal):
my first metaphysical concepts developed… and I acquired a certain aesthetic
feeling, which is necessary for the lovers of Literature… He was for me the
illuminator of Art and Poetry… he was my first judge, and, although he noticed
the shortcomings, he, nevertheless, with his indulgence and tenderness,
encouraged me in these exercises.
608

At the same time that the voice expresses differences between himself and his friend, he does not
unsettle the harmony that existed between them, featured below in the description of their
complementary natures:
Agathon and I loved one same thing, but we loved it in different ways. Where he
approved with a calm smile, there I was ecstatic with delight; he contrasted my
fiery ardor with his cold judgment; I was a dreamer, he was a practical
philosopher… often tears flowed from my eyes; but he never complained.
609

Agathon realized the highest expression of his noble spirit when he suggested that the “I”
go away in order to realize himself. By acting in this way, Agathon showcased the authenticity of
their friendship and took upon himself the responsibility and suffering that came with this
recommendation. In the text, the lyric “I” is moved when recalling the words that his friend used

607
“мы любили книги, и не думали о свѣтѣ; имѣли не много, не многимъ были довольны… Прелести разума,
прелести душевныя казались намъ всего любезнѣе… не рѣдко за Оссіаномъ, Шекспиромъ,
Боннетомъ, просиживали половину зимнихъ ночей… и часто заря утренняя красила восточное небо,
когда я разставался съ Агатономъ, и возвращался домой съ покойною душею, съ новыми знаніями,
или съ новыми идеями.” Ibidem.
608
“развивались первыя мои метафизическія понятія… пріобрѣлъ я и нѣкоторое эстетическое чувство,
нужное для любителей Литтературы… былъ для меня свѣтильникомъ въ Искусствѣ и Поэзіи… онъ
былъ первымъ моимъ судьею, и хотя замѣчалъ недостатки, однако же, по снисхожденію и нѣжности
своей, ободрялъ меня въ сихъ упражненіяхъ.” Ibidem.
609
“Агатонъ и я любили одно, но любили различнымъ образомъ. Гдѣ онъ одобрялъ съ покойною улыбкою,
тамъ я восхищался; огненной пылкости моей противополагалъ онъ холодную свою
разсудительность; я былъ мечтатель, онъ дѣятельной философѣ… часто слезы лились изъ глазъ
моихъ; но онъ никогда не жаловался.” Ibidem.
200
in this situation, and directly quotes him to preserve the otherness of his close one’s voice and
celebrate his show of true affection. The letters that the voice mentions also memorialize the
words of his friend: “he wrote to me—and these letters… will always be kept close to my
heart.”
610
Referencing letters is part of the “I’s” mourning process but does so in a way that
respects his deceased friend’s individuality. The objects that belonged to Agathon stress his
absence while also preserving his presence in something tangible. Thus, the “I” saves traces of
Agathon’s spirit and body and extends his presence through time and space.
As the fragment closes, the voice outlines the main concepts that he expressed throughout
the text, beginning with the declaration of his mourning, which has no end: “My grief will be
enduring—endless!”
611
The lyric “I” turns his friend into a legendary figure and remains
convinced that time will neither change his friendship with Agathon nor transform the mental
image he has of his friend: “the hand of time won’t wipe out your image from my thoughts.”
612

Finally, the “I” presents himself by promising to carry out the same activities that he and
Agathon once did together: “I will go to the field; I will go for a walk where I walked with you; I
will sit at the place where I sat with you, and under the noise of the spring waterfalls I will shed
sweet tears.”
613
The “I” neither negates his mourning, nor annihilates the other’s essence, but
decides to keep living; Agathon can continue to exert his influence over the “I’s” life through the
latter’s memory. In fact, the speaker ends the poem by confirming that he will keep in mind
Agathon’s lessons throughout his life: “your memory has been impressed upon the essence of my
soul and has merged with its most amiable ideas and feelings.”
614

610
“онъ писалъ ко мнѣ—и сіи письма… будутъ всегда храниться близъ моего сердца.” Ibidem.
611
“Горесть моя будетъ продолжительна—безконечна!” Ibidem.
612
“рука времени не загладитъ образа твоего въ моихъ мысляхъ.” Ibidem.
613
“я пойду въ поле; пойду гулять туда, гдѣ гулялъ съ тобою; сяду на томъ мѣстѣ, гдѣ сидѣлъ съ тобою, и
подъ шумомъ весеннихъ водопадовъ пролью сладкія слезы.” Ibidem.
614
“память твоя впечатлѣлась въ существо души моей, и слилася съ ея любезнѣйшими идеями и чувствами.”
Ibidem.
201
Analyzing this fragment confirms that Karamzin’s lyric language is apt for talking about
the different phases of mourning. Nevertheless, such variety of communicative forms does not
account for the myriad psychological aspects of the lyric persona. We come to know only
Agathon’s positive characteristics; the thoughts and feelings on the transitory nature of human
life that the lyric speaker expresses abstain from sharing the voice’s more controversial or
inappropriate thoughts, which are key features in Sentimentalist literature.
615
In turn, we can say
that Karamzin’s lyric fragment represents a step towards the full self-expression of the lyric “I,”
but that it stops short of fleshing out a fully individualized lyric persona in its idealization of the
relationship between the “I” and his deceased friend.
The lyric “I” in Derzhavin’s “The Swallow” shows a multi-layered, dynamic inner
experience, which he expresses through a series of parallelisms and through profound religious
reflections. Orthodox faith in resurrection, supported by a philosophic understanding of the
world, helps the lyric persona to overcome the grief for his beloved’s death, which permeates the
epitaph, “On the Death of Ekaterina Iakovlevna”: “But you, my dear wife, / Will never see me
again.”
616
Such a philosophic conception, which Derzhavin fully explains in his Philosophic
Odes and which I analyze in the following chapter, is expressed through naturalistic imagery in
“The Swallow.” Here, the “I” conveys death and resurrection as successive events through
parallelism between the experiences of the soul and those of the swallow throughout the natural
turn of the seasons. Throughout the lyric, the flying swallow serves as a protagonist who sees the
“whole of the universe” and enjoys “all of nature’s delights” during the summer, lies “breathless
in the darkness” during the winter, and wakes up again and sings “the new light of life” when

615
On this, see Schönle, “The Scare of the Self,” 723–746.
616
“Но ты, моя супруга милая, / Не увидишься век уж со мной.” Derzhavin, Stikhotvoreniia, 207.
202
spring returns.
617
The lyric “I” comes to the fore only in the conclusion, when he makes the
parallelism explicit: “My soul! You are a guest in this world: / Aren’t you this bird?”
618
This
revelation leads us to reconsider the previous stanzas in a new light and attribute new meaning to
the voice’s self-expression and to his affection for the swallow. He conveys this affection in the
first four lines of the poem through terms of endearment, including “little swallow” and “little
bird,” and through positive attributes such as “of a cute blue” and “beautiful white chest.”
619

Derzhavin conceptualizes the soul as a sort of winged being in other compositions as well,
including “The Immortality of the Soul,” which I will examine in chapter four. Parallelism
between the human soul and a winged being is exemplified in the Greek term, “psykhē” (soul,
breath, and butterfly), and in the Russian term, “dukh” (breath and soul, which also identifies an
aerial being). In fact, the voice in “The Swallow” pinpoints several elements shared between this
bird and the soul: whereas the swallow is the “summer guest,” the soul is a “guest in this world”;
whereas the swallow is a “little singer,” the poet’s lyre, a product of his soul, sings
immortality.
620
This succession of parallelisms even includes the poet’s wife: as the swallow
wakes up and sees the sun when spring returns, the persona will see Plenira when he is
resurrected. In effect, Plenira is brought close to the sun and projects an atmosphere of calm and
serenity onto the poem, the “I”’s philosophic worldview, and his process of mourning. At the
poem’s end, the lyric “I” nicknames his beloved Plenira in the very last word of the last line.
Naming her, the “I” disrupts the lyric’s regular structure, transforming the quatrain into a sestet
and adding a rhyming couplet to the preceding alternating rhymes. As such, Plenira comes to

617
“всю… вселенну.” “Всю прелесть… природы.” “Во мраке… бездыханна.” “новый луч жизни.” Derzhavin,
Stikhotvoreniia, 208.
618
“Душа моя! гостья ты мира: / Не ты ли перната сия?” Ibidem.
619
“ласточка.” “птичка.” “милосизая.” “грудь краснобела.” Ibid., 207.
620
“Летняя гостья.” “гостья… мира.” “певичка.” “Воспой же бессмертие.” Ibid., 207-208.
203
rhyme with “world,” “lyre,” and “aether,” thus defining the importance of the voice’s wife:
though at a distance because she has died, she keeps living within the lyric “I,” for whom she
remains a source of joy and inspiration.
621

These compositions show us how the lyric personae define themselves differently
depending on their relationships with the dear ones who have died and on their process of
mourning. Following the death of relatives or very close friends, the lyric voices denounce
feelings of emptiness and senselessness that come to threaten their own being. At the same time,
overcoming such trauma appears next to impossible given that the personae focus on their
detachment from these dear ones. Although images of the deceased are already fixed in these
speakers’ minds, they are only in the beginning stages of their grieving processes and their
outcomes are still uncertain. The lyric personae react to this shocking experience by looking for
support to continue their meaningful relationships and their shared experiences with the
deceased, who now have their own places in the speakers’ memories. Finally, when grieving is
complete, the lyric voices no longer perceive themselves in danger and respect the deceased’s
distinct nature. At this point, the speakers can consider all the aspects of their relationships with
the deceased—both their similarities and their differences, the moments when they were together
and those when they were separated—and experience the wide range of emotions that the
experience of a dear one’s death involves—from happiness to melancholy, from sadness to hope
for the future.

621
“мира.” “лира.” “эфира.” Ibid., 208-209.
204
The “I” Mourns between Protest and Dream
The lyric voices in Radishchev and Dolgorukov’s poems distinguish themselves from
those in the other poems because they not only express their sorrow for losing their wife and
daughter, but also argue about the deep reasons that make these losses acceptable. In these
poems we can read the same type of question running through Derzhavin’s “The Swallow,”
although the voices here answer the question by turning to Orthodox faith. Instead, in
Radishchev and Dolgorukov’s works, the voices wonder why the deaths they experience are
necessary, whether they can be explained rationally, and how they can be reconciled with
religious faith.
Through a series of conditional sentences, the lyric voice in the opening of Radishchev’s
epitaph casts doubt on the possibility for survival after death—a belief on which Christian faith
is based:
Oh! If it is not false,
That we will live after death;
If we will live, we must feel;
If we will feel, we cannot help but love.
622

Stylistic devices—like the repetition of logical structure, the anaphora “if,” the reiteration of and
the metric stress on the periphrastic future and on the double negation in the fourth line’s second
hemistich—suggest the voice’s certainty in his beliefs. The link that the lyric “I” builds between
eternal survival and the ability to “feel” and to “love” is as consequential as a philosophic
syllogism and is strengthened through the repetition of key terms and the alternating rhymes that
connect crucial aspects of the speaker’s rationalization: “to live” and “to love” (ll.2, 4). At first
glance, these initial lines reassure us and leave us hopeful, but the conditional in the first line

622
“О! если то не ложно, / Что мы по смерти будем жить; / Коль будем жить, то чувствовать нам должно; /
Коль будем чувствовать, нельзя и не любить.” Radishchev, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, v. 1, 123.
205
questions anything that follows: “If it is not false.” It is the subject who hopes that this is not
false; this belief helps him accept the terrible passing of his wife and leads him to desire death so
that he can meet her in the afterlife: “I wait for death like a nuptial day; / I will die and forget my
sorrows, / In your arms I will be happy again.”
623
The way in which the speaker expresses his
eagerness for life after death in these verses underscores the distinctly tangible nature of his
wife’s absence.
However, the subject considers the opposite hypothesis as well, which overturns the first
part of his rationale. As the epitaph continues, the lyric “I” assumes a more doubtful tone: “But if
this is a dream that flatters the heart by reassuring it, / And the hateful fate drove you away
forever, / Then there is no joy, but tearful rivers flow.”
624
Following the second hypothesis,
religion is only dream and flattery; if this is true, those who die are carried away “forever” and
nobody will be able to comfort the trauma of loss: “Then there is no joy, but tearful rivers flow.”
The lyric persona makes an effort to look for a solution to his despair and locates a personal hope
that is separate from any religious or philosophic beliefs: “If you can’t pass through the fierce
gates of death, / You can at least appear in a dream, comfort your husband this way…”
625
In this
final distich, the lyric “I” reiterates the opening lines’ hypothetical structure and directly
converses with his dead wife, whom he asks to appear “at least” in his dreams in order to
comfort him in his grief. The image of the dream also reoccurs throughout the poem, although
the “I” does not attribute it to religious faith and turns its meaning upside-down. “Dream” no
longer concerns the illusion created by untrustworthy spiritual systems but represents the only

623
“Я смерти жду, как брачна дня; / Умру и горести забуду, / В объятиях твоих я паки счастлив буду.”
Ibidem.
624
“Но если ж то мечта, что сердцу льстит маня, / И ненавистный рок отъял тебя на веки, / Тогда отрады нет,
да льются слезны реки.” Ibidem.
625
“Не можешь коль прейти свирепых смерти врат, / Явись хотя в мечте, утеши тем супруга.” Ibidem.
206
hope that the “I” has to continue to converse with his partner in his earthly life; as Freud
observes, every dream is the fulfillment of a desire.
626
As a dream is the only alternative to
eternal loss, the lyric “I” expresses its inner necessity through the dots that end the poem, as if he
wanted to extend the imagined dialogue with his wife forever. Thus, in the conclusion of the
poem, the lyric voice leans toward the latter, materialistic hypothesis, viewing the dream as the
only possible (and private) solution to the loss he is experiencing.
Dolgorukov’s poem, dedicated to the death of his daughter, follows a similar trajectory.
Although it was composed at the beginning of the nineteenth century, this work still expresses an
eighteenth-century pre-Romantic Zeitgeist—the period when the author completed his education
and started writing. In the poem’s first line the voice follows the Orthodox tradition, depicting
God as organizing the universe and determining human fate: “What God has done shall not be
changed.”
627
The “I” expresses himself with a sentential tone that is typical of the Holy Writs
and states that God “is as hard as adamant in his power.”
628
Human beings cannot change this
order “on a whim” because this would deny God’s great, omnipotent nature. In the order of the
universe, however, “[t]he unfathomable Creator has put in the law / The nothingness of matter
and the end of beings.”
629
In this ordered system, flux and precariousness, annihilation and death
also have a place in God’s universe. In turn, “we, when carrying our own kind to the grave, /
Blame in vain the auxiliary power of the heavens.”
630
In this view, death is also part of God’s
unfathomable order.

626
Sigmund Freud, The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, eds. James
Strachey, Anna Freud, v. 7 (London: Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho-Analysis, 1954), 50.
627
“Того, что дѣлалъ Богъ, нельзя перемѣнить.” Dolgorukov, Bytie serdtsa moego, v. 1, 35.
628
“твердъ какъ адамантъ въ могуществѣ своемъ.” Ibidem.
629
“по прихоти своей.” “Въ законѣ положилъ непостижимъ Творецъ, / Ничтожество вещамъ и существамъ
конецъ.” Ibidem.
630
“мы, относя подобныхь намь вь могилу, / Вотще винимъ небесъ содѣйствующу силу.” Ibidem.
207
A few lines later, however, the speaker’s rational, calm contemplation turns out to be a
mere hypothesis. The lyric “I” does what he had initially warned against, protesting against God
and His established order:
No, I don’t want to believe it, I never will,
That God, for Whom I live and always breathe,
The God of peace and bounty, Whom I worship
And serve with awe, am unable to understand,
Ordered to the family around me to die,
And to me to survive and not to dry my tears.
631

The lyric persona accuses both Nature, which is personified throughout the poem, and the
“auxiliary power of the heavens”: “you deprive us of fathers, spouses, and even children, / … /
You have pierced my chest with all the arrows of bitter grief.”
632
The private “I” expresses his
most intimate feelings and thoughts, emphasized by the first-person discourse, fragmented
sentences, dense punctuation, and growing number of questions and exclamations. Through
interaction with God and Nature, the voice tries to understand the meaning behind his daughter’s
death: “To You, my God! To You, I, tearful day and night, / Will tell the melancholy because I
don’t see my daughter,— / I pay my debt to Nature, breaking the bodily bonds.”
633
Conversing
with the supratemporal beings who control earthly life, the persona tries to overcome his trauma
and accept the unavoidable laws of human life. Nevertheless, this is an impossible conversation.
In it, the voice looks for comfort that has yet to emerge, as the future-tense verb (“I will tell”)
and the speaker’s request to God tell us: “Persuade my weak mind, as much as you think it
capable, / That You are able to heal the sores of the heart.”
634
The tone of the request implies that

631
“Нѣтъ, вѣрить не хочу, не буду никогда, / Чтобъ Богъ, которымъ я живу, дышу всегда, / Богъ мира и
щедротъ, пред Кѣмъ благоговѣю, / Со трепетомъ служу, понять не доумѣю, / Велѣлъ вокругъ меня
семейству умирать, / А мнѣ все пережить, и слезъ не осушать?” Ibidem.
632
“Лишаешь отцовъ, супругъ, и даже чадъ, / … / Всѣ стрѣлы скорбы злой, всѣ въ грудь мою вонзила.”
Ibidem.
633
“Тебѣ, мой Богъ! Тебѣ, слезаса день и ночь, / Повѣдаю тоску, что я не вижу дочь,— / Природѣ долгъ
плачу, разрывомъ узъ тѣлесныхъ.” Ibidem.
634
“Увѣрь мой слабый умъ, сколь вѣришь он удобенъ, / Что язвы сердца Ты уврачевать способенъ.” Ibidem.
208
the speaker is not fully convinced God will be able to heal his sorrows. The poem ends with the
lyric “I’s” prayer for his daughter (“Let Maria enter into Paradise with Evgeniia), and for himself
(“And just as You saved them, whom you united with yourself, / Save me and all those who
remained with me!!”).
635
The “I” seems to achieve reconciliation with God and Nature, but his
previous protests against them both, his mourning, and his mistrustful invocation to God
undermine the power of these prayers. Here, the lyric persona seems to align with Blaise Pascal,
for whom faith is a bet: “God is, or he is not. But to which side shall we incline? Reason cannot
decide it at all. There is an infinite chaos that separates us. A game is being played, at the
extremity of this infinite distance, in which heads or tails must come up. Which will you
take?”
636
While the lyric persona in Dolgorukov’s poem never doubts his faith, the fact that faith
is a bet points to his uncertainties and his disillusion at the epistemological and ontological
levels. When death enters the “I’s” life, abstract beliefs cannot justify the nullification of the
beloved’s life.
These two poems show us a further degree in the lyric persona’s individualization. The
personae in Dolgorukov and Radishchev’s lyrics, are individualized at the philosophic level.
Their uncertain faith in eternal life is explicit and they develop personal strategies to reconnect
with the dear ones who passed away. While the “I” in Dolgorukov’s poem keeps practicing his
faith in a tormented way, the “I” in Radishchev’s epitaph strongly calls faith into question,
turning instead to the powers of individual imagination.

635
“Съ Евгеніей въ раю Марію водвори.” “И такъ, какъ спасъ Ты ихъ, соединя съ собой, / Спаси меня и
всѣхъ остабшихся со мной!!” Ibid., 138.
636
Blaise Pascal, Thoughts of Pascal (No place, unknown, or undetermined, 1899), 252.
209
Conclusions
Every time a poet commemorates a dear one’s death, they recall the myth of Orpheus.
Orpheus embodies the ability to embrace both life and death while simultaneously expressing
art’s power and impotence before death.
637
In these poems, the personae acknowledge that death
concerns them directly and that poetry allows them to transcend it. At the same time, the
personae cannot bring their own Eurydice back to life; rather, they share a human nature with
their dear one—an awareness that causes them great pain. As we saw in Sumarokov’s elegy on
his sister’s death and in Karamzin’s lyric fragment, experiencing a dear one’s death is so
shocking that it is difficult to accept and articulate. Nevertheless, the lyric voices find ways to
talk about their trauma, expressing their skepticism, cries, screaming, and laments by means of
stylistic devices that are typical of lyric language, including apostrophe, prosopopoeia, caesuras,
exclamations, and anaphors. Sometimes, such as in Derzhavin’s lyric, the personae express their
inability to talk about death through silence. Elsewhere, such as in Radishchev and Dolgorukov’s
poems, the voices express their feelings by postponing the revelation of the dear one’s death and
trying to find a rational explanation of this irrational and absurd event. In all these cases, the
difficulty of finding suitable words to talk about the sorrows of death leads the personae to self-
examination. In doing so, they realize their mourning within the lyrics and find their salvation
thanks to the power of lyric language.
The “I” brings to life the dear one who passed away by welcoming them within the lyric
space and by creating a song of love and death that expresses feelings of sorrow and emptiness
within the harmony of the lyric form. Their dear ones are irreplaceable, and their disappearance
cannot be compensated for in real life. The lyric voices overcome this physical limitation by

637
Segal, Orpheus, 36.
210
increasing the deceased’s presence in the text. The names of these individuals appear in the
poems’ titles and are repeatedly invoked within the lyrics. The voices address them through
prosopopoeia as if the latter were still alive and could act and speak, as we found in Feofan and
Radishchev’s poems. The lyric personae entrust these texts with the task of commemorating
those who died. In so doing, they delineate the identity of both the deceased and of themselves,
as we saw in Sumarokov’s elegies and in Karamzin’s fragment.
The poems analyzed in this chapter illuminate the lyric speakers in different phases of
their mourning processes. Grieving grows more sorrowful the stronger the relationship with the
deceased. As Jankélévitch writes, “[d]eath is a void that suddenly opens in the full continuation
of being” and determines in the living “I” what Derrida calls “the end of the world.”
638
The
voices in Sumarokov’s elegies understand the death of two of their friends and colleagues as
threatening to their own theatrical endeavors, whereas the one in Dolgorukov’s poem sees his
family gradually disappear. Nevertheless, one needs to keep living; this sometimes becomes a
priority for the “I,” as the elegies for Troepol’skaia and Volkov demonstrate. In contrast, in
Karamzin’s lyric fragment the deceased is fully acknowledged in his individual identity and in
the crucial role that he played in the lyric persona’s life. Similarly, the fully-fledged figure of
Plenira, with her sun-like brightness that continues to beam light after her death, assures that the
lyric voice who has known and loved her will continue to derive joy from her memory.
The lyrics in this chapter confirm that the ways in which the speakers experience and
understand death are closely tied to the ways in which they express and understand themselves.
The deaths of dear ones are the deaths of unique individuals, who were irreplaceable in the lives
of the speakers and who created a shared world with them. Talking about this kind of death thus

638
“la mort est un vide qui se creuse brusquement en pleine continuation d’être.” Jankélévitch, La mort, 7.
211
determines a lyric “I” that I define as private and individualized at the existential, poetic, and
emotional levels. Moreover, in Radishchev and Dolgorukov’s poems, we see that the lyric “I” is
also individualized at the philosophic level. This gives the private lyric personae the opportunity
to confer upon their personal sorrow the right to exist within the order of the universe.
Derzhavin’s poems, which I analyze in the following chapter, not only condense all the
experiences of death that we have seen thus far, but further delineate the lyric persona at the
philosophic and biographic levels by means of an original, novel synthesis of personal
experience, classical philosophies, Orthodox spirituality, and Enlightenment thought.

212
Chapter Four:
Death, Singing, and the Soul in Gavrila Derzhavin’s Lyrics

By analyzing East Slavic poetry on death from the late seventeenth to the eighteenth centuries, I
have shown the evolution of the lyric voice from what I define as the universal “I” to the public
and the private “I.” In this last chapter, I consider the lyric persona before one’s own death
through Gavrila Derzhavin’s poetry. Here, the persona delineates themself as a personal “I.”
Derzhavin (1743-1816) was born into a noble family of Tatar descent which descended
from the mirza Bagrim (15
th
cent.), but which became impoverished in the eighteenth century.
He was fluent in German and translated texts by Immanuel Kant, Francis Bacon, Blaise Pascal,
and Voltaire.
639
He admired Frederick the Great as sovereign, thinker, and poet, and supported
the enlightened despotism of Catherine the Great.
640
At the same time, he never renounced the
right of men of culture to make their own choices, even when this detached him from court life
and led him to resign from his position as Minister of Justice.
Derzhavin’s poetry appears several times in this study. In chapters two and three, I
analyzed some of his lyrics on the death of prominent figures and close relations. The
significance of Derzhavin’s lyrics in this study underscores the centrality of the theme of death in
his oeuvre. Death is so relevant in his work that it appears as “one of the components of the order
of the universe. It is one of the pieces of the life of the world,” as Michel de Montaigne (1533-

639
Gavrila R. Derzhavin, Sochineniia, eds. G.N. Ionin, Galina M. Tsurikova (St. Petersburg: Gumanitarnoe agentsvo
“Akademicheskii proekt,” 2002), 14.
640
On Derzhavin’s life and work, see Gavrila R. Derzhavin, Sochineniia Derzhavina, ed. Iakov K. Grot (St.
Petersburg: Izd. Imp. akademii nauk; 1980). For a detailed account of Derzhavin’s life and thought in
English language, see Vladislav Khodasevich, Derzhavin: A Biography, transl. Angela Brintlinger
(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2007). Gary M. Hamburg, Russia’s Path Toward Enlightenment:
Faith, Politics, and Reason, 1500-1801 (Yale: Yale University Press; 2016), 473-523.
213
92) states in an essay.
641
In this chapter, I demonstrate how Derzhavin’s lyric “I” gains an
increasingly specific definition of self as he considers ever more closely his own death. In turn,
we can define the lyric voice in his poetry as a personal “I.” While private lyric voices define
themselves by their relationships with dear ones, personal “Is” delineate their identities through
self-consciousness. Here, “personal” relates to the person (the “I”) as a singular individual. As
such, it is opposed to the idea of human nature, which refers to universal qualities shared by
everybody. Although the two concepts interweave with one another—every person inevitably
manifests a universal human essence—the personal “I” is an individual characterized by their
own consciousness, spiritual life, and particular experiences. Derzhavin’s poetry presents an
opportunity to observe how personal lyric “Is” affirm their full presence while reflecting on their
own death.
As G.P. Makogonenko notes, Derzhavin’s lyric “I” is based on the “image of a living,
real person.”
642
Yet I think that it is also crucial to illustrate the ontological and ethical
foundations of Derzhavin’s deep, original notion of the self in order to grasp the lyric persona
and, subsequently, the “living, real person” that appears in his poems. As Charles Taylor
observes, there is a connection between individuality and ethics, since “our visions of the good
are tied up with our understandings of the self [and] a moral reaction is an assent to, an
affirmation of, a given ontology of the human.”
643
Scholars like Joachim Klein have investigated
specific aspects of Derzhavin’s thought, such as his religious positions in the ode, “Christ,” and

641
“une des pieces de l’ordre de l’univers. C’est une piece de la vie du monde.” Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, Les
Essais, eds. P. Villey, V.-L. Saulnier), online edition by P. Desan, University of Chicago:
https://artflsrv03.uchicago.edu/philologic4/montessaisvilley/navigate/1/3/21/?byte=224769 (Last access: 8
th

January 2022).
642
“образ живого, реального человека.” G.P. Makogonenko, “Poeziia, vossozdaiushchaia ‘istinnuiu kartinu
natury’,” in Gavrila Derzhavin, Sochineniia (Leningrad: Chud. Literatura, 1987), 5.
643
Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self. The Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1989), 105, 5.
214
his dialogue with Enlightenment philosophy in the odes, “God” and “Appeased Unbelief.”
644
A
close examination of Derzhavin’s poetry in which the lyric “I” reflects on death reveals the
complexity and depth of Derzhavin’s philosophical framework, on which he built the lyric
persona in his poems. As I will show in this chapter, Derzhavin had a rich and original view of
the self and of poetry, founded on a unique blend of Enlightenment, classical literary and
Orthodox theological traditions.
What leads Derzhavin to question his place in the world and to elaborate a self-
consciousness based on a complex philosophical system is the trauma of death. The lyric “I” that
results is thus not only a speaking voice, but a subject with a layered identity, who defines his
essence by means of his relationship with the Creator and Creation, as well as with his country
and its history.
645
Subsequently, Derzhavin develops a conception of human nature that allows
him to consider death as part of his essence rather than as his annihilation. The emergence of the
lyric “I” in his works thus expresses this new self-awareness.
This aspect of Derzhavin’s thought is elaborated in his spiritual odes, which are
masterpieces of a genre that, according to James von Geldern, grew increasingly philosophical
throughout the eighteenth century.
646
Derzhavin’s spiritual odes deal with religious, ethical, and
civic themes and feature personal tones in their contents, themes, and emotional structure. They
fully represent the phenomenon that Iurii Lotman and Boris Uspenskii call “cultural syncretism”
(mnogokul’turie), or the merging of heterogeneous branches of culture that characterizes

644
Joachim Klein, “Religion und Aufklärung im 18. Jahrhundert: Deržavins Ode ‘Bog’,” in Zeitschrift für slavische
Philologie 60, (2001)2: 297-306. “Derzhavin i religiia: Oda ‘Uspokoennoe neverie’ (1779),” in Vivliofika 2
(2014)2: 47-59. “Derzhavin in Old Age: The Ode ‘Khristos’,” in Russian Literature 75, (2014)1-4: 305-
319.
645
See, for instance, Luba Golburt, “Derzhavin’s Ruins and the Birth of Historical Elegy,” in Slavic Review, vol. 65,
(2006)4: 670-693.
646
James von Geldern, “The Ode as a Performative Genre,” in Slavic Review 50, (1991)4: 934.
215
eighteenth-century Russian literature.
647
Cultural syncretism draws on the introduction of
Western seventeenth- and eighteenth-century elements to the earlier, persisting elements of the
earlier Slavic and Orthodox traditions in eighteenth-century Russian culture, which was strong
enough “to subordinate the elements of foreign influences to its own influence and organically
merge them together,” as Grigorii Gukovskii notices.
648
Michela Venditti, for instance, proves
that “a strong and consistent lore of Orthodoxy [persisted] within Russian literature” as the genre
of the spiritual ode—including psalm paraphrases (perelozhenie psalmov) and prayers
(molitvy)—developed throughout the eighteenth century by elaborating on Medieval troparia and
on the liturgical and Akathist hymns.
649
Meanwhile, authors such as Antiokh Kantemir, Vasilii
Trediakovskii, Mikhail Lomonosov, and Aleksandr Sumarokov introduced models and motifs
from the Western literary tradition. A good case in point is Aleksandr Sumarokov who “provided
models of virtually every current European poetic and dramatic genre, including fable, song,
sonnet, elegy, satire, eclogue, idyll, epigram, ballad, madrigal, rondeau, folktale, and a wide
variety of odes,” as Marcus Levitt observes.
650
Indeed, Derzhavin created lyrics that allow the
“I” to express himself at the intersection of the Russian tradition and of the literary and cultural
traditions coming from Western Europe. Several scholars call attention to the ways in which
Derzhavin combined traditions that were previously kept distinct, such as psalms and satires, as
well as philosophical epistles and elegies. While Luba Golburt notes that Derzhavin skilfully
combined the panegyric, the Anacreontic lyric, the Ossianic mode, and the elegy, Ram discusses

647
Iurii Lotman, Boris Uspenskii, “K semioticheskoi tipologii russkoi kul’tury XVIII veka,” in Khudozhestvennaia
kul’tura XVIII veka (Moskow: Gos. Muzei im. Pushkina i In-t ist-rii isk-stv Min-stva kul-ry SSSR, 1974),
259-282.
648
“подчинить элементы чужеземных влияний своему влиянию и органически слить их воедино.” Grigorii
Gukovskii, Russkaia poeziia XVIII veka (Leningrad: Academia, 1927), 11.
649
“testimonianza di una forte e costante vena ortodossa nella letteratura russa.” Michela Venditti, Il poeta e
l’ineffabile. Gavrila Romanovič Deržavin. Le odi spirituali (Neaples: D’Auria Editore, 2010), 20-26.
650
Marcus Levitt, “Sumarokov: Life and Works,” in Early Modern Russian Letters: Texts and Contexts (London:
Academic Studies Press, 2009), 6.
216
the way that he interwove the Horatian and Pindaric odes.
651
Furthermore, N.Iu. Alekseeva
affirms that, building on the previous cultural tradition, Derzhavin shaped an odic genre capable
of expressing feelings within the ode by inserting the emotional intensity that characterizes the
Anacreontic ode within the Pindaric and the Horatian odes.
652
Hence, Derzhavin adapted psalms
and the Pindaric ode by combining them with the sensibility of the Horatian lyric “I” and the
emotional tone of the Anacreontic ode.
In Derzhavin’s spiritual odes we can also observe cultural syncretism at the philosophical
level, which makes it challenging to distinguish between the different cultural elements that he
combines in this work and that can rarely be found so closely conjoined. In this chapter, I
therefore show how the awareness of death is key to the evolution of the self and the persona in
Derzhavin’s lyrics and how it stems from a philosophical conception that merges the most
meaningful aspects of eighteenth-century European and Russian culture. A wide range of
scholars—primarily Paul Dukes, Marc Raeff, and Gareth Jones—has pointed out how, in the
eighteenth century, many different strands of European thought arrive in Russia, where they
were welcomed eclectically, determining the “kaleidoscopic… nature” of the Russian
Enlightenment.
653
However, Orthodox spirituality and Enlightenment thought, which are
connected through Neo-Platonism, constitute the heart of Derzhavin’s philosophy.

651
Golburt, The First Epoch, 27-28. Ram, The Imperial Sublime, 84.
652
Nadezhda Iu. Alekseeva, Russkaia oda: razvitie odicheskoi formy v XVII-XVIII vekakh (St. Petersburg: Nauka,
2005), 358.
653
Janusz Dobieszewski, “Neoplatonic Tendencies in Russian Philosophy,” in Studies in East European thought 62,
(2010)1: 3–10. Paul Dukes, “The Russian Enlightenment,” in The Enlightenment in National Context, eds.
Roy Porter and Mikuláš Teich (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 176-191. Gareth Jones,
“Russia’s eighteenth-century Enlightenment,” in A History of Russian Thought, eds. William
Leatherbarrow and Derek Offord (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 73-94. Aloys
Grillmeier, “Hellenisierung-Judaisierung des Christentums al Deuteprinzipien der Geschichte des
kirchlichen Dogmas,” in Scholastik (1958)33: 321-335, 528-558. William Leatherbarrow and Derek
Offord, eds., A History of Russian Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 9, 73, 76, 84-
91. Marc Raeff, Origins of the Russian Intelligentsia: The Eighteenth-Century Nobility (New York:
Harcourt, Brace & World, 1966), 12-13.
217
As Tat’iana Artem’eva and Sergei Averintsev demonstrate, Eastern Orthodoxy is rooted in
Neo-Platonism.
654
Patristics draws the transcendence of the Unity and the derivation of
everything from it from Neo-Platonism: “The One is all things and is not one thing. For it is the
principle of all things, but is not those things, though all things are like it.”
655
Origen, the first
important Christian thinker, not only reiterates this concept, but adopts Plotinus’ terminology
when he calls God “enad.”
656
Indeed, as Tomáš Špidlík notes,
primitive Christianity grew on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean basin… the
Fathers were exposed in the schools above all to philosophic doctrines which,
more than anything else, created the atmosphere in which they lived: an eclectic
philosophy, some sort of philosophic-religious koinē, a mixture of popularized
Stoicism, Pythagoreanism, Middle-Platonism, and later Neoplatonism… The
influence of this type of philosophy on the development of christian [sic] dogma
has been amply demonstrated… The Fathers were Greeks who became
Christians.
657

In addition, a thread links Plotinian monism to the Enlightenment conception of nature. The
Unity and the universal sympathy in Plotinus’ writings are found in the works of Italian
Renaissance Neo-Platonic thinkers including Giordano Bruno, according to whom “the universe
is in all things and all things are in the universe, we in it and it in us: thus, everything coincides
in perfect unity.”
658
Bruno’s thought inspired the theories of nature of both Baruch Spinoza and
the pioneers of the English Enlightenment, namely the Cambridge Neo-Platonists, Isaac Newton,
and John Toland. Margaret Jacob shows the link between Neo-Platonism and the Enlightenment
and the key role that Bruno’s philosophy played in it: “In Bruno’s thought we find the three
themes that will be consistently presented in the writings of eighteenth-century radicals:

654
Tat’iana Artem’eva, Istoriia metafiziki v Rossii XVIII veka (Sankt-Peterburg: Aleteiia, 1996), 189-215. Sergei
Averintsev, Ritorika i istoki evropeiskoi literaturnoi traditsii (Moscow: Iazyki russkoi kul’tury, 1996), 327.
655
Plotinus, Enneads, transl. and introd. Lloyd P. Gerson and George Boys-Stones (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2018), 549.
656
Origen, John Behr, On First Principles (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 10.
657
Tomáš Špidlík, The Spirituality of the Christian East (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications Inc., 1986), 9-10.
658
Giordano Bruno, Giordano Bruno: Cause, Principle and Unity, ed. Richard J. Blackwell and Robert de Lucca
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 90.
218
pantheistic materialism, the search for a religion of nature, and republicanism.”
659
In eighteenth-
century Russia, Orthodox spirituality and Enlightenment thought built on this foundation when
conceptualizing God and nature.
I refer to Voltaire’s definition of Deism as it was expressed in the first phase of his
philosophy, preceding the Lisbon earthquake (1755), because it resonates particularly well with
Derzhavin’s spiritual odes.
660
For both Eastern Orthodoxy and Deism, God is visible in Nature
and is situated in the human being’s inner reality, but, at the same time, He is an indefinable,
ineffable spirit. Neo-Platonic philosophies, which understand God as a Unity comprehending all
things and which have influenced Russian Orthodoxy and the Enlightened idea of Nature,
formed the philosophical background that allowed Deism to enter Derzhavin’s thought. These
three philosophical approaches—Russian Orthodoxy, Neo-Platonism, and Deism—converge in
Derzhavin’s conception of the dignity of human nature, the central focus of his ethical reflection.
In meditating on human behavior, Derzhavin turns to Stoic and Epicurean ethics, which
Enlightenment thought also circulated, to affirm that awareness of each human being’s noble
spirit is rooted in everyday practice and becomes a driving force of action. This emphasis on

659
Margaret C. Jacob, The Radical Enlightenment: Pantheists, Freemasons and Republicans (London: Allen &
Unwin, 1981), 36-37.
660
Extant scholarship has found evidence of the circulation of Voltaire’s work in eighteenth-century Russia and
Derzhavin’s familiarity with it. For instance, Nikolai Karamzin’s Moskovskii zhurnal (publ. 1791-2;
reissued 1801-3) published excerpts from Voltaire’s work as well as poems and translations of Voltaire’s
writings by Derzhavin. Joachim Klein, one scholar who has investigated the philosophical connection
between Derzhavin and Voltaire, highlights the difference between Derzhavin’s optimism in his 1779
spiritual ode “Appeased Unbelief” and Voltaire’s pessimism in the “Poem on the Lisbon Disaster” (1755-
56) and Candide (1759). However, this difference does not rule out the possibility that Voltairean elements
are present in Derzhavin’s thought. Moreover, studies by Gerhardt Stenger and Christophe Paillard
demonstrate that Voltaire’s philosophy underwent an evolution, after the turning point of the Lisbon
earthquake. Joachim Klein, “Derzhavin i religiia: Oda ‘Uspokoennoe neverie’ (1779),” in Vivliofika
(2014)2: 47–59. Christophe Paillard, “Entre science et métaphysique: le problème du fatalisme dans la
philosophie de Voltaire,” in Revue Voltaire (2008)8: 207-223. René Pomeau, La Religion de Voltaire
(Paris: Nizet, 1969). Alain Sandrier, “Lectures athées de Voltaire: la duplicité du philosophe,” in Voltaire
philosophe. Regards croisés, eds. Sébastien Charles, Stéphane Pujol (Ferney: Centre International D’Etude
du XVIIIe siècle, 2017), 141-150. Gerhard Stenger, “Le Dieu de Voltaire,” in Dieu. Réponse au Système de
la nature, Oeuvres complètes de Voltaire, vol. 2 (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2011), xix-xxxviii.
219
action relates to the lyric “I” in his poetry. This “I” reacts to the trauma of death by locating the
source of his own dignity in his essence and in the value of his deeds on earth. Here, poetry is a
way for the “I” to act on their surrounding reality.
In effect, Derzhavin blends and uniquely interprets multiple, seemingly opposed
approaches, including Eastern Orthodoxy and science; the moderate and radical Enlightenment;
and Neo-Platonism, Stoicism, and Epicureanism. Despite this heterogeneity, all these
philosophical strands share an awareness of the precarious nature of human existence and faith in
the dignity and nobility of the human spirit. In the subsequent pages, I first pinpoint the
philosophical approaches that frame Derzhavin’s conception of the human and the lyric persona
and then define the original features that shape the persona in his lyrics and how they define
themselves before death. To show how central death is to Derzhavin’s lyrics, the analysis will
feature “On the Death of Prince Meshcherskii” (1779), the first ode to garner Derzhavin notable
popularity, and “The River of Ages” (1816), a fragment of an ode that he composed just a few
days before his death. Then, I delve into two of Derzhavin’s spiritual odes to demonstrate how
his reaction to the event of death shapes his ontological conception of the “I”: “God” (1784), one
of his best-known odes and one of the first Russian poems to be translated into numerous foreign
languages, and “The Immortality of the Soul” (1785-97), a lesser-known ode, but equally
meaningful for understanding Derzhavin’s worldview. The latter poem bridges the fields of
ontology and ethics in Derzhavin’s definition of the lyric persona; I examine this definitional
process in a controversial Psalm paraphrase, “To the Sovereigns and Judges” (1780), which
showcases how the voice’s ethical and civil demands generate a concrete individuality. Through
analysis of “On the Death of Countess Rumiantseva” (1788), “My Idol” (1794), “Freedom”
(1803), and “To Eugene. Life in Zvanka” (1807), I demonstrate how the lyric persona overcomes
220
the trauma of death by adopting behavior consistent with the moral principles he endorses in his
everyday life. Finally, I explore “Monument” (1795) and “Swan” (1804), which exemplify how
the voice in Derzhavin’s lyrics fully expresses themself when contemplating their own death.

The Dining Table and the Coffin
Over the course of Derzhavin’s long literary career, he often reflected on death and its
relationship to the conception of the human and the presence of the lyric “I.” This section
features Derzhavin’s reflections in two works, “On the Death of Prince Meshcherskii” (1779)
and “The River of Ages” (1816). Despite their thirty-seven-year gap, Derzhavin states similar
ideas in these poems—particularly the transience of earthly life and the unavoidability of death,
which brings about the emergence of the lyric persona.
“On the Death of Prince Meshcherskii” includes eleven eight-line stanzas in regular iambic
tetrameter with even-numbered alternating rhymes and uneven-numbered enclosed rhymes. In
this ode, Derzhavin commemorates the death of Prince Meshcherskii, who was a patron, friend,
and a well-known pleasure-seeker. In response to Meshcherskii’s death, “the spirit is restless
with sadness” and the lyric persona carries out heartfelt, albeit unoriginal, reflections on death
that are reminiscent of Frederick of Prussia’s “A Maupertuis. La vie est un songe” (1760) and
Edward Young’s “Night Thoughts” (1742).
661
A refined poetic style is one of the mechanisms
through which the poetic “I” comes to the fore, as shown in frequent shifts from the first to the
second to the third person and in the recurring alternation between exclamations, questions, and
reflections. The lyric “I” self-manifests mainly in their personal involvement in Mescherskii’s
death, as seen in the ode’s beginning: “Your moan calls me, calls me, / It calls–and it brings me

661
“дух мятется от печали.” Gavrila Derzhavin, Stikhotvoreniia (Leningrad: Sovetkii pisatel’, 1957), 86.
221
closer to the coffin.”
662
The voice conveys the passage of time through repeated “calls” and
shares that the death of his friend has led him to think about his own death. Death and the voice
appear in the first stanza, where the presence of the “I” is marked through the four-time
repetition of the first-person pronoun and possessive, and death is revealed through metonym and
metaphor. Moreover, the couplet’s word order, with the noun “coffin” and the verb “brings
closer” located in the last line of the poem, conveys a sense that death is approaching, which the
“I” perceives as the last goal of their existence. Thus, in the first stanza, the lyric persona
shoulders the universal human experience of death, conceiving of it not as an awareness shared
with the whole of humanity as in the poems featured in chapter one, but as a personal threat.
Both time and death are allied in erasing any memory of humanity, be it physical, like the
“coffin,” or immaterial, like “glory.”
663

Throughout the poem, biblical, classical, Medieval, and Baroque representations of death
chase the lyric “I,” tormenting him with images of the transience of human life. For example, the
persona is taunted by the classical motif of tempus fugit associated with transitory images like
flowing waters and the classical image of the “shores of death” beyond the Acheron.
664
The
biblical world oppresses the “I” with the metaphor of the body as “dust” and the theme of vanitas
vanitatum. The “I” is then persecuted by death, which gnashes its teeth and mows down human
lives with a scythe; medieval echoes of the “Triumph of Death” and of the danse macabre
remind us that death touches everyone and everything, including prisoners, kings, and rich men,
“beauty and delights,” and “the sublime mind.”
665
In contrast, in the ninth stanza, the voice
expresses the Baroque conception of life as a dream, again pointing to the temporality of human

662
“Зовет меня, зовет твой стон, / Зовет—и к гробу приближает.” Ibid., 85.
663
“Гробницы… / … славу.” Ibidem.
664
“брегам… мертвых.” Ibid., 86.
665
“прелесть и красы, / … разум возвышенный.” Ibidem.
222
existence: “Like a dream, like a sweet reverie, / Faded away my… youth.”
666
Numerous
antitheses between life and death that afflict the “I” are also Baroque: “I just saw this world, /
And death is already gnashing its teeth” in the first stanza; “We slip on the edge of the abyss, /
Into which we fall headlong. / We receive our death with life, / We are born to die” in the third
stanza; and “Where the table was full of viands, / There is the coffin” in the fourth stanza.
667

Antitheses characterize the human condition, as we read in the eighth stanza: “We are pride
together with misery; / Today I am God, and tomorrow dust.” Here, the “feasts’ images” are also
opposed to the “cries by the tombstone.”
668
Torn between life and death, the lyric “I”
understands that the core of human nature lies in its precariousness and creates an unforeseeable,
revealing image that cannot be assimilated to the Baroque poetics of wonder but to Iurii
Lotman’s notion of an “explosion” of meaning.
669
In other words, Derzhavin creates the Greek
“thaumazein”—i.e., the wonder which marks the beginning of thought, which constitutes art, and
from which self-awareness originates.
The death of Prince Meshcherskii, which inspired the ode’s composition, is featured in its
central section, transcends the contingent event, and leads the lyric persona to discover that life is
“an abyss, / in which we will fall headlong.” Further, they note that death is the “dread of
nature,” a cosmic force that annihilates—in an ascending climax—the stars, the suns, and the

666
“Как сон, как сладкая мечта, / Исчезла моя… младость.” Ibid., 87. On Baroque motifs in Derzhavin’s poetry,
see Angelo Maria Ripellino, “Le cascate e i grandi della terra,” in Letteratura come itinerario nel
meraviglioso (Turin: Einaudi Editore, 1968), 22-26.
667
“снедь червей.” “Едва увидел я сей свет, / Уже зубами смерть скрежещет.” “Скользим мы бездны на
краю, / В которую стремглав свалимся; / Приемлем с жизнью смерть свою, / На то, чтоб умереть,
родимся.” “Где стол был яств, там гроб стоит.” Derzhavin, Stikhotvoreniia, 85-86.
668
“Надгробные… клики.” “Мы—гордость с бедностью совместна; / Сегодня бог, а завтра прах. // …
пиршеств… лики.” Ibid., 86.
669
“The moment of the explosion interrupts the chains of causes and effects and projects to the surface a space of
events equally probable of which, in principle, it is impossible to say what will come true.” “Il momento
dell’esplosione interrompe la catena delle cause e degli effetti e proietta in superficie uno spazio di eventi
parimenti probabili di cui è impossibile per principio dire quale si realizzerà.” Iurii Lotman, Cercare la
strada. Modelli della cultura, transl. Nicoletta Marcialis, introd. Maria Corti (Venice: Marsilio, 1994), 35.
223
worlds.
670
However, while the lyric persona is concerned with human nature and the trauma of
death, they have not yet elaborated a system of thought that allows them to respond to it. The “I”
manifests like a consciousness that opens to know the world, but that lacks any further
ontological or biographical delimitations. Addressing Prince Meshcherskii in the fifth stanza—
“Here is your body, but not your spirit”—, the voice does not leave room for hope because it is
followed by insistent, unanswered questions on the destiny of the spirit: “Where is it? There.
Where’s there? We don’t know.”
671
The “I” asks the same question in the eighth stanza: “But
where will you be tomorrow, man?”
672
It is evident that the “I” is not simply interested in
investigating the destiny of their deceased friend’s spirit but is also concerned with human
essence as a whole.
In the ninth and tenth stanzas, the lyric voice conveys his perception of the limits of the
human condition: the fallacy of hope, the end of youth, and the temporary nature of joys and
desires. In this context, stating “I stand by the doors of eternity” does not dissolve the
inescapable transience of human nature—an idea that dominates the ode—although it hints at
humankind’s middle position between mortality and immortality.
673
The eleventh and last stanza
sounds like a reconciliation with the idea of death. Here, the personal lyric “I” enacts a dialogue
with himself, recalling Stoic and Epicurean motifs:
Why should we torment ourselves and grieve
That your mortal friend did not live forever?
Life is the skies’ momentary gift;
Arrange it so you have peace,
And with your pure soul
Bless the blows of fate.
674

670
“краю, / В которую стремглав свалимся… // … трепет естества.” Derzhavin, Stikhotvoreniia, 86.
671
“Здесь персть твоя, а духа нет. / Где ж он?—Он там.—Где там?—Не знаем.” Ibidem.
672
“А завтра: где ты, человек?” Ibidem.
673
“Я в дверях вечности стою.” Ibid., 87.
674
“Почто ж терзаться и скорбеть, / Что смертный друг твой жил не вечно? / Жизнь есть небес мгновенный
дар; / Устрой ее себе к покою, / И с чистою твоей душою / Благословляй судеб удар.” Ibidem.
224
However, the consolation in this stanza cannot undo the omnipotence of death maintained by the
lyric subject in the previous ten stanzas or answer their questions on the essence of humankind.
The lyric voice asks the same questions again when contemplating his own death in the
ode’s fragment, which Derzhavin composed thirty-seven years later, in 1816. In “The River of
Ages,” the “I” uses the same metaphors of flowing water and of death leveling out human
fortunes that are featured in the 1779 ode:
The river of times in its rushing
Carries away all human affairs
And drowns in the abyss of oblivion
Peoples, kingdoms, and kings.
675

After these lines, the lyric persona mentions “something that remains,” which he defines through
two classical metonymies: political-military actions are identified with the “trumpet” and poetic
creation identified with the “lyre.”
676
Nevertheless, the “I” in this fragment thinks that even
“human affairs” do not escape the “common destiny,” since they too “are devoured by eternity’s
mouth.”
677
The lyric “I” does not manifest himself overtly but shines through the ode’s stylistic
expertise and sentential tone, as in “On the Death of Prince Meshcherskii.” In sixteen lines, we
have metaphors (“The river of ages,” “in the abyss of oblivion”), metonymies (“trumpet,”
“lyre”), personifications (“The river… / Carries away… / And sinks… / … something remains /
… is devoured / And... does not escape”), and accumulations (“People, reigns, and kings”).
678

The persona conveys these figures of speech with a concise, solemn tone that confers upon the
fragment necessity and urgency, as in an epitaph on human life. Derzhavin expressed similar
ideas, although in a much more optimistic tone, in “Monument” (1795) and “Swan” (1804).

675
“Река времен в своем стремленьи / Уносит все дела людей / И топит в пропасти забвенья / Народы,
царства и царей.” Ibid., 360.
676
“что то и остается.” “лиры... трубы.” Ibidem.
677
“дела людей.” “общей... судьбы.” “вечности жерлом пожрется.” Ibidem.
678
“Река времен.” “в пропасти забвенья.” “трубы.” “лиры.” “Река… / Уносит… / И топит… / … что и
остается / … пожрется / И… не уйдет.” “Народы, царства и царей.” Ibidem.
225
However, in “The River of Ages” the imminence of his own death prompts the personal “I” to
stress human precariousness. Hence, “The River of Ages” testifies to the key role that questions
around humanity’s essence and destiny play in Derzhavin’s lyrics.
Analyzing the works that Derzhavin composed between “On the Death of Prince
Meshcherskii” and “The River of Ages” highlights how he continues to explore questions around
humankind’s ontology in different phases of his lyric production. For instance, the line, “Today I
am God, tomorrow I will be dust,” expresses a main dichotomy in Derzhavin’s thought, which
we will encounter again in the central stanza of “God” in almost identical form, though its
meaning is overturned. The question on the spirit’s destiny—“Where’s it? There. Where’s
there?”—reappears in “The Immortality of the Soul,” where the question finds its answer.
Finally, the statement, “I stand at the eternity’s doors,” alludes to humans’ position in the
Creation, which is further developed in “God” through the theory of the “great chain of being.”
Thence, “On the Death of Prince Meshcherskii” and “The River of Ages” highlight the role that
death plays in the emergence of the “I” and how the lyric voices come to the fore when
meditating on their own death in Derzhavin’s lyrics.

The Persona and the Universe
The spiritual odes, “God” (1784) and “The Immortality of the Soul” (1785-97), answer
to the essential questions on humankind’s destiny and position in the universe found in “On the
Death of Prince Meshcherskii.” Derzhavin’s odes show how his lyric persona draws on a multi-
layered conception of the self, which combines Orthodox ideas—founding Russian culture—and
ideas coming from Western Europe—particularly the first period of Voltaire’s Deism. These
226
different philosophies interweave in the Russian Enlightenment, which, as Elise Wirtschafter
claims, “show[s] how rationalism… and science could be reconciled with belief in God.”
679

“God,” a meditative ode written in 1784 and consisting of eleven ten-line stanzas with
even-numbered alternating rhymes and uneven-numbered enclosed rhymes, exemplifies the
cultural syncretism of Derzhavin’s lyric persona. It merges elements of the Psalms (especially
Psalm 8), with elements of poems by contemporaneous Russian authors like Mikhail Lomonosov
(1711-65) and Aleksandr Sumarokov (1717-77) and of poems by Western European authors such
as Edward Young (1683-1765), Frederick of Prussia (1712-86), Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock
(1724-1803), and Heinrich von Kleist (1777-1811).
680
By means of oxymora and antitheses,
Derzhavin juxtaposes the Creator and Creation, allowing the lyric voice to define God. He then
depicts the role of the Creator in Creation and, finally, the emergence of a modern sense of
subjectivity. Following Earl Miner and Nicola Gardini, the entire composition constitutes a
typical lyric experience in that the spiritual and intellectual adventure of discovering the “I” takes
place “in presence”—i.e., in the very moment at which the poem is being written.
681

679
Elise K. Wirtschafter, Religion and Enlightenment in Catherinian Russia. The Teachings of Metropolitan Platon
(DeKalb: NIU Press, 2013), 20-24.
680
About “God,” see Liudmila Boeva, “Khudozhestvennoe vremia i prostranstvo v ode G.R. Derzhavina ‘Bog,’” in
Tvorchestvo G.R. Derzhavina. Spetsifika. Traditsii (Tambov: Kredo, 1993), 6-14. Anna Lisa Crone,
“Derzhavin’s ‘Bog’: The Internalization of Lomonosov’s ‘Bozhie velichestvo,’” in Russian Literature 44,
(1998)1: 1-16. Pierre R. Hart, G. R. Derzhavin: a Poet’s Progress (Columbus: Slavica Publishers, 1978),
60-71. Oleg Ilinskii, “K dvukhsotletiiu ody ‘Bog’ Derzhavina,” in Zapiski russkoi akademicheskoi gruppy v
SShA, vol. 17 (St. Petersburg: Klio, 1984), 217-229. Joachim Klein, Puti kul’turnogo importa. Trudy po
russkoi literature XVIII veka (Moscow: LitRes, 2017), 489-497. Aleksandr Levitskii, “Ody ‘Bog’ u
Kheraskova i Derzhavina,” in Gavrila Derzhavin 1743-1816 (Chicago: Northfield, 1995), 341-360.
Nicholas Struve, “L’ode intitulée Dieu,” in Derjavine, un poète russe dans l’Europe des Lumières (Paris:
A. Davidenkoff, 1994), 117-120. Natalia Teletova, “Oda Derzhavina ‘Bog’ i Edvard Jang,” in
Derzhavinskie chteniia (St. Petersburg: IMLI RAN, 1997), 28-34. Michela Venditti, Il poeta e l’ineffabile.
Gavrila Romanovic Deržavin, le Odi spirituali (Naples: M. D’Auria Editore, 2010), 59-73.
681
Earl Miner writes that he “take[s] lyric to be literature of radical presence,” while Nicola Gardini observes that
“[t]he lyric subject… exists in a present that is also physical presence—that of the voice, who introduces
themselves by revealing the existence of an entity that is always contemporary to the act of writing and of
reading.” Earl Miner, Comparative Poetics. An Intercultural Essay in Theories of Literature (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1990), 87. Nicola Gardini, Storia della poesia occidentale (Milano: Bruno
Mondadori, 2002), XVII-XVIII.
227
The ode opens with a prayer in which the lyric voice praises the Creator, whose
unfathomable essence fills him with wonder:
O Thou, endless in space,
Alive in the movement of matter,
Eternal through the passage of time…
Who hath no position nor cause,
Whom no one can comprehend…
682

The “I” describes God in a way that blends the scientific language of Newtonian physics with the
principles of apophatic theology, according to which human beings cannot perceive God’s
essence.
683
While God is infinite, and humankind cannot know His thoughts and His actions,
tangible objects reveal His presence and wisdom. The idea stems from Neo-Platonic philosophy:
Plotinus writes that “we say what it [the One] is not; what it is, we do not say, so that we are
speaking about it on the basis of things posterior to it.”
684
Early Christian thinkers express the
same concept. For example, Evagrius Ponticus, the fourth-century monk and ascetic who
inspired the hesychast movement, claims that “Christ, while teaching his wisdom to reasonable
beings, traced it in physical nature.”
685
In the lines above, the “I” in Derzhavin’s ode expresses
negative theology with a series of negations: “endless,” “without,” “no… nor,” and “no one.”
The voice reinforces the rhetorical strength of litotes through hyperboles (“endless,” “eternal”),
parallelisms (“endless in space, / Alive in the movement of matter”), and oxymora (“Eternal
through the passage of time”). These lines show us that, while unable to imagine the divine
essence, human beings can state His existence by perceiving earthly phenomena.

682
“О ты, пространством бесконечный, / Живый в движеньи вещества, / Теченьем времени превечный, / …
Кому нет места и причины, / Кого никто постичь не мог.” Derzhavin, Stikhotvoreniia, 114.
683
On Derzhavin’s blend of scientific and religious language see Joachim Klein, Puti kul’turnogo importa. Trudy po
russkoi literature XVIII veka (Moscow: Iazyki slavianskoi kul’tury, 2005), 489-497.
684
Plotinus, Enneads, 570.
685
Špidlík, The Spirituality of the Christian East, 331.
228
This apophatic conception of the Deity overlaps with Western Enlightenment philosophy.
Aaron Beaver highlights how Derzhavin’s poetry resonates with the conception of metaphysical
knowledge as “cut off from the knowing self” elaborated by Kant, whom Derzhavin knew and
translated.
686
Voltaire also affirms that philosophy shows us that God exists, but cannot teach us
what He is, what He does, or why He does it.
687
For Voltaire as for Orthodox thinkers, Nature
confirms God’s existence without disclosing His essence.
688
For example, in the dialogue “God”
in Voltaire’s Pocket Philosophical Dictionary (publ. 1764; revised ed. 1769), Logomacos asks
the barbarian Dondindac about who informed him that God exists; he answers that the whole of
nature told him so.
689
Consistent with the ironic tone of his texts, Voltaire plays with readers’
expectations and lets the uneducated barbarian Dondindac express his conception of God instead
of the erudite theologian Logomacos, whose name stems from the Greek word for “reason”
(logos). While Logomacos knows religious dogmas by heart, he is unable to understand God’s
essence and His relationship with Nature. Likewise, although he cannot explain God’s essence,
Derzhavin’s lyric “I” demonstrates His presence in everyday earthly phenomenon: “Thou art!–
The order of nature says it.”
690
Both Derzhavin and Voltaire assert that the order of the universe
is a sign of the creating and organizing principle that has determined it.
Derzhavin’s lyric persona also juxtaposes the immeasurability of God and the enormity of
Creation with the “I’s” finite nature. He investigates whether he himself has any significance

686
Aaron Beaver, “The Unknowable in Derzhavin,” in Poetics, Self, Place: Essays in Honor of Anna Lisa Crone,
eds. Anna Lisa Crone et al. (Bloomington, Ind: Slavica, 2007), 100-107. On Derzhavin’s knowledge of
Kant’s thought, see n.639.
687
Voltaire, Voltaire’s Philosophical Dictionary (New York: Carlton House, 2006), 301. The Elements of Sir Isaac
Newton’s Philosophy, transl. John Hanna (London: Frank Cass & Co. Ltd., 1967), 205-206.
688
P.R. Zaborov, Russkaia literatura i Vol’ter. XVIII v.-pervaia tret’ XIX v. (Leningrad: Nauka, 1978).
689
Voltaire, Voltaire’s Philosophical Dictionary, 152. In the present chapter, I refer to the 1769 version of the
dictionary.
690
“Ты есть!–природы чин вещает.” Derzhavin, Stikhotvoreniia, 115.
229
within this vast design: “what is the universe visible to me? / And what am I before Thee?”
691
As
Beaver shows, Derzhavin often employs the interrogative form to contrast the divine and the
human, as well as the extratemporal and the temporal.
692
These questions recall Psalm 8: “what
are human beings that you are mindful of them, / Mortals that you care for them?” They also ask
the same question posed by the speaking voice in “On the Death of Prince Meshcherskii”:
“Where will you be tomorrow, man?” The question is answered in the eighth stanza of “God,” in
which the “I” stands out to share his own viewpoint:
I am a particle of the whole universe,
I am positioned, I think, in that venerable
Middle of nature,
Where Thou finished the bodily creatures,
Where Thou started the heavenly Spirits
And linked the chain of all beings through me.
693

Here, the “I” bases his idea of human nature on the theory of the great chain of being, a theory
elaborated by Plato and further developed by Neo-Platonic, as well as Eastern Orthodox
thinkers.
694
According to this theory, all forms of life derive from the Unity, in whose essence
they participate, and are hierarchically positioned in the universe. In the eighteenth century, the
writings of Italian Renaissance Neo-Platonic philosophers—particularly of Giordano Bruno—
popularized this theory, which was known to Russian intellectuals of the time.
695
The persona in
“God” highlights this idea through parallelisms with antitheses: “Where Thou finished the bodily

691
“что мной зримая вселенна? / И что перед тобою я?” Ibidem.
692
Beaver, “The Unknowable in Derzhavin,” 90-95.
693
“Частица целой я вселенной, / Поставлен, мнится мне, в почтенной / Средине естества я той, / Где кончил
тварей ты телесных, / Где начал ты духов небесных / И цепь существ связал всех мной.” Derzhavin,
Stikhotvoreniia, 116.
694
Anna Lisa Crone, “The Chiasmatic Structure of Deržavin’s ‘Bog’: Poetic Realization of the ‘Chain of Being’,” in
Slavic and East European Journal 38 (1994)3: 407-418. Pierre R. Hart, “Deržavin’s Ode ‘God’ and the
Great Chain of Being,” in Slavic and East European Journal 14 (1970)1: 1–10. Arthur Lovejoy, in his
history of the theory, states that “in the eighteenth century… the conception of the universe as a Chain of
Being… attained their widest diffusion and acceptance.” Arthur O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being: a
Study of the History of an Idea (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1964), 183-186. Jacob, The
Radical Enlightenment, 35-41.
695
Aleksandr K. Gorfunkel’, “Giordano Bruno in Russia,” in Rivista di filosofia 52(1961): 462-475.
230
creatures, / Where Thou started the heavenly Spirits”; through enjambments that focus the
reader’s attention on meaningful concepts: “venerable / Middle”; and through the collocation of
the first-person pronoun under metric stress, which underlines the human being’s central role in
the universe. Thus, perception of God and contemplation of the great chain of being allow the “I”
to affirm the role that humankind plays in the universe.
The lyric persona affirms that, among all the earthly beings, human beings are at the apex,
mediating between other creatures and God like the “copula mundi” in the anthropocentric
worldview typical of Italian Renaissance Neo-Platonism:
I am the bond of worlds existing everywhere,
I am the highest degree of substance;
I am the centre of the living beings,
The starting point of divinity.
696

While the lyric voice is aware that they are nothing before God, they know that a divine element
is present in humanity. The simple, yet powerful structure of the lines above affirms the
individual’s central role in the universe, starting with the anaphora of the pronoun “I” and
continuing with the list of the roles that the subject carries out, which is strengthened through
syntactic parallelisms. While the voice is aware of the ontological difference between God,
Nature and himself, he proudly states in the first person his function among his fellow living
beings and his relationship with the Deity. Derzhavin in “God” upends the idea of the “fury of
the elements” encountered in the ode “On the Death of Prince Meshcherskii.”
697
The continuum
of God-humankind-Nature prevents death from “threaten[ing] all the worlds.”
698
In turn, nature

696
“Я связь миров, повсюду сущих, / Я крайня степень вещества; / Я средоточие живущих, / Черта начальна
божества.” Derzhavin, Stikhotvoreniia, 116.
697
“злость стихий.” Ibid., 85.
698
“И всем мирам она грозит.” Ibidem.
231
is ennobled by the divine presence, deifying humanity and elaborating a lyric persona that, while
rooted in “human affairs,” elevates themself over the mortal “common fate.”
699

Between the Heart and Reason
After defining their place in the universe, the persona begins on a path of self-knowledge
that leads them to find out the essence of the self.
This inward path runs parallel to the gradual emergence of the lyric “I” at the grammatical
level. The poem starts with an apostrophe to God: “O Thou, endless in space.”
700
As we saw in
chapter one, the apostrophe is common to lyrics to “signify [the expressive] intensity” of the
“I.”
701
Starting from the sixth stanza, which is strategically located at the centre of the ode, the
lyric persona grammatically individualizes themself through the first-person pronoun and defines
themself in relation to God through a twofold question about the world and the “I”: “What is the
universe visible to me? And what am I before you?”
702
The question also offers a way for the
speaking subject to highlight their own presence. As Roman Iakobson notes, questions reveal a
dialogic situation involving the speaker in the first person.
703
The utterer now comes to the fore
by casting themself as the sentence’s theme and by becoming, at once, the subject and the object
of the discourse. As they differentiate themself from Nature, in which they participate, the lyric
“I” increasingly emerges through grammatical markers—in verbs conjugated in the first person
singular and in the first-person pronouns and possessives that appear twenty-five times from the
seventh to the tenth stanzas. The individualisation of the lyric “I” is further reinforced by the

699
“дела людей, / … общей… судьбы.” Ibid., 360.
700
“О ты, пространством бесконечный.” Ibid., 114.
701
Jonathan Culler, Theory of the Lyric (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2015), 212-213.
702
“Но что мной зримая вселенна? / И что перед тобою я?” Derzhavin, Stikhotvoreniia, 115.
703
Roman Iakobson, Essais de linguistique générale: rapports internes et externes du langage (Paris: Les Editions
de Minuit, 1973), 188.
232
speaker’s jubilation, pointed out by the high pace of the anaphora in the fifth, eighth, and ninth
stanzas. Emerging at the linguistic level, the “I” moves on to fully declare their own nature.
This inward path leads the “I” to discover the self as the union of two entities that are often
kept separate—reason and the heart. “That Thou exist, my soul desires, / Reflects, thinks,
reasons” states the lyric persona in the seventh stanza, locating a through line between the soul
that feels and the mind that thinks.
704
The “I” repeats the idea in the following stanza: “Thou art!
… / My heart tells me, / My reason assures me.”
705
For the poet, reason and the heart are not
mutually exclusive or even in opposition to one another; both constitute the essence of human
beings, which allows them to think of and to be in contact with God and thus to attribute
meaning to their own mortality in the perspective of their immortal destiny. The “I” attributes a
key role to reason and accords it with a probing power that coincides with the principles of
Enlightened Deism. In defining reason as one of the two foundational qualities of the human
spirit, which remains stable despite the temporariness of existence, Derzhavin proves that the
deep transformation of culture and society attributed to the Enlightenment also took place in
Russia.
706
At the same time, he goes beyond the Enlightenment’s conception of reason as the
main feature of human beings and places the heart next to it. This conception is reminiscent both
of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s philosophy, which was then spreading throughout Russia and
enshrines the heart and the teachings of the Church Fathers with a determining role.
707
For
Derzhavin’s “I,” it is the heart that locates within itself the presence of the divine Spirit (“Thou
art! / … / The heart tells me”); as Seraphim of Sarov states, “in the human heart the Kingdom of

704
“Тебя душа моя быть чает, / Вникает, мыслит, рассуждает.” Derzhavin, Stikhotvoreniia, 115.
705
“Ты есть! … / Гласит мое мне сердце то, / Меня мой разум уверяет.” Ibidem.
706
Paul Hazard, The Crisis of the European Mind: 1680-1715, transl. J. Lewis May, introd. Anthony Grafton (New
York: New York Review Books, 2013), 435-447.
707
“Do not let us confuse the outward forms of religion with religion itself. The service God requires is of the heart;
and when the heart is sincere that is ever the same.” Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile, or Education, transl.
Barbara Foxley (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1921), 259.
233
God can be contained.”
708
In Eastern Orthodoxy, the heart is the center of the individual,
involves a human being’s full essence, and overcomes the partitions of the soul and its
rationalistic identification with the “nous,” or the intellect that is elaborated in Greek philosophy.
Russian spiritual writers identify the heart as the cornerstone of the “I’s” unity and as the
“meeting point with God,” so much so that the theologian Pavel Florenskii derives the Russian
word for heart (serdtse) from the word meaning “center” (serdo).
709
Certain Orthodox thinkers
even maintain that the heart perceives the spirit just as “a pregnant woman feels the child moving
in her womb.”
710
The heart is the ontological principle that shapes the self and the center through
which the individual can relate to any existing being. Hence, both reason and the heart build the
“I” of the individual; and the “I’s” recognition of the compatibility of reason and the heart speaks
to a broader harmonizing between Orthodox spirituality and Enlightenment thought.
The process of experiential self-knowledge leads the lyric persona to proclaim their own
existence and to tell God: “I exist—and, of course, You also exist!”
711
The voice states that the
existence of humankind demonstrates the existence of a Creator. In Michela Venditti’s words,
thanks to the value attributed to experience, for Derzhavin “God’s existence is established on the
basis of one’s own existence. It is not possible for human beings to be nothing if in them is
reflected the divine element, notwithstanding the immense difference between them. [At this
point, t]he centre is the ‘I,’ and the miracle of the humans who aspire to and merge with God.”
712

Relatedly, in the famous lines in the ninth stanza, the ode to God constitutes, in Khodasevich’s
terms, “an ode to the divine sonship of humankind.”
713
Derzhavin’s idea of divine sonship relates

708
http://orthodoxinfo.com/praxis/wonderful.aspx (Last access: 18 December 2021).
709
Pavel Florenskii, Stolp i utverzhdenie istiny (Moscow: Pravda, 1990), 269.
710
Quoted from Špidlík, The Spirituality of the Christian East, 20.
711
“Я есмь—конечно, есть и ты!” Ibidem.
712
Venditti, Il poeta e l'ineffabile, 69.
713
“одой божественному сыновству человека.” Vladislav Khodasevich, Derzhavin (Moscow: “Kniga,” 1988),
136.
234
closely to the notion of God’s universal fatherhood—the idea that all humans share in God’s
divine nature not because they identify with Christ, God’s son, but because they are the sons of
the Father.
714
This way, “God” becomes a hymn to humankind, and first and foremost to the
poet, who is the poem’s subject of this thought and who represents the entirety of humanity: “I
am the bond of worlds existing everywhere, / … / I am the centre of the living beings, / … / I am
king–I am slave, I am worm–I am God!”
715
As in “On the Death of Prince Meshcherskii,”
oxymora and antitheses define the lyric voice’s individuality and relationship with the deity.
Although these expressions are almost identical to those found in the 1779 ode, their meaning in
“God” is quite different. In “God,” the “I” is simultaneously a worm and God, both “the highest
degree of substance” and “dust.” Yet rather than drive them to despair, the “I’s” disjointed state
is a source of pride.
716
Notwithstanding his precariousness (“I rot in dust with my body”), the
lyric “I” does not think that “we are born to die,” because he acknowledges himself as “the
highest degree of substance.”
717

Death, far from being life’s goal, now becomes the starting point for a journey of
discovering one’s most authentic self. This process begins in the final section of “God”:
To your truth it was necessary
That my immortal being pass through
The mortal abyss;
That my spirit be clothed in mortality
And that through death I return,
Father!–To your immortality.
718

714
The theme of universal fatherhood and sonship is present in both the pagan tradition and the New Testament.
Homer, Iliad, 1: 544. Odyssey, 1: 18. Plato, Timaeus, 28C. Cleanthes, Hymn to Zeus, ll. 1-5. Epictetus,
Discourses, 1:19:9. Philo of Alexandria, Decalogue, 64. New Testament, Ath. 17: 18; Paul, 1Cor. 8: 6a;
Eph. 3: 14-15, 4:6.
715
“Я связь миров, повсюду сущих, / … / Я средоточие живущих, / … / Я царь—я раб—я червь—я бог!”
Derzhavin, Stikhotvoreniia, 116.
716
“Я крайня степень вещества; / … прахе.” Ibidem.
717
“Я телом в прахе истлеваю.” “крайня степень вещества.” “На то, чтоб умереть, родимся.” Ibid., 116, 85.
718
“Твоей то правде нужно было, / Чтоб смертну бездну преходило / Мое бессмертно бытие; / Чтоб дух мой
в смертность облачился / И чтоб чрез смерть я возвратился, / Отец!—в бессмертие твое.” Ibid., 116.
235
This is the point of the highest praise of God and the human, who now encompasses both
mortality and immortality. As in Baroque poetry, death never ceases to be a reminder of the
human condition, but it is no longer part of a Weltanschauung belittling the earthly dimension in
view of the afterlife, as we saw in Evfimii and Simeon’s poems. Further, it is neither the “greedy
death” or the “dread of nature, and anxiety” that we encountered in the ode “On the Death of
Prince Meshcherskii.”
719
Through awareness of death, the lyric persona becomes conscious of
his finite nature, the immortality of his soul, and the supratemporal meaning of his earthly life.
Derzhavin thus turns his position on human nature upside down and acknowledges human
beings’ characteristics with jubilation and pride, even the ones those make humans fragile, such
as the body and death. This awareness makes the lyric persona conscious of the uniqueness of
their own essence and leads them to conclude their experiences throughout the ode with
“thankful tears.”
720

The Poet-Prophet
“The Immortality of the Soul,” another of Derzhavin’s spiritual odes, continues his
reflection on lyric and spiritual experience where “God” leaves off. This poem, comprising
twenty-four eight-line stanzas in iambic tetrameter with alternating rhymes, was composed
between 1785 and 1797.
721
Here, the lyric voice notes that in human beings, “earthly dust [and

719
“алчна смерть. // … трепет естества и страх.” Ibid., 85-86.
720
“благодарны слезы.” Ibid., 116.
721
On “The Immortality of the Soul,” see Dmitrii Bashkirov, “Tema smerti i bessmetiia v tvorchestve G.R.
Derzhavina i poeziia svt. Grigoriia Bogoslova,” in Evangel’skii tekst v russkoi literature XVIII-XXvv.
(Petrozavodsk: Problemi istoricheskoi poetiki, 2001), 81-90. Aleksander Levitskii, “Derzhavin, Goratsy,
Brodskii (tema ‘bessmertiia’),” in XVIII vek (St. Petersburg: IRLI RAN, 1999), 260-267. Venditti, Il poeta
e l’ineffabile, 73-89. Viktor Zhivov, Razyskaniia v oblasti istorii i predystorii russkoi kul’tury (Moscow:
Iaz. slavian. kul’tury, 2002), 638-681.
236
the] spirit… participate / In the properties and the nature of one another.”
722
With this statement
as its point of departure, the “I” continues his meditations on the nature of the human soul and
the qualities that make it immortal.
Derzhavin illustrates this immortality of the human soul by varying the ode’s ring
structure. In this way, “The Immortality of the Soul” presents us again with a lyric experience
that unfolds in real time, allowing us to witness the evolution of the persona’s thought. The
exclamation “God is alive!—Alive is your soul,” in the first stanza becomes “God is alive!—
Alive is my soul! [italics mine],” in the last.
723
Throughout the ode, the lyric “I” takes upon
themself the entirety of the human condition; the soul that they perceive within themself speaks
to their simultaneously universal and individual nature. The “I” introduces their path of
discovery in the first stanza by using the first-person pronoun (“Reveal to me Your secret”) and
by questioning the human soul’s true nature (“Say it: Will I live forever? / Is my soul
immortal?”).
724
This question recalls the ode, “On the Death of Prince Meshcherskii,” which
raises questions about the destiny of the spirit: “Where’s it? There. Where’s there? We don’t
know.” The answer arrives in the fifth and sixth stanzas in “The Immortality of the Soul,” which
confirms the human spirit’s participation in the nature of the divinity and the immortality of the
latter:
Can this spirit be cut off
By death’s scythe and not live?

How can the universal tsar,
The Lord of the elements and of matter —
This spirit, this mind, this celestial fire,
This true image of the deity —
Have appeared with such glory,

722
“персть земную… дух… / … / … сделались… причастны / Друг друга свойств и естества.” Gavrila R.
Derzhavin, Sochineniia, comm. Ia. Grot, vol. 2 (Sankt-Peterburg: Tip. Imp. Akad. Nauk., 1864-83), 31.
723
“Жив Бог—жива душа твоя! // … Жив Бог - жива душа моя!” Ibid., 30-4.
724
“Твою мне тайну ты прорцы. / Вещай: я буду ли жить вечно? / Бессмертна ли душа моя?” Ibid., 30.
237
To live only one moment in this world,
And then be covered with eternal darkness?
725

The philosophical approach here is the same as that in “God.” If God is One in everything, as
the Orthodox, Deist, and Neo-Platonic theories conceive of Him, He cannot but exist in the
human being as well: “The glow lasts forever, / Which flows from the Father of light.”
726
In
“The Immortality of the Soul,” the lyric voice also claims that the spirit lives “[i]n the desire, in
the memory, and in the mind,” which means, in the heart and in reason.
727
Thanks to the
participation of humankind in the divine essence, the human spirit is also “the universal Tsar” as
is God, and cannot “be cut off / By death’s scythe and not live.”
728

Self-awareness leads the lyric voice to reflect on actions in which the spirit reveals himself:
Spirit able to feel, listen,
Know everything, judge and conclude;
To measure around, weigh, calculate
Both the light dust and the huge world;
To avert roaring thunder,
To sail the seas across the abyss,
To draw the light of sunrays
Through the azure arches of the air…
729

The human spirit can “feel” and “listen,” features of the Orthodox heart, and “know,” “judge,”
“measure,” “weigh,” and “calculate,” features of Enlightened reason, which is here presented in
act. Whereas in “God” the spirit is characterized by longing (“Not at all satiated I fly / Always
soaring to the heights”), in “The Immortality of the Soul” it fully realizes its desire to elevate

725
“Сей дух возможет ли косою / Пресечься смерти и не жить? // Как можно, чтобы Царь всемирный, /
Господь стихий и вещества — / Сей дух, сей ум, сей огнь эфирный, / Сей истый образ Божества — /
Являлся с славою такою, / Чтоб только миг в сем свете жить, / Потом покрылся б вечной тьмою?”
Ibid., 31-32.
726
“Сиянье длится беспресечно, / Текуще света от Отца.” Ibid., 30.
727
“В желаньи, в памяти, в уме.” Ibidem.
728
“Царь всемирный.” “косою / Пресечься смерти и не жить?” Ibid., 31.
729
“Дух, чувствовать, внимать способный, / Все знать, судить и заключать, / Как легкий прах, так мир
огромный / Вкруг мерить, весить, исчислять, / Ревущи отвращать перуны, / Чрез бездны преплывать
морей, / Сквозь своды воздуха лазурны / Свет черпать солнечных лучей.” Derzhavin, Sochineniia, 31.
238
himself.
730
As the “true image of the Deity,” the human spirit is validated for accomplishing the
eighteenth century’s vast contributions to human knowledge: the discovery of the lightning
conductor, the exploration of new lands, and Newton’s studies on light.
731
Reason, which in
Eastern philosophy is traditionally subordinated to the soul, comes to the fore and its discoveries
testify to the immortality of the human spirit.
In the following stanzas, it is the creative power of imagination that indicates the spirit’s
immortality. In the fifth stanza, for instance, we read: “[Spirit, who can] imagine beatitude,
eternity.”
732
Imagination implies being “fascinated by the beauty of the truths.”
733
This notion
goes back to a Platonic motif, according to which beauty cannot be separated from the truth and
the good, and to a Neo-Platonic motif, according to which beauty is only the splendor of the idea,
as Plotinus understands it.
734
These beliefs cast art (especially poetry) and revealed truth (istina)
as indissolubly linked. Thanks to this link, poetry is immortal and endows immortality upon
those who compose it.
The lyric “I” develops this idea in the eighth stanza, where he brings poetry close to
prophecy: “This spirit foretells like the Prophets, / And floats on high like the Poets.”
735
Through
the theme of the prophecy Derzhavin underlines the central role played by the “I,” because the

730
“Несытым некаким летаю / Всегда пареньем в высоты.” Derzhavin, Stikhotvoreniia, 115.
731
“истый образ Божества.” Derzhavin, Sochineniia, 31. On the reception of Western science in eighteenth-century
Russia, see Valentin Boss, Newton and Russia: The Early Influence, 1698–1796 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1972), 138-145. Leonid Kryzhanovskii, “The Lightning Rod in 18th-Century St.
Petersburg,” in Technology and Culture, vol. 31 (1990)4: 813-816. Iurii Sokolov, “Columbus, the
Discovery of America, and Russia,” in GeoJournal, vol. 26 (1992)4: 497-502.
732
“Воображать блаженство, вечность.” Derzhavin, Sochineniia, 30.
733
“Пленяться истин красотою.” Ibidem.
734
“Let’s take this trio, fineness, commensurability, truth, and treating them as a single unit say that this is the
element in the mixture that we should most correctly hold responsible, that it is because of this as
something good that such a mixture becomes good.” Plato, Philebus, transl. and comm. J.C.B. Gosling
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), 69. “all that is good is beautiful, and what is beautiful is not ill-
proportioned.” Plato, Timaeus, transl. and introd. Donald J. Zeyl (Indianapolis, Cambridge: Hackett
Publishing Company, 2000), 83. “If someone, then, has seen it [the Good], he knows what I mean when I
say how beautiful it is.” Plotinus, Enneads, 99, 699.
735
“Сей дух в Пророках предвещает, / Парит в Пиитах в высоту.” Derzhavin, Sochineniia, 31.
239
prophet “is called” by God for his experience and personal history. This is a recurring idea in
Derzhavin’s work. In fact, he theorized it in his 1811-15 treatise, Reflection on Lyric Poetry and
on the Ode, where he states that, in the ancient times, prophets and poets were one in the same;
that every literary tradition presents figures of prophets who also composed lyric poems; and that
poets and prophets continue to share a common depth of perception.
736
Thus, in his odes, the “I”
carries out the functions of both poet and prophet. The “I” responds to a personal call from God
and contains a spark of divine presence within themself, guaranteeing immortality of their spirit:
“What shall an immortal fear? / He will live even after the coffin.”
737

The lyric “I” reiterates poetry’s prophetic character in the thirteenth stanza, which contains
winged imagery derived from biblical and classical texts and confirms the ode’s religious and
ethical value:
I live here—but in the whole world
My winged thought is hovering;
I will die here—but also in the air
My voice will thunder upon death.
738

The “voice” establishes his value by juxtaposing the “here,” characterized by temporal and
spatial limits, with death and the “winged thought,” which does not know such limits. The
“voice,” a metonym for poetry, serves as mediator between the earth and the air, the temporal
and the eternal. The “I” reveals the meaning of this metonymy in the second part of the stanza:
Oh! If poetry knew how
To take the color of the sunrays,
Like the moon at night, the immortality
Of my soul would be shining.
739

736
Ibid., 516-628.
737
“Чего бессмертному страшиться? / Он будет и за гробом жить.” Ibid., 31.
738
“Я здесь живу,—но в целом мире / Крылата мысль моя парит; / Я здесь умру,—но и в эфире / Мой глас по
смерти возгремит.” Ibid., 32.
739
“О! если б стихотворство знало / Брать краску солнечных лучей, / Как ночью бы луна, сияло / Бессмертие
души моей.” Ibidem.
240
This is the only point in the ode in which the lyric voice explicitly names poetry. When poetry is
able to assert the splendor of truth (“the color of the sunrays”), it guarantees the immortality of
the poet-prophet’s soul. The link between beauty and truth that the poem establishes transforms
reality and “[d]rives blindness away from the peoples.”
740
These qualities of the poetic voice
characterize the author of the work, who is also devoted to the pursuit of beauty and truth and to
enlightening his contemporaries through them. By doing so, Derzhavin recalls Kant’s definition
of Enlightenment—“man’s release from his self-incurred tutelage”—and practices his freedom
by “mak[ing] public use of [his] reason at every point.”
741
The lyric persona also comes to this
realization when he states that “[t]his spirit even in chains isn’t afraid / To tell the truth to
tyrants.”
742
This constitutes the core task of the Enlightened intellectual, which in Derzhavin’s
conception coincides with the mission of the human inspired by God in the Christian tradition.
“The Immortality of the Soul,” which starts with the same cosmic dimension that we
encountered in “God,” ends by announcing the ethical demands that we read in “To the
Sovereigns and Judges” (1780-87), “My Idol” (1794), and “Freedom” (1803). In the second part
of “The Immortality of the Soul,” the persona states that the immortality of the spirit requires the
individual to act in a free and dignified manner. Vice versa, ethically correct behavior is one of
the spirit’s deeds that determines the soul’s immortality: “Actions and our very passions, / Are
the signs of the immortality of our souls.”
743
The “I” introduces their reflection on the spirit’s
deeds with two questions that begin to refute the soul’s mortality:

740
“С народов гонит слепоту.” Ibid., 31.
741
Immanuel Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, and What is Enlightenment?, transl. and introd.
Lewis White Beck (Indianapolis, New York, Kansas City: The Liberal Arts Press, 1959), 87.
742
“Сей дух и в узах не боится / Тиранам правду говорить.” Derzhavin, Sochineniia, 31.
743
“Дела, и сами наши страсти, / Бессмертья знаки наших душ.” Ibid., 33.
241
But if there is no immortal soul:
Why do I live in this world?
What is there in the virtue that is vain to me,
When will my soul die?
744

After stating that poetry can make the “immortal soul… shin[e],” the lyric “I” continues his
reflection ad absurdum. He wonders whether the opposite can also be possible—that is, if earthly
life could be mortal and in actuality bear no meaning whatsoever. The speaker introduces the
overturning of the perspective with the contrasting conjunction, “but,” and two questions built
around a chiastic parallelism strengthen their rhetorical power. This calls attention to the
rhyming words, which constitute the ode’s conceptual center and the key antinomy in
Derzhavin’s thought. The anti-semantic rhymes “immortal” and “vain” in the ll. 105 and 107
(italicized in the text) summarize the human condition; the semantic rhymes “I” and “my” in the
ll. 106 and 108 (italicized in the text) glorify the lyric “I.”
745

If our actions had no value, if the good and the bad had the same significance, what would
ethical behavior be worth? Ultimately, however, the soul acknowledges that virtue and justice
are not futile in the “difference of feelings.”
746
The soul distinguishes between “good spirits,”
from which “life” and “light” descend, and “evil spirits,” from which “decline” and “obscurity”
descend.
747
Derzhavin then repeats the symbolism of the light to express its traditional religious
connotations of “good and blessed,” on the one hand, and the Enlightened idea of the “light of
reason,” on the other.
748
This confirms that one can in fact recognize and pursue the good. The

744
“Но если нет души бессмертной: / Почто ж живу в сем свете я? / Что в добродетели мне тщетной, / Когда
умрет душа моя?” Ibid., 31. Italics mine.
745
By semantic rhyme, I mean rhymes between words belonging to the same semantic field such as “I” and “my”;
by anti-semantic rhyme, I mean rhymes between words which belong to opposite semantic fields such as
“immortal” and “vain.” The collocation of these terms in rhyming position combined with their semantic
and anti-semantic natures stresses their meanings.
746
“разность чувств.” Derzhavin, Sochineniia, 33.
747
“Благие… духи.” “свет, / … жизнь.” “духи, злые.” “тьму / … тлен.” Ibidem.
748
Wirtschafter, Religion and Enlightenment, 20, 24-27.
242
two questions that started the argument now appear rhetorical; through them, the persona
challenged the immortality of the soul only to affirm it with renewed strength.
The ethical quality of the persona’s actions and the passions that prompt this behavior
guarantee a double immortality to the “I”—the celestial immortality of the soul that inspires
them and the immortality of the memories that will live on about the persona after their death.
The idea that humans must accomplish deeds to achieve eternal deliverance is not only a
distinguishing feature of Christian thought but also constitutes the focal point of Simeon and
Evfimii’s poetry. Derzhavin renovates this notion by ascribing an autonomous value to good
actions that assure immortality in the earthly dimension. Indeed, Derzhavin believes that one can
achieve earthly immortality by providing positive examples, which create a trail of good deeds
over the generations:
Another person will follow
My example bravely:
Thus we stretch behind us
The atmosphere of actions and thoughts!
749

The voice affirms this principle again in the eighteenth stanza by establishing the link between
the coffin and memory. This link acquires a civil meaning that resonates with the almost
contemporaneous Western European poets like Friedrich Hölderlin’s “The Archipelago” (Der
Archipelagus, 1800-01) and Ugo Foscolo’s “Of the Sepulchres” (Dei sepolcri, 1806):
Our ashes will be watered with tears,
The coffin will soon be overgrown with moss:
But from the ashes the fire will be born in it, …
Its Phoenix will start a new circle;
Everything moves, lives through deeds,
The soul is immortal, thought and spirit.
750

749
“Вослед же моему примеру / Пойдет отважно и другой: / Так дел и мыслей атмосферу / Мы простираем за
собой!” Derzhavin, Sochineniia, 33.
750
“Наш прах слезами оросится, / Гроб скоро мохом зарастет: / Но огнь от праха в том родится, / … / Начнет
свой феникс новый круг; / Все движется, живет делами, / Душа бессмертна, мысль и дух.” Ibidem.
243
As the lines above indicate, rebirth starts from the coffin. The lyric “I” conveys this idea through
the metaphor of the flight, which was foreshadowed in the thirteenth stanza through the image of
the poetic voice soaring in the air. The persona restates this concept later on with the metaphor of
the phoenix and that of the butterfly. While the phoenix is continuously reborn and his cycle as
passions and actions flows in human life, the butterfly symbolizes rebirth and metamorphosis by
virtue of the transformation it undergoes during its lifetime. The lyric persona observes even the
smallest actions as constitutive of the butterfly’s life (“It lands on from flower to flower,” “It
flies in the air’s plain azure”), associating the freedom and industriousness of the butterfly’s
movement and flight with the virtuous behavior of human beings.
751
Death is a reward for one’s
good actions, like the last metamorphosis:
the righteous man in his bed,
Already covered by a deadly shadow…
… Rushing to embrace the motherland,
He exhales his soul with a smile.
752

The lyric “I” defines immortality as “[l]iving forever in one God, / Honoring the peace and
holy happiness / In his blessed light.”
753
In such bliss, the lyric voice is captured by enthusiasm,
or “vostorg”—the same term that Lomonosov uses in the opening of “Ode on the Taking of
Khotin” (1739). While crying, they scream out about their immortality as if they were
experiencing it in the very moment of the poems’ composition: “And I scream on the edge of the
abyss: / God is alive! – Alive is my soul!”
754
These lines portray a deep philosophic and poetic
intensity built on the quick alternation between different expressive modes—from simile to
description to moralizing reflection. These modes reach a climax in the repeated exclamations in

751
“С цветов садится на цветы.” “В лазурну воздуха равнину / … летит.” Ibid., 34.
752
“мужа праведна в одре, / Покрытого уж тенью мертвой; / … / Спеша в объятие отчизны, / С улыбкой
испускает дух.” Ibidem.
753
“В едином Боге вечно жить, / Покой и счастие святое / В его блаженном свете чтить.” Ibidem.
754
“Да на краю воскликну бездны: / Жив Бог!—Жива душа моя!” Ibidem.
244
the ll. 185, 189, 192, which are marked by spondees: “Oh, happiness!—Oh, dear enthusiasm!”
755

The lyric “I” interrupts this reflection in the last stanza, in which immortality elevates itself
above the abyss of death.

The Mighty Ones and Death
Derzhavin’s reflections in “God” and “The Immortality of the Soul” lead him to overcome
the trauma of death and acquire an ontological self-awareness that demands deep ethical
consistency. Subsequently, he does not merely declare that the poet-prophet is the highest
expression of humanity but performs this role. Andreas Schönle, referring to Iurii Lotman, notes
that, in the eighteenth century, “the Russian religious respect for the artistic Word… required
those uttering the Word to be held accountable for translating it into their everyday existence.”
756

The poems analyzed in the previous section indicate how the lyric personae come to root
themselves in their surrounding reality and define themselves historically. In this section we will
see how the more the personae act in their quotidian lives, the deeper they conceptualize the
human condition, and the stronger their self-awareness becomes.
This process emerges quite clearly in another spiritual ode, “To the Sovereigns and
Judges” (1780-87), composed of seven four-line stanzas in iambic tetrameter with alternating
rhymes. Here, Derzhavin does not limit himself to theoretically declaring that poetry is
prophecy; instead, the lyric “I” carries out the role of both the poet and the prophet. The “I”
criticizes the mighty ones and the monarchs for their corrupt practices and prompt them to
instead work to better society and achieve their highest selves. The ode is a paraphrase of Psalm

755
“О радость!—О восторг любезный!” Ibidem.
756
Andreas Schönle, “The Scare of the Self: Sentimentalism, Privacy, and Private Life in Russian Culture, 1780-
1820,” in Slavic Review 57 (1998)4: 742.
245
82, a genre started in the second half of the seventeenth century when Simeon Polotskii versified
and published the entire Psalter. Such practice established a literary tradition in the East Slavic
territories that other men of culture followed.
757
The translation or paraphrasis of the psalms was
used to teach literacy in the schools at the time. Furthermore, the choice of versifying the psalms
within East Slavic culture, in which the religious and the literary spheres were not independent
from one another, provided poetry with a language appropriate for discussing ethical and
spiritual topics. In the eighteenth century, the genre of psalm paraphrase became especially
popular and “constitute[d] a crucial link to the… secular, panegyric ode.”
758
Kirill Ospovat
shows how Psalm 82 was well-known in Russian eighteenth-century culture, so much so that
Feofan Prokopovich and Platon Levshin quoted excerpts in several sermons.
759
Nevertheless,
“To the Sovereigns” is much more than a mere exercise in translation.
760
The choice of Psalm 82
indicates Derzhavin’s intention to take part in the civic and intellectual life of his time by
reminding his contemporaries of their ethical and religious duties. Furthermore, certain
differences between the Psalm and the ode explain the relationship between selfhood and reality
in Derzhavin’s poetry.
This poem originates from another key opposition in Derzhavin’s thought between
“boundless power… and mortality.”
761
Derzhavin’s chastising is based on an awareness of
humanity’s shared condition and of the presence of death. The “I” criticizes sovereigns and
judges, who are as mortal as the poet is and therefore stand equally before the law.
762
The ode

757
Viktor Zhivov, Language and Culture in Eighteenth-Century Russia, trans. Marcus C. Levitt (Boston: Academic
Studies Press, 2009), 189-209.
758
Levitt, Early Modern Russian Letters, 279.
759
Kirill Ospovat, “‘Vlastiteliam i sudiiam’: Derzhavin i pridvornoe politicheskoe blagochestie’,” in Istoriia
literatury. Poetika. Kino (Moscow: Novoe izdatel’stvo, 2012), 282-292.
760
N.A. Portnova, “Perelozheniia psalmov v poezii G.R. Derzhavina,” in Russian Language Journal, 49 (1995)
162/164: 314.
761
“беспредельная власть… и смертности.” Alekseeva, Russkaia oda, 246.
762
“Земных богов.” Derzhavin, Stikhotvoreniia, 92.
246
opens with the majestic introduction of God as inquisitor and judge: “The almighty God stood
up, and judges.”
763
The speaker’s solemn tone is highlighted by terms typical of liturgical
language, like “almighty” (vsevyshnyi). In the second line, the voice opposes the “earthly
deities,” or the mighty ones, to God and demands that they account for their actions. The
relationship between God and the “deities” in this ode is distinct from the one portrayed in the
Psalm: whereas in the Psalm “God stood up in the divine council; in the midst of the gods he
carried out his judgment,” in Derzhavin’s ode “the almighty God stood up, and judges / The
earthly god in their council.”
764

In the second and third stanzas, God reminds the mighty ones what their duties are: “to
preserve the law…”
765
A similar concept also appears in the 1767 “Nakaz,” a text dear to
Derzhavin both for his career and for expressing his ethical and political ideals.
766
The
reproaches in these stanzas must have been particularly important to Derzhavin, since he doubles
the length of the Psalm’s section dedicated to the list of the mighty ones’ duties, which in the
original is four lines.
767
By including God’s speech in the ode, Derzhavin expresses agreement
between Him and the lyric “I,” who performs the role of the prophet and of the Enlightenment
man of letters that “put themselves forwards as spokesmen for the ‘public.’”
768

In the fourth stanza, the voices of God and the lyric speaker overlap in referring to the
psalmist’s comments (“They have neither knowledge nor understanding, / they walk around in
darkness”) and exclaim:

763
“Восстал всевышний бог, да судит.” Ibidem.
764
“Бог стал в сонме богов; среди богов произнес суд.”
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm+82&version=RUSV (Last access: February 10,
2022). “Восстал всевышний бог, да судит / Земных богов во сонме их.” Derzhavin, Stikhotvoreniia, 92.
765
“Ваш долг есть: сохранить законы.” Derzhavin, Stikhotvoreniia, 92.
766
Ospovat, “Vlastiteliam i sudiiam,” 287.
767
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm+82&version=RUSV (Last access: February 10, 2022).
768
John Robertson, The Enlightenment. A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 111.
247
They don’t listen! They see—and do not know!
Their eyes are covered with bribes:
Wicked actions shake the earth,
Falsehood makes the heavens tremble.
769

Merging the two voices confers upon the speaker a prophetic and solemn tone. The persona
utters an indictment that is based on the Enlightenment metaphor of light as knowledge:
Derzhavin’s contemporaries “see,” but “do not know.” They can use the light of reason but
choose not to because they are corrupt. The “I” reinforces the accusation through two
exclamations and a spondee that break the iamb’s rhythm in the stanza’s first line. In the three
following lines, the metric structure coincides with the syntactic structure, which builds the ode’s
assertive tone. The strong denunciation that the voice utters in the first person is another
innovation with respect to the Psalm and is followed by the omission of the Psalm’s sixth and
seventh lines: “I said, ‘You are gods, / Children of the Most High, all of you’.”
770
The behavior
of sovereigns and judges is so reprehensible that the persona chooses not to recall that they, as
human beings, also bear within themselves a divine spark.
From the accusation against the nobility stems the accusation against the sovereigns, which
introduces the theme of death and leads the lyric-prophetic “I” to express himself explicitly in
the first person:
Tsars! I thought of you as powerful gods,
With no one judging you,
But you, like me, are passionate,
And as mortal as I am.
771

769
“ Не знают, не разумеют, во тьме ходят.”
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm+82&version=RUSV (Last access: February 10,
2022). “Не внемлют! видят—и не знают! / Покрыты мздою очеса: / Злодействы землю потрясают, /
Неправда зыблет небеса.” Derzhavin, Stikhotvoreniia, 92.
770
“Я сказал: вы—боги, и сыны Всевышнего--все вы.”
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm+82&version=RUSV (Last access: February 10,
2022).
771
“Цари! Я мнил, вы боги властны, / Никто над вами не судья, / Но вы, как я подобно, страстны, / И так же
смертны, как и я.” Derzhavin, Stikhotvoreniia, 92.
248
Realizing the corruption of the sovereigns—an action intrinsically opposed to their self-
identification as “powerful gods”—leads the lyric voice to perceive humanity’s mortal nature in
a more dramatic way than they did in “God” and “The Immortality of the Soul.”
772
Derzhavin’s
paraphrase goes beyond the generic reflection on humanity that we find in the Psalm and
portrays the split between ethical consistency and power in an increasingly accusatory way,
while the “memento mori” acquires an almost threatening tone. The ode’s conclusion is not only
three times longer than the corresponding passage in the psalm (“But you will die like mortals,
and fall like any prince”), but also strengthened through a series of figures of speech.
773
The lyric
voice addresses the sovereigns through a succession of exclamations and similes that create a
strong climax restating the mortal nature of the mighty ones. The sovereigns’ precarious nature is
first compared to the speaker himself (“like me,” “as mortal as I am”), then to “the withered leaf
[that] falls from the trees,” and finally to “the least slave”: “And you will die, / Just the same as
your least slave will die.”
774
The prayer to God in the last stanza originates from the “I’s”
certainty that the sovereigns’ behavior is opposed to God’s will. Here, the lyric persona, who is
aware of truth-value of his accusation, addresses God in the imperative mode: “And be the only
tsar of the earth!”
775

In “To the Sovereigns,” the lyric persona presents himself as the “center of the universe,”
taking full responsibility for his linguistic acts and delineating his identity through his ethical
beliefs. Thanks to the religious nature of the text, which conveys an ontological awareness and a
universal tone, the odic speaker acquires the authority of a spiritual master and realizes the

772
Portnova, “Perelozheniia psalmov v poezii G.R. Derzhavina,” 313-314.
773
“но вы умрете, как человеки, и падете, как всякий из князей.”
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm+82&version=RUSV (Last access: February 10,
2022).
774
“с древ увядший лист падет.” “И вы подобно так умрете, / Как ваш последний раб умрет!” Derzhavin,
Stikhotvoreniia, 92.
775
“И будь един царем земли!” Ibidem.
249
moralizing goal of the Enlightenment men of culture. In Ospovat’s article, he argues that “the
speech role of the prophet… inscribed poetry into the elaborate system of court cultural
representations and role” and that “the unavoidability of death… did not call into question the
legitimacy of worldly power, but confirmed its ethical code and served the moral discipline of
the ruler.”
776
Yet while Ospovat contextualizes Derzhavin’s composition within court behavior,
he overlooks the ode’s critical vein; in actuality, for Derzhavin the mortal nature of humankind is
the basis on which the “I” builds his accusation against the mighty ones. This explains why
Derzhavin’s translation of this psalm was so hotly debated among his contemporaries. Derzhavin
first published “To Sovereigns and Judges” in 1780 in the journal St. Petersburg Messenger but
the distribution was immediately interrupted and the page containing the poem was removed.
777

We do not know with certainty whether this came after an order from the higher authorities or at
the discretion of the journal’s editors, but, in subsequent years, Derzhavin published the ode
twice with a title that softened its accusatory tone. In 1787, for instance, he published the poem
in the journal Mirror of the World under the title, “Ode. Translated from the Psalm 81.” Soon
after, Psalm 81, which inspired Derzhavin’s ode, began circulating among French Jacobins,
raising suspicions among the Russian court that Derzhavin was a Jacobin himself.
778
In 1798,
censors stopped Derzhavin from publishing the ode in a collection of his own works; he received
authorization to do so only in 1808. Despite the fact that Derzhavin composed the ode well
before the French Revolution and that, hence, it was anachronistic to accuse him of Jacobinism,

776
“речевая роль пророка… вписывала поэзию в разработанную систему придворных культурных
представлений и амплуа.” “неизбежностью смерти… не ставила под сомнение законность мирской
власти, но подтверждала ее этический кодекс и служила нравственной дисциплине
правительствующих.” Ospovat, “Vlastiteliam i sudiiam,” 296, 290-291.
777
Grot, Sochineniia Derzhavina, 110.
778
N.V. Trofimova, “O stikhotvorenii G.R. Derzhavina ‘Vlastiteliam i sudiiam,” in Russkaia rech’ (1989)5:122-126.
250
readers grasped in this ode a message addressed to contemporary Russian society that went
beyond the tone that they were used to read in psalm paraphrases.
In contrast to Ospovat, Anna Lisa Crone emphasizes the criticism in Derzhavin’s ode and
centers her analysis of his poems on the poet’s disagreement with Catherine the Great’s later
policies.
779
Such reading, however, fails to take into account that Derzhavin’s accusation did not
in fact aim to revolutionize the political system. Rather, he intended to pinpoint ethical issues
like injustice, corruption, and deceit, hoping for their resolution.
Overall, in “To the Sovereigns” we can locate Culler’s understanding of lyric poetry as
offering “a distinctive vision of the world—not a fictional universe but our world, in all its grim
and nefariousness seductiveness.”
780
The lyric persona in Derzhavin’s odes derives their
inspiration from their awareness of their ontological essence, which enables them to issue a
judgment on “our world” with the goal of bringing about change.

The Wise Man and Death
As this chapter has demonstrated, ontological awareness and ethical consistency, declared
in “The Immortality of the Soul” and in “To the Sovereigns and Judges,” identify Derzhavin’s
lyric “I.” In some of his lyrics—above all those composed in the 1790s—the voice comes to
more clearly embody the type of person that they are theorizing. The voice details the person’s
feeling, acting, reflections, features, relations, and surrounding environment. In doing so,
Derzhavin draws on the Stoic and Epicurean philosophies, which constitute classical
philosophy’s ethical response to the trauma of death. Notwithstanding their differences, Stoicism

779
Anna Lisa Crone, The Daring of Deržavin: the Moral and Aesthetic Independence of the Poet in Russia
(Bloomington: Slavica, 2001).
780
Culler, Theory of the Lyric, 124.
251
and Epicureanism both identify the wise man in those individuals whom external events do not
unsettle or carry away and who do not try to control or modify the course of the events. These
philosophies were already present in Derzhavin’s previous works, like the ode “On the Death of
Prince Meshcherskii,” but now acquire a meaning that is more deeply connected to his
conception of human nature and align with his representation of the lyric persona.
781

Stoic and Epicurean ethics identify the triumph over the fear of death in the wise man’s
behavior. For these classical philosophical traditions, Jankélévitch writes that death never exists
for the self.
782
Both point out the vanity of human anxiety and the non-existence of the “pseudo-
problem of death.”
783
Stoicism found fertile ground in eighteenth-century Russia for its several
shared features with Christian anthropology.
784
According to Stoic thought, human beings should
not worry about death or anything over which they do not have control; instead, they should care
only about what depends on individual consciousness, namely will and freedom. In this regard,
death is nothing and consciousness becomes “master of its life and of its death.”
785

The lyric persona reflects this notion in several of Derzhavin’s poems, including one of
Derzhavin’s “exegi monumentum,” “My Idol” (1794)—a song of twenty-four ten-line stanzas in
iambic tetrameter with alternating rhymes ending with a couplet. In this poem, the creation of a
bust of Derzhavin by the French-Russian sculptor Vladimir Rashet prompts the lyric voice to

781
As Andrew Kahn shows, classical culture spread widely and became well-known in eighteenth-century Russia.

“Readings of Imperial Rome from Lomonosov to Pushkin,” in Slavic Review, 52 (1993)4, 745-768. Stoic
and Epicurean philosophies are part of the classical heritage that Russian men of culture are assimilating at
the turn of the eighteenth century through Enlightenment philosophy. Marcus Levitt shows how popular
Stoic philosophy is among Russian authors by analyzing works by Lomonosov and Sumarokov. Marcus C.
Levitt, The Visual Dominant in Eighteenth-Century Russia (DeKalb: NIU Press, 2011), 93-104.
782
Vladimir Jankélévitch, La mort (Paris: Edition Flammarion, 1977), 29.
783
Ibidem.
784
As Max Pohlenz demonstrates, Stoic doctrine has in fact constituted the theoretical basis for the development of
Christian anthropology. Max Pohlenz, Die Stoa. Geschichte einer geistigen Bewegung (Göttingen:
Hubert&Co., 1947), 462-465.
785
“Maîtresse de sa vie et de sa mort.” Edgar Morin, L’homme et la mort (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1970), 270.
252
project himself beyond their death and employ the topos of humility, wondering “by what honor
am I seduced / In this immortal idol?”
786
The “I” answers a few stanzas later by stating that the
difference between good and bad glory exists because “Nature has poured into us / With the soul
also disgust for malice, / And love for the good and for those who are in the grave.”
787
Bringing
together the good and the deceased ones leads the lyric persona to profess their faith—their true
idol that is destined to win out over death and build their pride for posterity:
I want to be a man,
The poison of whose passions
Is powerless to corrupt his heart;
Who is blinded by neither bribes,
Nor rank nor revenge nor the luster of porphyry;
Whom only the truth teaches,
By loving himself, to love the whole world
With a wise, enlightened love,
Sacred by virtue.
788

In these lines, the “I” showcases their strength by summarizing the central ideas of Stoic thought
and juxtaposing what is good and what is bad in a style reminiscent of “The Immortality of the
Soul.” They proclaim their search for the “truth” and “a wise, enlightened love” on the one hand,
and detachment from the “poison of passions” and from greedy feelings—bribing, revenge, and
careerism—on the other. The voice introduces this statement in a sentence that asserts will, one
of the main values in Stoic ethics: “I want to be a man [italics mine].” He explains the sentence
by deploying variations at the ll. 63, 65, and 67; a series of negations at the ll. 65-66, which
stress the rejection of negative values; and repetitions at the ll. 68-69, which emphasize positive
values. As the voice professes his faith, one perceives the ethical breath of the Stoic thinkers

786
“мне какою честью льститься / В бессмертном истукане сем?” Derzhavin, Stikhotvoreniia, 200.
787
“Природа в нас влила / С душой и отвращенье к злобе, / Любовь к добру и сущим в гробе.” Ibid., 202.
788
“Хочу я человеком быть, / Которого страстей отрава / Бессильна сердце развратить; / Кого ни мзда не
ослепляет, / Ни сан, ни месть, ни блеск порфир; / Кого лишь правда научает, / Любя себя, любить
весь мир / Любовью мудрой, просвещенной, / По добродетели священной.” Ibidem.
253
Seneca and Marcus Aurelius who detached themselves from human passions and affirmed their
sense of community with the outer world and with human beings.
Subsequently, the praise of wise men leads the lyric voice to affirm the value of actions
that make life worthy of respect: “Posthumous glory is good: / merits mature in the coffin, /
heroes shine in eternity.”
789
Consistently with Stoic thought, the “I” does not fear death; on the
contrary, wise men are always ready to die because they are aware that they fulfilled their duty.
The lyric voice embodies Seneca’s motto: “Hence, every day ought to be regulated as if it closed
the series, as if it rounded out and completed our existence.”
790
For Derzhavin, as for Montaigne,
“who has learnt to die, he has learnt to serve. Knowing how to die frees us of any subjection and
constraint.”
791
Such awareness allows Derzhavin’s lyric voice to know “true happiness”: freedom
“[t]o live in peace with our consciousness.”
792
The voice here maintains the Stoic “self-
determination,” or being the “cause of oneself” and of one’s own actions.
793
The “I” continues
along these lines in “Freedom” (1803), writing: “I do not want to exchange my freedom, / My
consciousness for dreams [italics mine].”
794
Without freedom, worldly occupations are dreams,
illusions, and falsehoods, which the persona wants to cast aside in order to live in harmony with
themself. They willingly renounce “titles, gold, and honors” because they know what real power
is: “Then my power is great, / Since I’m not looking for power.”
795
The persona practices their

789
“По смерти слава хороша: / Заслуги в гробе созревают, / Герои в вечности сияют.” Ibid., 204.
790
“Itaque sic ordinandus est dies omnis tamquam cogat agmen et consummet atque expleat vitam.” Seneca,
Epistles, Volume I: Epistles 1-65, transl. Richard M. Gummere (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1917), 70-71.
791
“Qui a apris à mourir, il a desapris à servir. Le sçavoir mourir nous afranchit de toute subjection et contrainte.”
https://artflsrv03.uchicago.edu/philologic4/montessaisvilley/navigate/1/3/21/?byte=224769 (Last access: 8
th

January 2022).
792
“Счастье прямое.” “Жить с нашей совестью в покое.” Derzhavin, Stikhotvoreniia, 204.
793
Diogenes Laertius, Life of the Eminent Philosophers, transl. and introd. Pamela Mensch and James Miller (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2018), VII: 86, 121.
794
“Титла, золото и честь… // Не хочу моей свободы, / Совесть на мечты менять.” Derzhavin, Stikhotvoreniia,
292.
795
“Власть тогда моя высока, / Коль я власти не ищу.” Ibidem.
254
will and freedom in accordance with the Stoic principle that human beings shall not worry about
death and about earthly matters that they cannot control.
Derzhavin’s lyric “I” is inspired by Stoicism; their higher awareness of their dignity and
spiritual freedom leads the individual to practice self-control and to detach themself from fears
and earthly goods. They also become more determined to assert their will to make their beliefs
their motive of action.

The Persona and Death in Everyday Life
Some of the poems considered in this section demonstrate how the responsibility of the
persona moves from voicing concern over the ruling government, as we saw in “To the
Sovereigns,” to voicing concern over the government of oneself and the choices of everyday life,
as we saw in “My Idol.” In the everyday dimension of the latter poem, Stoic ideals interweave
with Epicurean principles in that both philosophies answer personal and civic issues at the
individual level.
Although the Orthodox Church deemed Epicurean materialism heretical and eighteenth-
century Russian intellectuals avoided any explicit reference to it, we now know that Epicurean
philosophy was spreading in Russia at the time.
796
The reception of Lucretius in particular is
linked with his popularity among Western European Enlightened philosophers, who were
prominent among the Russian cultural élites and considered him a prophet of reason, as studies
by Catherine Cusset and Natania Meeker show. Moreover, as Andrew Kahn points out,

796
On the reception of Epicureanism during the Enlightenment, see Natania Meeker, Voluptuous Philosophy:
Literary Materialism in the French Enlightenment (New York: Fordham University Press, 2007), 17-58.
Catherine Cusset, No Tomorrow. The Ethics of Pleasure in the French Enlightenment (Charlottesville,
London: University Press of Virginia, 1999), 2, 5-9, 169-172. On the reception of Epicureanism in
eighteenth-century Russia, see Andrew Kahn, “Epicureanism in the Russian Enlightenment: Dmitrii
Anichkov and Atomic Theory,” in Epicurus in the Enlightenment, eds. Neven Leddy and Avi. S. Lifschitz
(Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2009), 119-136.
255
Epicureanism entered Russia at the scientific level thanks to Robert Boyle (1627-91)—a follower
of Democritean atomism who was well-known to Lomonosov—, as well as at the poetic and
ethical levels through the work of Horace (65a.C.—5a.C.) who was already a renowned poet in
Russia in the seventeenth century.
797
The union of Stoic and Epicurean ethics also played a
fundamental role in poems that were less explicitly dedicated to the theme of one’s own death.
Good cases in point are “To my First Neighbor” (1780), “On the Death of Countess
Rumiantseva” (1788), “Country Life” (1802), and “To Eugene. Life in Zvanka” (1807).
The Stoic-Epicurean conception of the ephemeral nature of earthly things appears already
in “On the Death of Prince Meshcherskii”: “Why should we torment ourselves and grieve / That
your mortal friend did not live forever? / Life is the skies’ momentary gift.”
798
It also features in
“To my First Neighbor,” which remarks that “[i]mpermanence is the lot of mortals”; in “On the
Death of Countess Rumiantseva,” which notes that “minute by minute / The wheel of human
fortune pivots”; and in “Countryside Life,” in which the voice affirms that “[t]oday is my only
day,— / And tomorrow everyone will forget, / And everything will pass like a shadow.”
799
In
addition, in “To Eugene. Life in Zvanka,” the lyric persona wonders: “What is this worthless
life? My meager lyre! / Alas! And Saturn will sweep away from the perishable world / Even the
dust of my bones with wings.”
800
Although the speaking voice expresses the Baroque motifs of
tempus fugit and vanitas vanitatum, in “To Eugene” they do not give rise to the hopeless, gloomy

797
Kahn, “Epicureanism in the Russian Enlightenment: Dmitrii Anichkov and Atomic Theory,” 119-136.
Alekseeva, Russkaia oda, 309-313, 319-336, 348-354. Pavel N. Berkov, “Rannie russkie perevodchiki
Goratsiia (K 2000-letiiu so dnia rozhdeniia Goratsiia),” in Izv. AN CCCR, otd. obshch. nauk. (1935)10:
1039–1056. A.L. Pinchuk, “Goratsiia v tvorchestve G.R. Derzhavina,” in Uch. zap. Tomskogo un-ta, 24
(1955): 71–86.
798
“Почто ж терзаться и скорбеть, / Что смертный друг твой жил не вечно? / Жизнь есть небес мгновенный
дар.” Derzhavin, Stikhotvoreniia, 87.
799
“Непостоянство доля смертных.” “как вертится всеминутно / Людской фортуны колесо.” “Севодни мой
лишь день,— / А завтра всяк забудет, / И все пройдет как тень.” Ibid., 91, 119, 289.
800
“Что жизнь ничтожная? Моя скудельна лира! / Увы! и даже прах спахнёт моих костей / Сатурн крылами с
тленна мира.” Ibid., 333.
256
atmosphere that they created in “On the Death of Prince Meshcherskii.” The lyric “I” in “To
Eugene” overcomes his mortal condition thanks to ethical conduct inspired by Epicurean thought
and the Horatian carpe diem.
In several of these poems, the lyric persona appears peaceful while praising actions like
“eat and drink” and qualities like “healthy and wealthy.”
801
This should not surprise us as these
actions conform to the Stoic and Epicurean notions of nature and reason. Moments of enjoyment
and sensory praise also appear in Derzhavin’s lyrics: “Mountains of sweets and pineapple / And
a multitude of other fruits / Tempt the senses and nourish them”; “Incense is pouring from
censers, / Fruits are laughing among the baskets.”
802
As Angelina Vacheva notes, the laid table in
Derzhavin’s poems is a metaphor of intimacy and of the domestic dimension.
803
Enjoying earthly
delights and domestic life can bring about “ataraxia,” or quiet and the absence of “bodily pain
and mental anguish,” as Epicurus writes.
804
Nevertheless, sometimes the “I” combines their
celebration of human relations and sensual joys with memento mori: “I dedicate to my friends, /
To friends and to beauty, this day; / … / And Death looks at us through the fence.”
805

Stoic ethics is so deeply rooted in Derzhavin’s notion of the self and that of his lyric
personae that we also encounter it in his poems dedicated to the death of prominent people, such
as “On the Death of Countess Rumiantseva,” which I analyzed in chapter two. In this ode, the
lyric persona presents the deceased Countess Rumiantseva as an example of Stoic and Epicurean
values to Princess Dashkova. According to the “I,” these values allow the Countess to reach

801
“Сладко есть и пить и спать.” “Богат, коль здрав, обилен, / Могу поесть, попить.” Ibid., 273, 290.
802
“Сластей и ананасов горы / И множество других плодов / Прельщают чувствы и питают.” “С курильниц
благовоньи льются, / Плоды среди корзин смеются.” Ibid., 90, 223.
803
Angelina Vacheva, “Natiurmort v poezii Derzhavina,” in Tvorchestvo G.R. Derzhavina. Spetsifika. Traditsii
(Tambov: Kredo, 1993), 36.
804
Epicurus, The Essential Epicurus: Letters, Principal Doctrines, Vatican Sayings, and Fragments, ed. Eugene M.
O’Connor (Buffalo, N.Y: Prometheus Books, 1993), 66.
805
“Друзьям моим я посвящаю, / Друзьям и красоте сей день; / … / И Смерть к нам смотрит чрез забор.”
Derzhavin, Stikhotvoreniia, 224.
257
eternity: “in her splendid name / Even still she is alive.”
806
During her long life, she has been
able to keep calm and detached before a wide range of events; by virtue of her behavior, she
defeated death “with a quiet sigh, with a clear eye, / She left this world behind.”
807
Here, the lyric
voice proposes that Princess Dashkova take up the same values and behavior that they suggest
for themself in “My Idol”:
And you, if you have vanquished your passions…
When you don’t take revenge, and your conscience is right…
What, then, if you are of sound body,
What more could you wish to add to this bounty?
808

The lyric voice then highlights Countess Rumiantseva’s social and family values as an example
for Princess Dashkova:
Take comfort, and in a tender embrace
Kiss your children;
Sowing your Thessalian garden,
Live and spread the sciences;
Live and immortalize yourself.
809

In these lines, the voice expresses the values of domestic life and of knowledge, referring to the
latter by way of the Enlightened term “sciences.” Practiced together, the voice presents these
values as capable of guaranteeing victory over the trauma of death and achieving peace for the
soul.
The subject in the ode, “To Eugene. Life in Zvanka” (1807), presents similar features by
combining the figures of the classical and the modern wise men in the lyric persona. Overcoming
fear of death, the lyric “I” now lives without concerns and worries, as well as autonomously:
“Blessed is he who is least dependent on people, / Free from debts and from official hassle, /

806
“именем своим прекрасным / Еще, еще она живет.” Ibid., 119.
807
“с тихим вздохом, взором ясным / Она оставила сей свет.” Ibidem.
808
“И ты, коль победила страсти, / … / Когда не мстишь, и совесть права, / … / Какого же, коль телом здрава,
/ Еще желаешь ты добра?” Ibid., 119-20.
809
“Утешься, и в объятьи нежном / Облобызай своих ты чад; / Фессальский насаждая сад, / Живи и
распложай науки; / Живи и обессмертвь себя.” Ibid., 120.
258
Who doesn’t look for gold or honor at court.”
810
These lines open the ode and revive a topos that
traces back to Horace by transforming a literary echo into a lived experience. After celebrating
his choice to live far from the capital and the court, the lyric persona concludes: “The only thing
I endeavor to do, / Is to live happily.”
811
Here, Derzhavin sends a message to his readers, which
reveals that, despite his isolation in Zvanka and his detachment from court life after Tsar
Aleksandr I removed him from his appointment as the Minister of Justice in 1803, he manages to
continue a dialogue with his contemporaries. The author thus affirms an idea of the poet as a man
of culture who holds himself responsible for the wider community; he posits himself as a role
model for the existential and intellectual truths that he experienced and that other individuals
may also confront. In this way, the lyric persona does not renounce the role of the prophet that he
undertook in the spiritual odes but rather continues to carry out a social task with a spiritual and
ethical purpose.
Hence, both Stoicism and Epicureanism help the lyric persona to overcome the trauma of
death. The Stoic will to do one’s part in society strengthens one’s self-awareness and
determination, while the Epicurean tradition invites one to live peacefully and acknowledge the
limits of one’s existence.

Poetry and Immortality
The trauma of death runs through Derzhavin’s entire oeuvre, inspiring ontological and
ethical meditations that chart the evolution of the lyric persona. It is precisely in their transition
from understanding death as an inescapable aspect of human existence to an event that concerns

810
“Блажен, кто менее зависит от людей, / Свободен от долгов и от хлопот приказных, / Не ищет при дворе
ни злата, ни честей.” Ibid., 326.
811
“О том лишь я стараюсь, / Чтоб счастливо прожить.” Ibid., 289.
259
the person as an individual and a poet that Derzhavin’s lyric “I” achieves the highest level of
individualization and self-consciousness. The “I” speaks to this accomplishment at the end of the
ode “On the Death of Countess Rumiantseva,” anticipating themes in later works by Derzhavin:
As for me, nothing can harm me,
Spite I with resoluteness defy;
My enemies’ bones will be gnawed by worms,
But I am a poet–and I shall not die.
812

Derzhavin develops the idea presented in the last line of this quatrain in another ode,
“Monument” (1795)—a re-interpretation of Horace’s well-known ode that Lomonosov translated
into Russian in 1747 and that Aleksandr Pushkin would translate again in 1836. It also appears in
“Swan” (1804), a re-interpretation of Horace’s ode, “To Maecenas,” and part of the same cycle
of poems that includes “Monument.”
813

Comparing Horace’s “Exegi monumentum” with Lomonosov and Derzhavin’s adaptations
helps to pinpoint the novelty of Derzhavin’s lyric persona. At its foundation, Horace’s ode
juxtaposes the instability of human life, which is subject to hurdles and “the countless series of
the years… the flight of time,” with the enduring nature of poetry, which is worthy of “the praise
of posterity.”
814
The lyric voice affirms his own presence through a series of verbs conjugated in
the first person singular, as well as biographical references. Horace proudly recalls moving
“from a lowly state to a position of power,” alluding to the fact that his father was a freed
slave.
815
He then pays homage to his geographic origins by naming the Ofanto, Apulia’s longest
and richest river. Finally, he mentions his highest merit, which will gain him an eternal presence

812
“Меня ж ничто вредить не может, / Я злобу твердостью сотру; / Врагов моих червь кости сгложет, / А я
пиит—и не умру.” Ibid., 121.
813
Crone highlights Derzhavin’s adaptation and transformation of the Horatian ode, which Nadezhda Alekseeva
analyzes in depth. The Daring of Deržavin, 199-200. Alekseeva, Russkaia oda, 309-313, 319-336, 348-354.
814
“innumerabilis / annorum series et fuga temporum. / … postera / … laude.” Horace, Odes and Epos, ed. and
transl. Niall Rudd (Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press, 2004), 216-217.
815
“ex humili potens.” Ibidem.
260
in the memory of his descendants—that is, his introduction of the modes typical of Greek lyrics
into Latin literature: “I was the first to bring Aeolian verse to the tunes of Italy.”
816
Horace’s
lyric persona thus defines himself by sharing his personal and family history, which shaped his
identity, and by affirming the eternal value of his poetic work.
Lomonosov’s version of the ode is a quite faithful translation of the Latin original. The
work even includes the same toponymy; indeed, the poetic speaker names the city of Rome,
Italian rivers, and Mediterranean winds.
817
The voice also mentions Horace’s relevance to Latin
literature: “My fatherland will not conceal, / … / That I was the first to bring to Italy Eolian
verses / And to play Alcaeus’ lyre.”
818
In turn, we can confirm that Lomonosov’s translation
played a key historical role because it testifies to the reception both of the classical tradition and
the motif of the eternizing function of poetry within Russian literature.
“Monument”—Derzhavin’s version of the ode—instead reinterprets Horace’s poem in a
personal way, using Horace’s work as a model through which to express his own function within
Russian literature. “Monument” shares Horace’s faith in poetry’s immortality and the idea of
poetic glory. However, while the first stanza seems a paraphrase of Horace’s ode, of which it
reiterates the motifs of ‘flying’ time in contrast to the permanence of poetry that we find in
Horace’s ode, Derzhavin’s opening line grants a more central role to the lyric persona, who
claims to have built a monument “for himself.”
819
The “I” maintains this centrality in the second
stanza, where he pays homage to his own ethnic origin by referring to the Slavs:

816
“princeps Aeolium carmen ad Italos / deduxisse modos.” Ibidem.
817
“Рим.” “бурный аквилон.” “Авфид.” Mikhail V. Lomonosov, Izbrannye proizvedeniia (Leningrad: Sovetskii
pisatel’, 1986), 255.
818
“Отечество мое молчать не будет, / … / Чтоб внесть в Италию стихи эольски / И первому звенеть
Алцейской лирой.” Ibidem.
819
“себе.” Derzhavin, Stikhotvoreniia, 233.
261
Yes!—all of me won’t die, but rather a large part of me,
Having escaped decay, upon death will start living again,
And my glory shall grow without fading,
For as long as the universe honours the Slavic tribe.
820

Whereas Horace understands death as the end of one’s personal existence—an event that one can
survive only through glory—Derzhavin Christianizes this classical view and depicts a double
immortality. One part of him—his soul—will continue to live after death, while the glory he
acquired through his poetic work will grant him earthly immortality. While Horace’s lyric
persona predicts that his poetic glory will last as long as the Roman Empire, underlining his link
with Augustan politics, Derzhavin’s lyric “I” roots his glory as a lyricist in the Slavic people and
refers to ethnicity as a determining element for his identity. The enduring link that he establishes
between himself and his surrounding community is strengthened by the shared root of the
Russian words for “glory” (slava) and “Slavic” (slavian), following a popular etymology in
Russia in the eighteenth century. The voice also repeats his reference to the Slavs in the third
stanza, when he names the Russian borders and peoples:
821

My renown will spread from the White to the Black Seas,
Where the Volga, the Don, the Neva, and the Ural flow from the Riphaean Mountains;
Everyone will remember how, among countless peoples,
I became known out of obscurity.
822

The hyperbolic tone with which the persona describes his rise to fame is exemplified by the
contrast he strikes between his obscure origins and his numerous successes. Born into a family of
impoverished nobility, thanks to his merits Derzhavin has later become a court poet and

820
“Так!—весь я не умру, но часть меня большая, / От тлена убежав, по смерти станет жить, / И слава
возрастет моя, не увядая, / Доколь славянов род вселенна будет чтить.” Ibidem.
821
Joachim Klein, “Poėt-samochval: Deržavins Pamjatnik und der Status des Dichters im Russland des 18.
Jahrhunderts,” in Zeitschrift für slavische Philologie 62, (2003)1: 83-110.
822
“Слух пройдет обо мне от Белых вод до Черных, / Где Волга, Дон, Нева, с Рифея льет Урал; / Всяк будет
помнить то в народах неисчетных, / Как из безвестности я тем известен стал.” Derzhavin,
Stikhotvoreniia, 233.
262
occupied prominent places in the administration. In this case, Derzhavin again reinterprets
Horace’s ode by way of his personal history.
In the fourth stanza, Derzhavin’s biographical information acquires greater depth; here, the
lyric “I” specifies why poetic activity will make him immortal:
I was the first to dare in amusing Russian style
To proclaim the virtues of Felitsa,
To talk in heartfelt simplicity about God
And to tell the truth to Tsars with a smile.
823

In mentioning “Felitsa” and “God,” the lyric persona names two of the odes that have made him
a prominent poet, references his role in court, and declares his religious faith.
824
In particular,
“Felitsa’s publication quickly acquired the features of a literary myth”; the title, a nickname for
Empress Catherine the Great, depicts her as both an idealized and a human figure—a key
innovation within the tradition of imperial panegyrics.
825
The mention of Felitsa is a recurring
commonplace in Derzhavin’s lyrics; for example, in the fifteenth stanza of “My Idol,” the
persona lists what brought him glory: “That [I] could represent Felitsa, / heavenly goodness in
the flesh, / That I sang the tsaritsa of the Russians…”
826
Further, in the last line of “To Eugene,”
the speaker asks to be remembered with a sort of epitaph: “Here lived the singer of God—and of
Felitsa.”
827
In “Monument,” moreover, Derzhavin declares his poetics when the lyric voice,
echoing Horace, states that he “was the first to dare in amusing Russian style,” a reference to his
stylistic innovations, and when he characterizes his writing by its “heartfelt simplicity,” which
means a simplicity that comes from the heart.

823
“первый я дерзнул в забавном русском слоге / О добродетелях Фелицы возгласить, / В сердечной
простоте беседовать о боге / И истину царям с улыбкой говорить.” Ibid., 334.
824
Klein, Puti kul’turnogo importa, 518.
825
Ibid., 198-217. Vera Proskurina, Creating the Empress: Politics and Poetry in the Age of Catherine II (Boston:
Academic Studies Press, 2011), 198.
826
“Что мог изобразить Фелицу, / Небесну благость во плоти, / Что пел я россов ту царицу.” Derzhavin,
Stikhotvoreniia, 204.
827
“Здесь бога жил певец,—Фелицы.” Ibid., 334.
263
Thus, although both Horace and Derzhavin are aware that they are innovators, Horace
limits his merit to poetry (“it was I… who would first / spin Aeolian song home to Italian verse”)
while Derzhavin calculates his virtues at not only the stylistic and linguistic levels, but also the
political and spiritual ones. The lyric “I” sees his merit as both a poet and a man who “[tells] the
truth to Tsars with a smile”—a line that echoes similar ideas expressed in “The Immortality of
the Soul,” “To the Sovereigns and Judges,” and “Freedom.” In this line, the “I” understands truth
and freedom as the values that determine his ethical consistency, thanks to which “a big part of
me, / … will start living again.”
The entire ode culminates in the fifth and final stanza, in which the persona calls upon the
Muse to crown him as a poet at the ode’s end rather than at its beginning, following Horace’s
model.
828
In it, we can grasp how innovative Derzhavin’s conception of the lyric persona is. The
subject in Horace’s ode addresses the Muse as follows: “Take the merited, proud honors,
Melpomene, / I had gained but through you, Muse, and most graciously / Place now Apollo’s
bays garlanded in my hair.”
829
Horace is well aware of the key role that the poet’s technique and
creative action play in composing poems, since he dedicated his second Epistle, Ars poetica, to
these principles. Yet in his ode, Horace follows tradition; the “I” asks the Muse to crown his
head with a laurel. Notwithstanding the metaphor implied in this expression, here the speaker
attributes to the Muse the task to crown him. Rather different is the invocation to the Muse in
Derzhavin’s poem: “O Muse! Be proud of just merit, / And despise those who despise you.”
830

Although in both poems the reference to the Muse signifies poetry, the Muse in Derzhavin’s

828
Klein, Puti kul’turnogo importa, 520.
829
Horace, The Odes: New Translations by Contemporary Poets, vol. 1 (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
2020), 242-243.
830
“О Муза! возгордись заслугой справедливой, / И презрит кто тебя, сама тех презирай.” Derzhavin,
Stikhotvoreniia, 233.
264
composition possesses human traits and sentiments that clearly point us to the lyric persona. The
speaker in this distich may be making a statement of Stoic indifference, voicing a conventional
affirmation of his superiority with respect to his contemporary critics, or directly referencing the
polemics of his time. Regardless, although the subject utters a “you” rather than an “I” in these
lines, in addressing the Muse, he is actually addressing himself as a lyricist. Derzhavin thus takes
on the full responsibility of his poetic glory on his own.
Placing Derzhavin’s “Monument” side by side with the original ode, the former alludes to
the poet on a much more personal level. The lyric speaker continues his double dialogue with the
Muse and with himself in the final distich: “With unconstrained, unhurried hand / Crown your
brow with the dawn of immortality.”
831
Here, the speaker crowns his own head with the crown
that symbolizes that he has achieved immortality. The repetition of the negative prefixes “im-”
(ne-) in the penultimate line and “without” (bes-) in the last line fortifies the link between
immortality and poetry maintained throughout the ode. By ending the poem with the verb
“crown” (venchai), the voice seems to evoke, by consonance, the idea of eternity (vechnost’).
The role that Derzhavin attributes to poetry is comparable to the one that Gilgamesh took upon
himself in antiquity. Gilgamesh points out the threat of death—that one becomes nothing—and
suggests the possibility of salvation: “I will set up my name in the place where the names of
famous men are written.”
832
Similarly, Derzhavin’s lyric persona sees the opportunity for
salvation in his poetry.

831
“Непринужденною рукой неторопливой / Чело твое зарей бессмертия венчай.” Derzhavin, Stikhotvoreniia,
303.
832
Nancy K. Sandars, The Epic of Gilgamesh (London: Penguin Classics, 1960), 6.
265
Elevation
Derzhavin returns to the theme of overcoming death through literary production in “Swan”
(1804), which we can consider a summa of typical Derzhavinian themes. The voice is present
throughout the lyric, in the first six stanzas as the subject of the actions described and in the last
four stanzas as the object of other people’s attentions. This dual role of subject and object affirms
the lyric persona’s immortality as the author of lyrics and as a renowned poet.
The lyric persona’s profession of faith in his survival after death thanks to his activity as a
poet dominates the first six stanzas. While Horace’s “To Maecenas” also celebrates poetry’s
immortal value, the praise focuses on art as such rather than on the artist. In contrast, in the
opening of “Swan,” the metaphor of “extraordinary soaring” anticipates that the voice will
elevate himself “from the passing world.”
833
Flying allows the lyric “I” to announce his fame and
visualize the boundaries of Russia, which are more precisely indicated here than in “Monument.”
The “I” conveys the image of the flight—which is expressed in “The Immortality of the Soul”
through the figures of the phoenix and the butterfly—through that of the swan, a common
metaphor in Horace’s “To Maecenas.”
834
The swan is a sacred animal to Apollo, the Greek god
who protects poetry and prophecy as well as health. Poetry and prophecy are thus once more
brought together to guarantee the lyric persona’s health on earth and salvation in the heavens.
At the same time, mentioning the “passing world” at the beginning of the poem testifies to
the durability of the Baroque conception that earthly life is inherently unstable. However, the
speaker recalls this conception only to announce that he will overcome it; other usual Baroque
motifs are missing in the poem, like the lamentation about one’s destiny and longing for the

833
“Необычайным… пареньем / От тленна мира.” Derzhavin, Stikhotvoreniia, 303.
834
“Iam iam residunt cruribus asperae / pelles, et album mutor in alitem / superne, nascunturque leves / per digitos
umerosque plumae.” Horace, Odes and Epos, 138.
266
loved ones left on earth. Envy and the “splendor of kingdoms,” which Horace also cites, are a
dead weight that the lyric persona casts aside; they will not slow down his flight.
835
As
Derzhavin states in “To the Sovereigns and Judges,” kings are powerful, but they are also mortal,
notwithstanding their power. The “I” is thus destined to turn into dust like decorations by virtue
of his poetic work: “Among the stars I will not turn to dust.”
836

In this detachment from mundane activities, the speaker in “Swan” refers to the same
biographical motifs that we read in “Monument,” namely his humble origins and his departure
from court life.
837
Likewise, the voice is not ashamed of his origins but rather derives pride from
them; in any case, he is now superior to the other court dignitaries and “the favorite of the
muses.”
838
Again, biographical references—which also figure into Horace’s “To Maecenas,”
albeit in a less prominent and detailed way—serve as the basis of the speaking voice’s value. In
the penultimate stanza, poetry and prophecy are combined in the epitaph, which describes how
the lyric persona wants his descendants to remember him:
Here flies he, who, by tuning the lyre,
Spoke with the language of the heart,
And, by preaching peace to the world,
Rejoiced for everybody’s happiness.
839

In the stanza’s last distich, the voice recalls his political career in a way that reminds us of the
sense of brotherhood in the Stoic, Christian, and Enlightenment thoughts encountered in “My
Idol”: “by preaching peace to the world, / Rejoiced for everybody’s happiness.” The poet refers
to his work as minister of justice from 1802-03, during which he advocated for peace; however,

835
“блеск царств.” Derzhavin, Stikhotvoreniia, 303. “invidiaque maior / urbis relinquam.” Horace, Odes and Epos,
138.
836
“Средь звезд не превращусь я в прах.” Derzhavin, Stikhotvoreniia, 304.
837
“ego pauperum sanguis parentum.” Horace, Odes and Epos, 138.
838
“будучи любимец муз.” Derzhavin, Stikhotvoreniia, 304.
839
“Вот тот летит, что, строя лиру, / Языком сердца говорил, / И, проповедуя мир миру, / Себя всех счастьем
веселил.” Ibidem.
267
and despite support from Tsar Alexander I, the nobility remained opposed to peace. In “Swan,”
the lyric persona also hints at a principle of poetics when stating that he is the one who, “by
tuning the lyre, / Spoke with the language of the heart.” It is therefore in the ethical quality of
these works—both political and poetic—that the subject assures his immortality.
In the last stanza the “I” leaves the earthly world—a reinterpretation of Horace’s “To
Maecenas.”
840
While he is flying, the lyric persona appears as though he were talking with his
dear ones on earth. In bidding his friends and his wife farewell, he recommends sobriety and
discretion after his death, echoing Stoic ethics, whereby the “I” invites friends and loved ones to
be careless of earthly matters:
Away with a magnificent, glorious burial,
My friends! Chorus of the muses, don’t sing!
Oh, my wife! Be patient!
Don’t cry over a seemingly dead man.
841

The “I” never considers the fate of his body in the ode—a departure from the Baroque tradition
of the contemplation of the dead body and the pleasure of funerary celebrations. Instead,
Derzhavin’s ode discusses becoming “a seemingly dead man” as a condition shared by the
entirety of humanity; it does not cause any trauma and therefore does not need to be on display.
In fact, the lyric voice rejects the idea of a sumptuous funeral, which he claims is part of the cult
of appearance; he mentions a funeral only to point out its meaninglessness (“Away with a
magnificent, glorious burial”). Instead, the lyric voice’s goal in this poem is to build his true
individuality. Mentioning the precariousness of earthly life in the final stanza—a link to the
opening stanza—creates a ring-composition and establishes the base from which the lyric voice

840
“Absint inani funere neniae luctusque turpes et querimoniae; compesce clamorem ac sepulcri mitte supervacuos
honores.” Horace, Odes and Epos, 138.
841
“Прочь с пышным, славным погребеньем, / Друзья мои! Хор муз, не пой! / Супруга! облекись терпеньем!
/ Над мнимым мертвецом не вой.” Derzhavin, Stikhotvoreniia, 304.
268
begins his eternal flight in the poem’s central section. In “Swan,” the voice continues to affirm
his twofold immortal nature, which stems from his “immortal soul,” from which he derives his
need to act justly, and his “singing,” thanks to which “[f]rom the skies my voice will sing.”
842

These two characteristics grant him immortality both in the heavens and among the humans.
Derzhavin’s “Swan” is one of the early instances of elevation, that is, of the human desire
to overcome earthly existence, in modern poetry. In realizing this aspiration in the poem,
Derzhavin manifests the personal “I” that distinguishes his lyrics. A brief comparison between
Derzhavin’s “Swan” and Charles Baudelaire’s “Elevation”—one of the most well-known
instances of elevation in Symbolist poetry—drives home this point. The speaker in Baudelaire
addresses his spirit: “Fly far, far away from this baneful miasma / And purify yourself in the
celestial air” in order to go “[b]eyond the vast sorrows and all the vexations / That weigh upon
our lives.”
843
The “I’s” conflict with surrounding society cannot be solved, so the only possibility
for him to elevate himself is by nullifying the misfortunes of reality and moving with
imagination toward a purer dimension. By contrast, in Derzhavin’s poem, elevation means
achieving a distance that opens a broader gaze on and a deeper relationship with reality. Thanks
to his gaze from above, the persona can detach himself from the transitory nature of reality
without rejecting it. It is exactly through his elevated gaze that the poet confirms his love and
connection with the entire world and with the Russian people. Elevation, thus, helps the “I” to
individualize himself and to root himself in his own time and space.

842
“С душой бессмертною и пеньем, / … // С небес раздамся в голосах.” Ibidem.
843
“Envole-toi bien loin de ces miasmes morbides; / Va te purifier dans l’air supérieur… // Derrière les ennuis et les
vastes chagrins / Qui chargent de leur poids l’existence brumeuse.” Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du Mal
(Paris: Ligaran Éditions, 1961), 16.
269
Conclusions
Writing on the conception of death in the West, Ariès claims that there is an enduring
relationship between the idea of death and that of the self. Analyzing several of Derzhavin’s
works not only substantiates this notion but also showcases how lyric poetry, as a form of
expression, is uniquely positioned to elaborate this relationship. In Derzhavin’s lyrics, the
personal “I” becomes more precisely defined as their reflections on death become more
individualized. The trauma of death makes the poet aware that “[t]he river of times in its
inclination / Carries away all the deeds of people” and that even “the sounds of the lyre and the
trumpets, / Will be devoured by eternity’s muzzle.”
844

The spiritual odes “God” and “The Immortality of the Soul” take the relationship between
death and the self a step further. In these poems, human beings are conceived of as having a
divine element within themselves and are thus immortal and mortal at the same time. The
simultaneously universal and individual “I” combines the principles of Orthodox spirituality with
those of the Enlightenment based on their shared Neo-Platonic features. In these poems, faith in
the immortality of the spirit restores human nature after being traumatized by death. They also
declare poetry’s sacral and prophetic role. The “immortal” voice in these poems is rooted in a
concrete reality, as highlighted in “The Immortality of the Soul” and “To the Sovereigns and
Judges.” Meanwhile, “My Idol,” “Freedom,” “On the Death of Countess Rumiantseva,” and “To
Eugene. Life in Zvanka” acknowledge the dignity of the human being, implying the ethical need
for personal consistency, which refers to Stoicism and Epicureanism. The idea of the wise man’s
steadfastness, drawn from these philosophical traditions, responds to the impermanence of
earthly life and also allows human deeds to acquire an “immortal” value. Through these

844
“Река времен в своем стремленьи / Уносит все дела людей… / звуки лиры и трубы, / То вечности жерлом
пожрется.” Derzhavin, Stikhotvoreniia, 360.
270
experiences, the lyric “I” acquires further individual characteristics, bringing him closer to
Derzhavin’s biographical identity. “Monument” and “Swan” conclude this path and become a
sort of epitaph, self-examination, and testament through which the lyric voice affirms his own
identity before death.
Several scholars maintain that Derzhavin introduced autobiographism into Russian lyrics.
According to Klein, for instance, Derzhavin does not express his ideas as abstract beliefs but,
rather, as thoughts rooted in his own concrete experience: “the poem invites us to understand the
discourse of the lyric subject as the confession of Derzhavin himself.”
845
Indeed, some of
Derzhavin’s poems display a lyric persona whose characteristics coincide with some of his own
biographical traits. In these poems, the poet-protagonist depicts himself in his quotidian life,
describing his day-to-day activities, his friends, and historical figures. Following the etymology
that Lidia Ginzburg analyzes in her study, On Lyric Poetry, the Russian word “lichnost’” comes
from the root “lich-,” meaning “face” and, metonymically, “individuality.”
846
Derzhavin
undoubtedly delineates the “face” of his speakers and sometimes reflects on his personal
experiences in his lyrics. Yet the lyric “I” in Derzhavin’s poems is neither identified exclusively
by his own consciousness or delineated as the autobiographic and absolute “I” that we see in
modern lyrics since the Romantic period, which are characterized by an isolation that eventually
leads to the dissolution of the “I.” Instead, Derzhavin’s “I” is open to dialogue with surrounding
world and reflects on a literary level what the human represents on the philosophic plane: the
meeting point between the earthly and the divine, between the particular and the universal, and
between the individual and society.

845
“стихотворение приглашает воспринимать речь лирического субъекта как исповедь самого Державина.”
Joachim Klein, “Pozhiloi Derzhavin: Oda ‘Khristos’ (1814),” in Russian Literature 75, (2014)1-4: 315.
846
Lidia Ginzburg, O lirike, izd. vtoroe, dopol’nennoe (Leningrad: sovetskii pisatel’: 1974), 6-8, 10, 14-15.
271
Derzhavin’s lyric voice never interrupts his relations and communications with his
contemporaries. Derzhavin’s quest for an inner spiritual space co-exists with his continued
membership in a community of supportive friends. This social circle does not alienate the
speaking voice nor does it push the “I” to hide behind a mask. On the contrary, it helps the “I” to
realize their true self, achieving new wisdom and proposing a new lifestyle. If it is true, as
Aristotle writes, that being social is a necessary condition for human beings to develop their
identity, we can consider the lyric voice in Derzhavin’s poems an exemplary case of relationship
between the “I” and collectivity.

272
Conclusions

This research has proven how fruitful it is to apply to lyric poetry the results of historical,
philosophical, and anthropological studies on death. Working at this intersection, I have
demonstrated the presence of the lyric persona in seventeenth-century East Slavic and
eighteenth-century Russian poetry. More specifically, I have identified how the lyric “Is” emerge
in lyric poetry by gaining awareness of their mortal essence and by communicating this
realization to their interlocutors.
In effect, self-consciousness and social relationships with others define the lyric persona.
Lyric voices originate in the moments at which they address someone else. For instance, in
Evfimii Chudovskii’s poem, the lyric “I” manifests himself through apostrophe—“Look, man,
this clock”—, which points to poetry’s oral origins and the co-existence of the speaker and the
listener. By addressing a “you,” the “I” enacts a performance in which the word becomes an
action that manifests the utterer’s presence. The linguistic act occurs when personae hold
themselves responsible for expressing the mortality of human beings, which previously was done
in treatises, sermons, or prayers.
The event of death leads the “I” to realize that all human beings share the same transitory
essence; in other words, individuals infer their own death from the death of everyman. No other
discovery defines human beings and affects their ability to think and to feel more deeply. Yet
because each individual faces death alone, one needs to attribute a meaning to death in order to
attribute a meaning to one’s own essence and life. In turn, the personae express the trauma of
their newly acquired awareness through language—the tool that distinguishes and defines them
as humans. Even twentieth-century thinkers, like Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida, who
273
questioned the notion of author and linguistic referentiality, felt an urgent need to put the traumas
connected to their experiences with death into words. Through language, the “Is” call the
attention of the “yous” (their interlocutors) to the fact that they are mortal, too. Translating their
realization about death into words helps the “I” to elaborate on it, become conscious of it, and
share it with the “you.” The lyric voices manifest themselves from this dialogical encounter
about an experience that is shared by all of humanity.
East Slavic poetry is a fertile ground for this analysis because of the significant role that
death plays in these compositions. In seventeenth-century East Slavic culture, in which religion
played a central role and literary poetry took its first steps, death was the common theme of
poetry and religion. It retained this prominence in the eighteenth century. As Krassimir
Stantchev argues, “Medieval Orthodox Slavic poetry, both liturgical and non-liturgical, had one
main inexhaustible and all-encompassing theme: Salvation. Everything else would stay outside
the literary space.”
847
At the turn of the eighteenth century, awareness of death and of the Final
Judgment was closely related to the idea of Salvation, or the possibility for an individual to
overcome the trauma of death through their belief in eternal life. Human beings determine their
behavior through these meditations on death. Acquiring an awareness of one’s eventual death
and the Final Judgment motivates the self to define one’s individual ethics and take
responsibility over one’s own actions. Similarly, the poems analyzed here demonstrate that the
prospect of Salvation helps the lyric personae not only to affirm their presence and dignity before
death but also to invite others to gain consciousness of their mortality and take on the
responsibility that results from this awareness.

847
“la poesia medievale slavo-ortodossa, liturgica e non, aveva infatti un solo grande tema, inesauribile e
omnicomprensivo: la Salvezza. Tutto il resto rimaneva fuori dello spazio letterario.” Krassimir Stantchev,
“La poesia liturgica,” in Lo spazio letterario del Medioevo. 3. Le culture circostanti, vol. III: Le culture
slave, ed. Mario Capaldo (Roma: Salerno Editrice, 2006), 470.
274
In the works analyzed, the lyric voices communicate their awareness of human mortality
by referring to other textual genres typical of the East Slavic writing tradition, such as folkloric
and oral poetry, sermons, and other religious texts. In doing so, they establish the nature of lyric
poetry as an open and hybrid text, similar to Bakhtin’s conception of the novel. The lyric
personae include innovative expressive modalities in their compositions that originate from their
own experiences and inner lives, taking on the affective tone and the subjective perspective. This
personalization highlights common traits between the lyric persona and the interlocutor and
shapes the lyrics’ expressive intensity, which is based on the voice’s emotions, ideas, and
experiences.
To efficiently communicate at a distance this subjectivity, the lyric “I” deploys expressive
tools, drawing upon both the oral origins of lyric poetry and adapting them for written texts,
including the prosopopoeia, apostrophe, and dialogism of the oral tradition and the meter, syntax,
and figures of speech. Together, these devices grant lyric poetry its distinct expressive intensity.
This research also allowed me to reflect on issues that are connected to my analysis. I
have highlighted the unique nature of lyric poetry—not only its subjective dimension but also its
variety, which corresponds to the multiplicity of human experiences. Through this research, I
have also examined how the role of lyric poetry and of the lyricist changed in Russian society
between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and how poets understood their role over time.
The poems in this study reveal how poets transitioned from serving as men of the Church who
wrote for other men of the Church to serving as courtiers who wrote for sovereigns and other
courtiers to serving as men of culture who recorded key social events and who write for the
wider public. Furthermore, because they reflect specific notions of the self, lyric personae
convey the early modern East Slavic conception of the self, which I have defined as relational
275
and which sparks new interest nowadays. Finally, this research confirmed that elaborating death
enables the speaking voices in lyric poetry to more effectively gain control over and make sense
of their human condition. As Simeon’s poems illustrate, death pushes us to question the meaning
of life and to act and create during our lives in a way that will gain us eternal salvation in the
afterlife. Further, Derzhavin’s lyrics show how death leads one to consider how we will be
remembered in the world we leave behind. For these authors, and for us all, dealing with death
means dealing with life.

The Path of the “I”
In seventeenth-century poems, lyric voices emerge while admonishing their interlocutors
and trying to “educate, teach certain qualities to the person, and [to employ the] image of death
[as] the indication of the inadmissibility to violate the commandments and ethical
prohibitions.”
848

In poems by Simeon Polotskii, Evfimii Chudovskii, Karion Istomin, Andrei Belobotskii,
and Feofan Prokopovich, as well as in the anonymous poem “Oh Death,” universal lyric
personae appear while teaching and admonishing their interlocutors through dialogism and
theatricality—two features that harken back to the oral origins of early modern East Slavic
poetry. As they detach themselves from the expressive modalities typical of oral performances,
the voices increasingly employ linguistic tools characteristic of written literature in order to
impress the highest degree of meaning upon each word. As Giovanna Brogi Bercoff notes, this
type of written poetry not only realizes the broader goal of teaching but is also pleasing the

848
“поучать, воспитывать определенные качества в человеке, и образ смерти… указание на
непозволительность нарушения заповедей и этических запретов.” R.L. Krasil’nikov,
Tanatologicheskie motivy v khudozhestvennoi literature (Moscow: Iazyki slavianskoi kul’tury, 2015), 236.
276
interlocutor.
849
In accordance with Horatian poetics and with Polish authors like Ian
Kochanowski, which were studied in the East Slavic territories, poets started focusing not only
on conveying the Word of God, but also on how they conveyed it.
Building on Simeon’s innovative poetic activity, the practice of composing literary poems
then spread among his pupils and followers, including Sil’vestr Medvedev and Karion Istomin.
The lyric voices affirm their presence through various expressive tools, such as imitation, the
thematic clue, and erudition. Imitation asserts the “I’s” authority by situating their text within an
already established literary genre, whereas the thematic clue positions the personae in a line of
continuity with East Slavic culture, also amplifying the text’s authority. Finally, erudition
manifests the more conscious literary character that the lyric voices seek to confer upon their
work through quotes or references to classical culture. The poems analyzed also reveal an
increasing internalization of the theme of death, which is evident in the works of Andrei
Belobotskii, the anonymous poet, and, above all, Karion Istomin. In these compositions,
grammatical markers, deictic words, cultural references, and the “I’s” inner experiences
demonstrate how lyric personae work through questions about their nature and destiny.
Nevertheless, the “Is” in these poems are not yet individualized lyric speakers. These poems are
also hybrid in nature; lyric, epic, satiric, and descriptive features interweave in them so as to
adapt to each speaker’s cultural background and communicative needs.
In the poems by Karion Istomin, Vasilii Trediakovskii, and Antiokh Kantemir that are
dedicated to the death of sovereigns and in those by Sil’vestr Medvedev, Petr Buslaev, Mikhail
Lomonosov, Ivan Dolgorukov, Gavrila Derzhavin, and Nikolai Karamzin that are dedicated to
the death of prominent people, the lyric personae look at life and death from an upended

849
Giovanna Brogi Bercoff, Il Barocco letterario nei Paesi slavi (Roma: Nuova Italia Scientifica, 1996), 249.
277
perspective. After a death takes place, the speakers come to value individual lives for their
individual achievements and consider their good deeds worthy of celebration. The community
thus undertakes the task of preserving the memory of the deceased. As Ariès and Morin observe,
this process starts with the celebration of sovereigns, later commemorates prominent figures, and
gradually extends to other, lower strata of society.
Each phase of this process presents distinct features, objectives, and celebratory
modalities. The honors that the community pays to deceased sovereigns during their funerals
affirm its desire to preserve the reign without breaks, turmoil, or upheavals. Commemorative
poems are play a role in these official ceremonies; their lyric personae, whom I have defined as a
public “I,” rarely distinguish themselves from the chorus of the bystanders, although they
indirectly reveal their presence through their standpoint and voice. When singing the death of
men of culture, poets celebrate their counterparts. Here, poetic commemoration is an occasion to
celebrate their own social role. When perpetuating the memory of deceased noble people and
members of the army, lyric voices identify in the deceased models and values that their
interlocutors ought to follow in court, military, civil, and family life. Finally, lyric voices come
to commemorate the deceased not for their public roles but for their personal qualities, which
distinguish them as individuals. As the distance between the poet and the deceased person
decreases, the speaking voices increasingly portray the individual qualities of the deceased and
acquire more individualized characteristics themselves. The lyric personae thus play the roles of
the speaking and of the acting voices, of the witnesses of the deceased’s values and of the
depositary of the deceased’s memories.
When death involves the poet personally—i.e., when a relative or a close friend passes
away—the lyric voices are more individualized and I call them private. Through their mourning,
278
the lyric personae in poems by Feofan Prokopovich, Aleksandr Sumarokov, Gavrila Derzhavin,
Aleksandr Radishchev, Ivan Dolgorukov, and Nikolai Karamzin manifest themselves directly
while looking for the appropriate language to speak about such an intimate loss. In these works,
the lyric voices tend to call the deceased by name or even by diminutives; they celebrate and
recall their relationships with the deceased by mentioning shared experiences, personal
memories, and individual feelings. The speakers express themselves through specific syntactic
and lexical structures, like short sentences, omissions of nouns or verbs, exclamations, anaphors,
and an emotional lexicon. In these compositions, Salvation is no longer frames the perspective of
death on earth—rather, human life acquires an autonomous meaning. The loss of dear ones now
creates such an irreparable void that it constitutes the “end of the world,” to borrow from Jacques
Derrida. Singing the death of dear ones also testifies to the ongoing democratization of the right
to be remembered. In effect, the personae come to the fore to save the world that death and
mourning are threatening and hand it to the lyric word.
In Russia, the ability to express one’s own everyday emotions and values is realized in
the eighteenth century, when poets became familiar with the works of Western classical and
contemporary lyricists, as well as engaged with and helped shape the development of different
literary genres in literary debates in both Russia and the West. Eighteenth-century Russian lyric
poets drew upon authoritative literary models, but also adapted them as they sought an
appropriate language for expressing feelings and introducing private themes in their work. These
efforts are exemplified in the works by lyricists like Karamzin and Radishchev, who established
the autonomy of the lyrics in their turn-of-the-century poetry.
This progression in the development of the personal lyric “I” culminates in the literary
activity of Gavrila Derzhavin. Meditation on death plays a central role in Derzhavin’s work. In
279
his lyrics, Derzhavin considers a range of experiences with death—from the death of the
everyman and that of prominent societal figures to the death of dear ones and one’s own death.
However, the lyric persona confers further depth upon Derzhavin’s lyrics. This persona is
individualized and historically defined, as well as philosophically rooted in a multi-layered
understanding of the self and of human nature. In this conception, which brings together Eastern
Orthodoxy and Western contemporary philosophy in original ways, death continues to be a
traumatic event for the human being. At the same time, death is conceptualized as part of a
worldview that places the individual at the center of the “chain of being,” which allows the “I” to
rationally know nature and perceive God’s presence within oneself. Thus, the lyric personae find
an answer to the agony of death in their own self-awareness and in determining their place within
the universe. Derzhavin’s personal “I” proudly affirms that while they are physically mortal,
their soul and their creations are immortal. Derzhavin further roots the “I” in the earthly and the
historical dimensions by using Epicurean and Stoic ethics to conceptualize the human expressed
in his lyrics. Although they already entered Russia several decades ago, in Derzhavin’s lyrics the
Epicurean and Stoic conceptions of human mortality prompt the lyric persona to condemn the
corruption of courtiers and men of power who consider themselves “earthly deities.” The lyric
voice simultaneously claims his right to practice his will to live free from external conditionings
such as the Stoic wise man. The voice continues to make observations about public life when
describing everyday life in Zvanka. Notwithstanding the isolation of countryside life, the “I” in
these lyrics is not separated from society; he not only confers a public meaning upon this life
choice but also proposes it to his contemporaries, with whom he is in constant conversation. This
is a relational “I,” who represents a balanced relationship between the self and society that will
disappear in the nineteenth century.
280
In Derzhavin’s “Swan” and “Monument,” we witness to the last step in the “I’s” path.
Here, the prospect of his own death leads the “I” to analyze his life. The voice contemplates
some of his biographical traits by emphasizing the dignity of the individual and analyzes his
poetic activity by affirming poetry’s function as the highest expression of the spirit’s
immortality.

New Answers Generate New Questions
This study raises numerous questions for future research. For instance, can we observe
the same or similar developments in the lyric voice in East Slavic poems on death and in poems
in the Western European context? To answer this question, future research can analytically
compare early modern Eastern and Western European lyrics on death to ascertain the similarities
and differences between these distinct literary cultures and identify what determines the
specificities of each lyric tradition. Another future investigation might examine poems from the
eighteenth century up to the beginning of the nineteenth century in order to verify Ariès’ claim:
“The certain correspondence between the triumph of death and the triumph of the individual
during the Middle Ages invites us to wonder whether a similar, albeit overturned, relationship
exists today between the ‘crisis of death’ and that of individuality.”
850
By explaining the
conceptualization of death as it developed in Eastern and Western Europe between the late
seventeenth and the early nineteenth centuries, these studies would help illuminate the origins of
our contemporary relationship with the event of death and the taboo around it today.

850
“La correspondance certaine entre le triomphe de la mort et le triomphe de l’individu pendant le second Moyen
Âge nous invite à nous demander si une relation semblable, mais inverse, n’exist pas aujourd’hui entre la
‘crise de la mort’ et celle de l’individualité.” Philippe Ariès, “La mort inversée. Le changement des
attitudes devant la mort dans les sociétés occidentales,” in Archives européennes de sociologie 1967:8(2):
195.
281
A second pressing question that stems from this study asks whether lyric personae affirm
their presence only in poems about death. To this end, it would be interesting to study other types
of lyrics in the East Slavic territories, such as lyrics on love. In Provençal twelfth- and thirteenth-
century poetry, for example, love is an unsatisfied tension that creates a distance between the
lover and the beloved and precipitates the emergence of the “I” of the lover, who wishes to fill
such distance. Following scholars like Denis de Rougemont, a heretical movement lies at the
base of this type of poetry and the Catholic Church disapproved of it. In these lyrics, the beloved
woman stands in for the individual’s longing for God—or, in other words, for the individual’s
spiritual and angelic aspects.
851
I would like to investigate if something similar occurs in
eighteenth-century Russian poetry as well. Examining lyrics on love from the East Slavic
territories could explore whether love for the other raises self-awareness in the lyric voice in
ways that converge with or diverge from the development of the lyric “I” in lyrics on death.
Broader concepts in this study also point to new lines of inquiry for future research. For
one, the very concept of lyric poetry, whose definition is still debated among scholars, requires
further clarification. Moreover, the work of the first women poets in Russia, such as Ekaterina
Urusova and Anna Bunina, has long been neglected in the Slavic field. Future research that
centers the study of lyric poetry on these women authors may provide new insights to better
understand the development of this literary genre.

851
On this topic, see Denis de Rougemont, Love in the Western World, rev. and augmented ed. (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1983).
282
Many questions concerning the nature of lyric poetry and early modern East Slavic lyrics
remain unanswered. Particularly when it comes to the latter, what we do not know is more than
what we know, to borrow the words of Riccardo Picchio.
852
In the current study, I have
demonstrated that forms of lyric voices and lyric poems are present in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries. I have also identified the trigger for the emergence and the development of
the lyric persona in their meditations on death. Indeed, the presence of the lyric “I” is one of the
founding features of lyric poetry; this study finds that the dialogue between the persona and an
interlocutor on their shared mortal destiny provides a foundation for the origins of lyric poetry
and the emergence of the “I.”

852
“Many, very many are the things we do not know.” “Le cose che non sappiamo sono tante, tantissime.” Nicoletta
Marcialis, “Dialogo con Riccardo Picchio su passato, presente e futuro della slavistica,” in eSamizdat
(2004)II: 2, 9-13.
283
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Abstract (if available)

Abstract My dissertation deals with a fundamental theme for lyric poetry, namely the emergence and evolution of the lyric “I” in poems on death written in the East Slavic territories in the seventeenth century and in Russia in the eighteenth. Treasuring the main discovery by historians, anthropologists, and philosophers such as Philippe Ariès, Paul Landsberg, Edgar Morin, Vladimir Jankélévitch, Emanuel Lèvinas, and Jacques Derrida, who argue that self-consciousness originate in awareness of death, I show that trauma of death prompts the self to develop self-awareness and the lyric persona to emerge in poetic texts. The self’s need to define its ethical behavior and become responsible for its own actions before the Last Judgment stems from consciousness of death and one’s own self. I identify the presence of the lyric persona in the texts analyzed through a multidisciplinary approach that combines stylistics, linguistics, and philosophy and prove that conceptions of death, notions of the self, and appearance of the lyric persona are permanently interwoven. I trace the development of the lyric voice from their appearance as a universal “I” to their establishment as a public “I,” from delineating their inner characteristics as a private “I” to individualizing themself as a personal “I.” Meanwhile, I correlate these instances of the lyric voice with the death of the everyman, of sovereigns and prominent people, of dear ones, and of one’s own death. The process unfolds over the course of one and a half centuries, a lesser-known but crucial period for East Slavic literature. This is the time when Russian culture opens to the West, merging heterogeneous cultural traditions and experiencing unprecedented experimentations. So, I demonstrate the original contributions of East Slavic seventeenth-century and Russian eighteenth-century poetry to debated issues among comparativists—the definition of the lyrics as a genre and the evolution of the lyric persona.

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