Russian Self-Taught Poets of the 1820s: Pastoral, Patronage and the British Example

Abstract

This article studies the emergence of the “self-taught poet” position in Russian literature of the 1820s and its dependence on the system of literary patronage. Literati had notable control over the careers of poets from unprivileged social classes and shaped their choices of literary form to fit these peasant poets to particular aesthetic expectations. It is shown how literary patrons (Pavel Svin’in and Boris Fedorov) tried to implement the successful English model of Robert Bloomfield and keep their protégés within the confines of pastoral poetry and the setting of rural labour. The case of the serf Fedor Slepushkin – the most prominent self-taught poet of 1820s – demonstrates a clear connection to the English pastoral tradition and the role of the Romantic “rural idyll” in his success among political elites. The article also shows that the aesthetic window for the pastoral model of the peasant poet was not open for long. The organic aesthetics that spread in the 1830s established folkloric foundations for national literature, and “peasant song” replaced “peasant pastoral”. This shift underlay the success of Aleksei Koltsov in the 1830–1840s, who was the first Russian poet to both occupy the position of self-taught poet and use folksong language in his poetry.