Introduzione alla Russiade di Carlo Denina

Abstract

Many epic poems and plays were composed both in Russia and abroad between the 18th and early 19th centuries to honour the Czar Peter I, who early on had become one of the models of enlightened absolutism for the European Enlightenment. In fact, it was during this same period that John Perry wrote The State of Russia under the Present Czar and Voltaire penned the famous Histoire de l’Empire de Russie sous Pierre-le-Grand, which set the founder of Saint Petersburg «dans le rang des plus grands législateurs». In 1796, an unfinished epic poem by Carlo Denina entitled La Russiade was published in Berlin, praising Peter I, the city he founded in 1703 and the Russian empire. The final edition of the work is dated 1810 and as per tradition contains twelve cantos. Since it was written in prose, Denina boasted that he was «the first author of an epic poem in Italian prose», thus tying the work to the newly created tradition of the prose poem. The story is set between 1709, the year of Peter I’s victory over the Swedish, and 1721, when the Treaty of Nystad marked Russia’s ascent toward becoming a major European power. During a solemn assembly in St. Petersburg Peter is named emperor, while at the same time the city founded by him grows and prospers. Denina also manages to insert passages praising Napoleon and the Czar Alexander I. Though written in prose, the Russiade adopts many conventions of the epic genre and contains various passages in verse, some of which even rhyme.