2016 Vol. 7 №3

The article discusses some exercises of N. M. Karamzin, the first great Russian writer who worked in the prosaic miniature`s form, a short text which we compare to a poetic one. In the Russian tradition the prosaic miniature developed primarily in journals and magazines. Translations, sometimes fragmentary, from European languages, of both poetic and prosaic texts became one of the main sources of the Russian prosaic miniature. Karamzin started with some translated miniature texts and went on to compose his original poetic texts in the first half of the 1790s. Analogues of his poetry can be found in Karamzin’s longer prosaic works;. Later publishers extend the collection of Karamzin’s prosaic miniature texts through fragmenting his other works.

The article examines various means of expressing the author’s modality which is explicit about the author’s intentions and evaluations in “Poor Liza” by N. Karamzin. The question of relations between the “narrator” and the “author” is in the focus. The analysis og the story shows that the category of the author’s modality gets implemented with the language means of various levels, i. e. evaluative adjectives, explicit modal words and word combinations (certain word-combinations with modal verbs and predicatives), particular syntactic structures, etc.

The article proves that the gallant style Précieuses of 1760—1770s had a great stylistic influence on the Russian literature of the XVIII—XIXth centuries. «Natalia, Boyarskaya doch’» («Natalia, Boyar's daughter»), a story by N. M. Karamzin, was created under the decisive influence of «Doushen’ka» («Darling»), a poem by I. F. Bogdanovich, and absorbed the traditions of La Fontaine and Voltaire, becoming a model of the literary style for I. I. Dmitriev that he demonstrated in his fairy tale «Prichudnitsa» (“Dreamer”) and then for most Russian writers of the first half of the XIXth century.

The article examines the structure of Baratynsky’s poem and compares it to a Karamzin’s tale because in spite of some substantial differences these two works prove to be clearly similar. The characters could be more deeply understood if the esearch goes into their inner world. Such analysis allows to discover a few psychological strategies introduced into literary practice by Karamzin: the author’s presence in fictional world, "closeups", "anthropocentric" landscape, specific fictional details, bodily "code". Comparativistic analysis of the two texts, that are storywise close to each other, not only allows to trace Karamzin’s psychological tradition in Baratynsky’s poem "Eda", but gives grounds to make a broader conclusion: with "Poor Liza" the Russian literature started to explore the most subtle emotional moves in human soul showing them as a process, and the tradition founded by Karamzin paved way for the most important psychological discoveries of great Russian writers.

There are virtually no specialized studies into the creation of poetic image of N. Karamzin in late 18th — early 19th centuries in Russian literature; though it is the expressiveness and imagery of poetry which can have a great impact on the myths in public consciousness. The present study is based on the texts published in the following collections of poems: “Epigrams and Satire: from the history of literary feud of the 19th century” (Epigramma i satira: iz istorii literaturnoy bor’by XIX veka. Moscow, 1931. Vol.1); “Russian epigrams of the second half of the 17th — early 20th centuries” (Russkaya epigramma vtoroy poloviny ХVII — nachala ХХ vv. Moscow, 1975); “A wreath to Karamzin” (“Venok Karamzinu”. Moscow, 1992). These are collections of epigrams and poems by N. Karamzin’s opponents (N. P. Nikolev, D. P. Gorchakov, P. I. Golenischev-Kutuzov, N. M. Shatrov, S. N. Marin) and his multiple idolaters and followers (G. R. Derzhavin, P. A. Vyazemskiy, I. I. Dmitriev, P. I. Shalikov, K. N. Batyushkov, V. A. Zhukovskiy, A. S. Pushkin, V. L. Pushkin, N. M. Yazykov, A. N. Maykov, F. I. Tyutchev). N. Karamzin is depicted in poetry as a Russian language reformer; the one who brought harmony into the ‘nature’ of Russian language; a discoverer, ‘Columbus’ of Russian history, in disregard for famous Russian historians before N. Karamzin; and a true Russian citizen. Ultimately, the history of image of N. Karamzin in Russian poetry shows his relevance at hard and critical times of country’s history when fundamental values and value orientations were strained, but human worth which N. Karamzin presented to the world the full took on particular significance.

The paper is analyzing the novel "The Journey Erastus Krutolobov..." (1929) by the Soviet and Russian philologist V. V. Sipovsky as a tool for explaining Sipovsky’s literary concepts. Emphasis is placed on Karamzin, who Sipovsky considered a key-figure for the Russian literature of the XVIII and XIX centuries. According to Sipovsky, Karamzin managed to combine different, sometimes opposing, literary trends. Sipovsky’s parodical novel illustrates the impact of literary struggle of idealism and realism of early XIXth century onto the public life and the role of Karamzin’s sentimentalism in the history of Russian literature.

Y. Lotman’s defined his own book " The Creation of Karamzin” as a " novel-reconstruction”. This is an attempt to create a new genre — the ideal historical description, organized as a polylogue between the historian, novelist and semiotician. For this, Lotman relied on Karamzin’s experience. The structural and semiotic characteristics of the novel-reconstruction allow revealing some new features of Karamzin’s "History".

The article presents an overview of the anniversary texts about N. M. Karamzin, and analyses semiotics and pragmatics of his image. The author assumes that the jubilee event and constructing N. M. Karamzin’s image depends on the socio-cultural context and identifies forms of "revival" and “modernizing” the celebrant.