Pushkin anthological epigram: Poetics of self-referentiality

The article is devoted to the analysis of Viktor Sosnora “The separation of the animal bark from the fear of an owl...”, written in 1966 and published in the USSR in 1977. The role and meaning of the concept words ‘separation’, ‘memory’, ‘prison’, ‘death’ in the poem are shown. The author’s graphic design of the poem vaguely resembles the sonnet canon, and the size (multi-foot amphibrach with a single impregnation of dactyl) reminds of imitations of ancient versification (hexameter, elegiac distich). None of the signs of the sonnet and the hexameter are reproduced sequentially, but each of them is manifested in the poem at least once. A lyrical plot related to travels to the world of dreams and the world of death has been recreated. In the first part of the poem, the lyric hero visits the kingdom of ancient Hypnos. In the second part, he addresses himself in the present, and his voice sounds as if from the domain of Thanatos. The ending of the poem expresses gratitude to the Creator in a sophisticated and saturated form with literary reminiscences and allusions. Shown are the echoes of the memory of the works of Russian poetry of the 18th – 20th centuries, both related to the textbook classics (G. Derzhavin, A. Pushkin, M. Lermontov, A. Blok, B. Pasternak) and unknown (F. Kozelsky, V. Krasov).

1. Introduction In most European poetical traditions, dactylic hexameter is almost always the first ancient metre to become employed systematically. same happened in Estonian poetry: here too the verse technique of hexameter was the first to gain special attention. developers of the Estonian hexameter proceeded mostly from the German and Russian tradition. Although the German theorists had discussed the possibilities of the quantitative hexameter in modern languages already since the beginning of the 19th century (for details, see, e.g. Lotman 1976, 1987), the Estonian hexametrists still proceeded from the principle offered by Johann Christoph Gottsched in the 18th century. According to this principle, the strong positions were to be filled with stressed syllables and weak positions with unstressed ones: such rules resulted in the accentual-syllabic hexameter. aim of the present paper is to give a synopsis of the Estonian accentual-syllabic hexameter from the second half of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century. material comprises the translation of the first song of The Odyssey by Jaan Bergmann (i.e. 444 verses), Friedrich Kuhlbars' stichic hexameters (72 verses) and elegiac distichs (208 verses), Villem Ridala's elegiac distichs (456 verses) and several other attempts of dactylic hexameters in the earlier Estonian poetry. main attention will be paid to three different aspects of versification, that is, to the prosodical, metrical and rhythmical structures. 2. Jaan Bergmann's hexameter 2.1. Prosody Jaan Bergmann was the first Estonian author who in order to diversify Estonian poetry (1) systematically wrote stichic hexameters and thus developed the principles of accommodating hexameter into the Estonian language. Jaan Bergmann uses in his hexameter several techniques which are characteristic of the Estonian poetry in the 19th century. most conspicuous are the following. 1) monophthongization of diphthongs. (2) In the earlier Estonian poetry, regardless of verse metre, diphthongs and long vowels can turn into monophthongs whenever required by versification rules. For example, in the following iambic tetrameter by Karl Eduard Soot (from the poem They said ...--Nad utlesid ...) we encounter the word 'kaod' which would normally be considered a monosyllabic word containing a diphthong, but in this particular case is monophthongized and thus fills two metrical positions: x X x X x X x X x Nad utlesid, sa kaod ara. There are numerous examples of such device in Jaan Bergmann's hexameters as well. For example, in the following verse: X x x X x x X X x x X x X xx X x Et tema nimi saaks tutvaks ja ausaks kuulsate reas (1, 95), the last foot is filled with the word 'reas', which is normally a monosyllabic word. In this case the diphthong 'ea' is monophthongized and becomes a disyllabic word: re-as. other diphthongs like this are, e.g. ea, oa, eo, ao in the following verses: X x x X x x X x X X x X x x Xx Ning et ta kusida voiks, kas isast ei midagi teaks (1, 135), X x x X x x X x x X x x X x x X x Koledas koopas ja teinud tast omale viimase roa (2, 20), X x x X x x X x X x x X x x X x Kuna teid endid on hulk, et jataksid joledad teod (2, 241), X x x X x x X x X x x X x x X x Koiki mu kaaslasi hirm siis kohutas kahvatuks naost (12, 243). At the same time, diphthongs can be retained as such, cf 1, 216: X x x X(x) x X x x X x x X x x X x Seda ei tea. Sest ukski ju ise ei tea, kust ta parit where the word 'tea' occurs in the verse twice. In the first case its prosody can be interpreted in two possible ways: it either fills the strong position of the second foot as a diphthong or is monophthongized and fills the strong position and the first element of the weak position in a dactylic foot. …

This study of the translation strategies for Romeo and Juliet heavily relies on two aspects concerning the play’s genre complexity: the lyrical plot (drawing on the poetic fashions of the 1590s), and the comical carnival element, imbued with a Shakespearean London idiom. The process of the Russian adaptation of Shakespearian imagery was lengthy and fraught with difficulties, not only due to the play’s linguistic complexity, but because of differences in treatment of higher matters (here, poetry) and social and everyday realities. The paper discusses the first Russian translation of Romeo and Juliet, penned by Ivan Roskovshenko. The study focuses on discovering the ways in which the play’s Petrarchian stylistics transforms in the Russian interpretation. A detailed comparative analysis of the translation and its original suggests that I. Roskovshenko consistently replaced the rhetorical conventions of the 16th century with the patterns of contemporary Russian poetry, domesticating the Shakespearian text. The approach only paid off when the images of English Petrarchism, interspersing Romeo and Juliet, resonated with the Russian poetry of the early 1800s.

After the conquests of Alexander the Great, many Greeks migrated to the southern regions of Asia Minor, including Lycia, Pisidia, Pamphylia, and Cilicia. They brought along their cultural traditions, which gradually merged over several centuries with the most enduring aspects of the indigenous culture. The ancient Greek language completely supplanted the Lycian, Pisidian, and other Anatolian languages. Education followed the established Greek canons, with Homer’s poems serving as primary texts. But, while the ruins of cities that have survived to this day provide an opportunity to gain an idea of the Hellenization of architecture, it is much more difficult to assess the extent to which the Anatolian population was able to familiarize itself with the Greek education system. The author of the article aims to establish the level of familiarity of the inhabitants of southern Asia Minor with the poems of Homer, to determine their personal attitude toward this poet, and argues that only inscriptions found in this region can be the material for such research, namely inscriptions written not in prose, but in hexameter or elegiac distich. Epigraphic material usually stands outside the scope of literary studies. Therefore, the relevance of this work lies not only in the formulation of the research problem but also in the choice of material for research. The article examines in detail four epitaphs. Their text indicates a very close familiarity of their creators with Homer’s poems. But even more sticking is the fact that there were quotations from the Iliad or the Odyssey in these epitaphs, and these quotations served to identify or even self-identify the one to whom these short poems were dedicated. One such quotation even appears in a prose inscription from the Adada city territory. These examples signify that during the Roman Empire, Homer evolved into an undisputed authority for the descendants of the original inhabitants of Anatolia, the same as he had always been for the ancient Greeks themselves.

The article follows the travels of a richly carved limestone fireplace that was originally located in 71 Pikk St., Tallinn. It was commissioned by local merchant Jacob Höppener in 1653; in the middle of the 19th century it was sold and taken to Russia. Several Baltic German heritage enthusiasts produced descriptions of the artefact, but after the historical upheavals of the beginning of the 20th century lost sight of it. From the middle of the century, Estonian art historiansstudying stone carvings and restoring the building made efforts to find the fireplace, but in vain.The paper examines the archival, printed and web sources about the artefact and traces it to its new locations, first in St. Petersburgand then in Tsarskoye Selo. The fireplace’s new owners, the princes Kochubey, used it to enhance the Historicist interiors of theirresidences. During the Soviet period the artefact’s provenance was forgotten and it was inaccessible to the public. In recent years, thefireplace has been reintroduced to a wider audience; a new origin story and a new interpretation of its iconography have been proposed and popularised by the Kochubey Centre.The article brings together the sources and results from researchers in different countries who have studied this mobile artefact over one-and-a-half centuries. The rediscovery of the Höppener-Kochubey fireplace is a solution to a longstanding mystery, and the artefact haswelcome similarities to Renaissance era stone carvings in Estonia. This case study also uncovers information about the sale of antiquities, the use of those antiquities in interior design, the interests and goals of collectors, and knowledge transfer through learned societies in 19th century Estonia, Latvia and Russia.

In theory of landscape art Hanging gardens have been known since ancient times. In Russia this type of garden appeared in 17th century. Two gardens of this type were created in the 18th century in Tsarskoye Selo, but only one of them survived. The article attempts to consider the history of the formation of Hanging and Maid-of Honor Gardens located in Tsarskoye Selo Park. Initially, the Hanging Garden of Elizabeth Petrovna was created on the gallery of Catherine Palace, not far from the empress’s chambers, and under Catherine II another garden was laid out on the terrace next to the palace, one of the sides of it was formed by the facade of Cold Bath, where the personal library of the empress was kept. Analysis of graphic materials makes it possible to trace the history of the formation of gardens.

The article comprehensively approaches the theme of military victories in the poetic reflection of Catherine Park in Tsarskoye Selo, enriching the perception of the semantics of the place that has the stable definition of the “motherland of muses” in the cultural memory. The extensive background of Russian poetry starting from the Enlightenment exposes the clear, obscure, or concealed evolution of the perception of the Park as the space of memory, historical reminiscences, and the pantheon of Russian glory. The analysis of the 18th–19th-centuries poetry material of various styles and trends, from classicism and romanticism to acmeism and its successors, makes transparent the choice of the objects for reflection as well as enables us to see the dynamics and transformation of their interpretation in various historical epochs. The author particularly focuses on the Park symbolism ascending to A. S. Pushkin’s poetry: Kagul obelisk and Chesme Column crowned with the victorious eagle. One can trace this Pushkin tradition of monuments’ interpretation in the artwork of those poets of Tsarskoye Selo who lived in the former Soviet Union or emigrated. The author concludes that poets’ appeal to the allegories of patriotism and dedicated service to the Motherland gained a prominent focus in crucial times, such as a war or revolution. In peaceful times, the landscape sceneries dominate in perception, transforming the artistic “Universe” of the Park into “the country of imagination” and the symbol of the Eden of love and creativity.

2024 marks the 200th anniversary of the death of Agustín de Betancourt (1758–1824), a distinguished Spanish and Russian engineer and scientist. His contribution to the development of engineering in both Spain and Russia is well-known; however, his role as a link between the two countries’ cultures is of particular interest. The research on the «Russian» period of Betancourt’s life began in the 1960s, yet recent discoveries by Russian scholars have revealed new aspects of his legacy in Russia. Although Betancourt’s life and work were closely tied to Saint Petersburg, his engineering projects can also be found in other Russian cities, such as Moscow and Nizhny Novgorod. Betancourt’s great legacy includes the fountain «Girl with a Jug» in Catherine Park in Tsarskoye Selo, the wooden Kamennoostrovsky Bridge, Saint Isaac’s Pontoon Bridge and Saint George’s Church. In addition, Betancourt’s engineering solutions were used in the construction of Saint Isaac’s Cathedral. Agustín de Betancourt’s legacy has to do not only with his material work, but also with his relationships with people who greatly influenced his life and work in Russia, above all with Emperor Alexander I. The memoirs of his contemporaries, such as Ivan Resimont and Filipp Vigel, shed light on Agustín de Betancourt’s career in Saint Petersburg, his personality and his unique role in the history of scientific and cultural relations between Spain and Russia in the early 19th century.

Introduction. The Livadia estate, which by the end of the 19th century became the main of the Romanovs’ Crimean possessions, claimed to be on a par with Tsarskoye Selo and Peterhof. One of the main problems for gaining such a status was the issue of providing the palace complex with fresh water. Methods and materials. The historiography of the imperial residences of the Crimea is dominated by the works of art critics, architectural historians, and art historians, often leaving organizational, administrative, and economic issues in the shade. Synthesis and analysis of archival materials of institutions of the Ministry of the Imperial Court allow us to reveal the course of development of the system for supplying Livadia with fresh water as one of the problems in the history of this possession of the Romanov dynasty. Analysis. The problem of supplying drinking water was on the agenda almost immediately after the acquisition of the estate by the Department of Appanages in 1861. The initial calculation of using their own sources did not materialize, and until the beginning of the 20th century, this problem was solved by attracting sources belonging to other owners. At the same time, when interacting with the Tatar community of the village of Gaspra and the Ministry of Agriculture and State Property, contractual methods were used, and when the sources of the Oreanda estate were included in the water supply system of Livadia, administrative levers within the Court Department were also used. However, with exhaustion by the 1900s and opportunities for extensive development, the managers of the estate turned to the development of a project to improve the entire water supply system. Prepared by engineer I.K. Sikorsky, the plan was rejected for several years by the leaders of the specific department, and only thanks to the persistence of the head of the Livadia-Massandra Appanage administration, V.N. Kachalov, when the decision on the complete reconstruction of Livadia was approved in 1909, it was included in the list of works and the complete reconstruction of the water supply. Results. Thus, the system for supplying the Livadia estate with fresh water went from using its own resources through extensive expansion to the idea of the need for a complete modernization of the system, which was implemented in 1910–1912.

The paper considers the history of the construction of lost element of the background building in Tzarskoe Selo – by the modern address Saints-Petersburg, town of Pushkin, 21, Krasnaya Zvezda street. This house was built in 1938 and was many times rebuilt and finally completely lost its initial appearance, but is still on the place of its construction. On the base of archival researchers, we manage to reveal the sequence of its reconstructions and architectural features of the building in the various periods of its existence. We have determined names of architects who participated in design and construction of the house (I.A. Rezantzev, A. A. Ton) and also found names of its owners in different periods. It was thought that widow Frideretzi was the first owner of the house. Our studies show that there were at least two owners before her. Genealogical studies allowed collecting information about Elisabeth Frideritzi, who was in fact the last but not the only owner of the house in the prerevolutionary period. The survived drafts and pictorial representations, published for the first time in our article, help to produce detailed description of the building. Special attention of the authors paid to the reconstruction to the design of architect V.D. Sokolov in 1909 – 1910. The fate of the background buildings in town of Pushkin in 20th century turned tragically. During the World War II the town was occupied by Nazi. 85% of buildings were destroyed completely, and the rest needed serious renovation. In 1947 the former house of Frideritzes was reconstructed in the style of Soviet classicism, and its initial appearance was distorted. The paper gives the critical description of the architecture of the building. In the 1960 the building has had the capital repair, which changed its internal plan. The building now keeps size and scale of the initial background building, other elements, which define its city planning significance are lost. The object lost its authentic appearance and therefore cannot be considered object of history of culture.

The Greek epigram published in this article was discovered in 2016 in modern Turkey, at Kibyra in southwest Asia Minor, during excavations under the directorship of Assoc. Prof. Şükrü Özüdoğru of the University of Burdur. Six lines preserving 3 elegiac distichs are carved on a stone that also features a relief showing a round shield with two greaves on either side. The epigram probably dates between the 1st century BCE and the 1st century CE and evokes the classical ideal of both physical and civic excellence in commemorating a man who died fighting as a citizen-soldier.

Although ancient verse has also been translated into Estonian with different non-equimetrical strategies, from the very beginning the equimetrical way of translation has prevailed, the purpose of which has been to convey the meter of a source text in the target text. Ancient meters are found in the Estonian tradition of translation from the end of the 19th century, when several authors undertook the translation of voluminous hexametrical texts. During the following decades, hexameter became an important meter both in original and translated poetry, first in accentual-syllabic or syllabic-accentual versification systems, later different quantitative forms were added. In the case of Estonian quantitative hexameter, a two-way evolution can be observed: the aim of the first direction is to accommodate hexameter in the prosodic reality of the Estonian language and develop a form that allows licences in the metrical structure rather than deform language, the aim of the second is to create a verse form, which, first of all, follows the patterns of ancient verse and, if necessary, forms artificial rules of quantity in order to accommodate Estonian language with the structure of hexameter.The incidence of other ancient meters, including different Ionic and Aeolic verse forms, is considerably lower. During the obser ved period, Aeolic meter s are conveyed in two dif fe -rent forms: in syllabic-accentual verse, where quantity plays only a rhythmic role, and syllabic-accentual-quantitative form, where the number of syllables is always strictly fixed, the distribution of accent s is governed by cer tain rule s, while quantit y is more impor tant in strong positions and less regulated in weak positions.At the same time, we come across non-equimetrical translations as well, where instead of the original meter some other verse form has been chosen for the translation. Such rendition can be a functional equivalent, but sometimes it is just the result of a random choice. On the other hand, mostly in the case of poems in hexameter or elegiac distichs, the verseto-prose translation strategy is also used.Therefore, we can see that during the observed period ancient meters were translated with a variety of strategies. There were many different experiments and some of these resulted in a vital and sustainable tradition still viable in Estonian poetry translation.

Abstract. The works of Ukrainian neoclassicists as the representatives of the era of «Executed Renaissance», who left an invaluable heritage and made a tremendous contribution to the enrichment of not only Ukrainian but also world literature, have repeatedly become the subject of scholars’ research. The purpose of the study is to analyze the sonnet as a phenomenon that appeared in the first third of the last century: what caused its «rigidity» and «severity», as well as what is its poetic beauty. Materials and methods of research. This article is based on the analysis of archival materials, letters, memoirs, the press of the twenties («Chervonyi Shliakh», «Nova Hromada», etc.), published and unpublished editions of works by Ukrainian neoclassicists. The severity of life dictated its own rules, its own style and its own norms. Sonnets of Ukrainian neoclassicists were also rigit or «strict». Comparative-historical and descriptive methods are used in the work. Discussion. The representatives of the informal society «neoclassicism», which was formed in Ukraine in the 20s of the 20th century, professed an aesthetic concept of spiritual renewal of the writer’s consciousness and the nation in general, disciplined the cardiocentric element of the «executed Renaissance» generation of artists, combining the Dionysian tradition with the Apollonian culture. The aesthetic platform that united the neoclassicists was the love to the word, to the strict form, to the great heritage of the world literature. They realized the sonnet as a «strict style», as a «severe» form. Ukrainian neoclassicists set the task of creating a «great style of Ukrainian literature» based on Greco-Roman antiquity and European Parnassians; hence there is a cult of strict classical forms (sonnet, octave, Alexandrine verse, elegiac distich). When Ukrainian neoclassicists spoke, they did not declaim ideological and aesthetic manifestos. Ukrainian neoclassicists, in contrast to the Russian ones, were distinguished by greater creative conservatism: if the latter put Pushkin as a role model, the first were oriented towards Greco-Roman antiquity and French Parnassians (the first edition of Ukrainian neoclassicism was «The Anthology of Roman Poetry» by M. Zerov, 1920), strictly adhered to canonical classical forms. Conclusions. The genre canon of the sonnet implies conceptuality that must be realized through a certain compositional rhythm according to the universal scheme: thesis – antithesis – synthesis. Such scheme of the sonnet dramatic line development «tells» the poet the most general direction in the development of thought, mood, and contemplation. The sonnet allows to resolve contradictions. Consequently, it is a balance between the stable and the variable, a dialogue with yourself, with the world; this is the beauty of dramatic trembles of poetic content. Finally, this is a distinctive stylistic thinking which attracts primarily the poets of the rationalist mindset.

The history of Russian epitaphs starts on rather late. The people in Rus’ were not accustomed to place any inscriptions on the tombstones for several centuries after the Conversion. The first inscriptions are found on the burial monuments dating back to the late 15th century. However, for a long time, until the second half of the 17th century, the inscriptions on the stones were extremely laconic. Their austere formular was usually limited to the date of death of the deceased and his name. A rhetorically decorated epitaph for a certain Theodore Tveritin stands out against the background of the typical inscriptions of the epoch. The epitaph lacks the name of its author. It is copied among additional texts in two manuscripts containing the works of Maxim the Greek. The article proves that he is the real author of the epitaph. The surviving text is a translation from a lost Greek original. This original was written in elegiac distichs, but it was translated into Church Slavonic as prose. The article suggests that the epitaph, like several other texts by Maxim the Greek, was written on occasion of the renovation of the Tver cathedral. This cathedral was completely distroyed by the fire in 1537. The author of the article assumes that Theodore Tveritin, to whom the text is dedicated, is Theodore the Good, the bishop of Tver of the 14th century. His burial was located in one of the cathedral’s aisles. The epitaph by Maxim the Greek is written according to the Byzantine traditions, and it can be added to a series of the writer’s experiments in different rhetorical genres (etopoeia, prosopopoeia). The epitaph for Theodore Tveritin is published in the Appendix of the article. The work by Maxim the Greek is important for the reconstruction of the author’s Greek-language legacy as well as for the history of the epitaph as a literary genre.

In the second half of the 11th century, a humanist circle of clerical poets, living around the central valley of the Loire, was writing poetry in classical language and metre. Baudriu of Bougueil, who wrote an impressive corpus of Latin poems, was an expert in the language, style, verse, motifs and genres of the classical and later antique pagan and Christian poetry, and treated theological as well as profane and explicitly ancient topics. About 1107, when he was urged to become bishop and to abandon, his personal independence and quiet monastic life, he gave voice to his disgust of the new ecclesiastical burden by a long poem in elegiac distichs. This paper tries to show the ancient genres Baudri has used and transformed and even inverted in order to describe his special situation. Therefore, in imitating the ancient genres, far from showing only his literary colture, he was rather using ther in a very specific and personal way. This use of literary traditions can best be analyzed, in terms of intertetextuality.