Elegiac genre in Russian poetry of the early 19th century. What is elegy: definition, history, elegy in literature and music What is the genre elegy

Initially, the concept of “elegy” was associated with the form of the poem, but over time the content and mood of the work became the dominant property. What works are now called elegy? What is an elegy? What motive does she carry?

What does the word "elegy" mean?

Vladimir Dal in the explanatory dictionary gives the following definition of this term: this is a sad, plaintive, slightly despondent poem. In the explanatory dictionary of Ushakov D.N. It also explains what an elegy is:

• in ancient literature - a poem written in couplets of various contents;
• c - this is the predominantly sad tone of love lyrics;
• in the new poetry of Western Europe - this is a lyrical work that is imbued with sadness and melancholy and is dedicated to some kind of reflection or love theme;
• in music, this is the name of musical works of a sad and sorrowful nature.

Ozhegov S.I. and Shvedov N.Yu. in their explanatory dictionary they give the following explanation of what an elegy is:

• this is a lyrical poem that is imbued with sadness, they are also called romantic elegies;
• a piece of music of a mournful, sad, thoughtful nature.

Efremova T.F. The explanatory dictionary explains that the term is used in several meanings:

• it is a lyrical genre of literature of the 18th and 19th centuries;
• this is a lyrical poem, imbued with sadness and sadness;
• poetry, which is written in couplets and contains the thoughts of the author;
• it is a synonym for the words “melancholy” or “sadness”.

The encyclopedic dictionary contains the same explanations of the term as in the explanatory dictionary of D.N. Ushakov.

According to Wikipedia, "elegy" is:

• lyrical genre, which contains in poetic form a complaint, sadness or emotional philosophical reflection on the issues of the universe;
• a piece of music of a sad, thoughtful nature.

History of Elegy

So what is an elegy? Where did this term come from? When did it arise? What was the original meaning?

The word comes from the Greek “elegos”, which is translated into Russian as “plaintive song”.

So, the definition of what an elegy is: in literature, it is a type of genre or a poem with emotional content, often written in the first person.

The concept itself arose in Ancient Greece in the 7th century BC (the founders of the genre were Mimnermus, Callinus, Theognis, Tyrtaeus), initially the elegy had a moral and political content or designated the form of verse. Works on various topics were created in a unique form, for example, Archilochus wrote accusatory and sad works, Solon - poems with philosophical content, Tyrtaeus and Callinus - about war, Mimnermus - about politics.

But during the period of the Roman development of poetry (Ovid, Propertius, Tibullus, Catullus) this concept is identified with love lyrics.

The heyday of elegy comes in the era of romanticism (Gray T., Jung E., Millvois C., Chenier A., ​​Lamartine A., Parni E., Goethe).

In the mid-18th century he wrote an elegy, which almost 50 years later was translated into Russian by V.A. Zhukovsky. - “Rural Cemetery.” She marked the beginning of the development of sentimentalism. At this time, in literature, the understanding of what elegy is completely changes. Now this concept means a poem that is permeated with sadness and thoughtfulness. The works of this era are characterized by themes such as loneliness, intimacy of experiences, disappointment, and unrequited love.

But over time, the elegy loses its genre distinctness, and the term gradually falls out of use, remaining only as a sign of tradition (Rilke R.M. “Duino Elegies”, Brecht B. “Bukovsky Elegies”).

Definition: what is elegy in the literature of Western Europe

The flourishing of this genre in European literature began with the elegy of the English poet Thomas Gray. In German literature in this genre, Goethe’s “Roman Elegies”, Schiller’s “Ideals”, “Walk”, many works by Mathisson, Heine, Herwegh, Lenau, Freiligrath, Platen, Schlegel and other authors were written.

Among the French, Debord-Valmore, Chenier, Millvois, Musset, Lamartine, Delavigne, and Hugo worked in this genre.

In Spain - Garcilaso de la Vega, Juan Boscan.

In Italy, the main representatives of this genre are Castaldi, Guarini, Alamanni.

In Poland - Balinsky.

History of elegy in Russian poetry

In Russian lyric poetry, elegy appears only in the 18th century; this genre is found in Trediakovsky V.K. and Sumarokov A.P., in the works of Zhukovsky V.A., Batyushkov K.N., Pushkin A.S., Baratynsky E. . A., Yazykova N. M.; starting from the 2nd half of the 19th century, the term is used only as the name of cycles by A. A. Fet and in the titles of individual poems by A. Akhmatova, D. Samoilov.

History of elegy in music

What is elegy in music? This is a genre of musical work of a sad or dreamy nature.

Elegy develops as a musical play only at the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th century, these are works by Busoni Ferruccio, Grieg Edward, Fauré Gabriel, Rachmaninoff Sergei, Kalinnikov Vasily. “Ellegie,” written by Massenet, became especially popular.

At the end of the 18th century, Russian vocal lyrics were significantly influenced by the plangent song. It is very close to elegy in content and methods of expression. The themes of death, unhappy love, and loneliness were close to her.

The drawn-out song gives way to a solo lyrical one, which is inextricably linked with literature - Teplov G., Mayer F., Dubyansky F., Kozlovsky O.

In the first half of the 19th century, the main field for elegy was romance. And in the second half of the century, elegy is present in the chamber-instrumental works of Rachmaninov, Tchaikovsky, and Arensky.

In the 20th century, many pop songs are descendants of lyrical elegies. Cutugno T., Doga E., Krutoy I., Pauls R. worked a lot in this genre. Each of them gave the world talented and amazing melodies, from which the soul becomes more beautiful, just like their music.

"Oh, where are you, days of love,

Sweet dreams,

Young dreams of spring?

The sad, soulful melody to which these poems are sung, first of all evokes in the Russian listener the voice of one of the best performers of this work, the French composer Jules Massenet. “Elegy” is what it’s called. What does this word mean, and what do musicians mean when they talk about “elegiac intonations”?

Elegy is one of those concepts that unite literature and music, existing in both arts. In Ancient Greece, elegies were small musical and poetic works written in distich - stanzas consisting of lines of different poetic meters (hexameter combined with pentameter). The content of ancient Greek elegies could be anything - they could tell about love or war, contain moral teaching or philosophical reflections. But if in Hellas the word “elegy” meant primarily a poetic form, then later in Ancient Rome the situation was exactly the opposite: the form of Roman elegies was relatively free, and a certain tradition was established regarding the content. Elegies began to be called love poems filled with sadness, telling about unrequited love and loneliness. It was precisely this kind of elegy that subsequently developed in European literature. This genre was especially loved by the poets of the era of sentimentalism, and later by the romantics.

This was the case in literature... but what about music? As we remember, at its birth in Ancient Greece, elegy originated as a musical and poetic genre, but in subsequent centuries the paths of poetry and music diverged. The second birth of elegy as a vocal genre took place in the 17th century. As in poetry, the main distinguishing feature of elegy in musical art was the expression of sadness. An example is the work of the English composer “Three Elegies on the Death of Queen Mary.” Having reappeared in music, the genre of elegy did not go away in subsequent centuries - it was addressed, for example, by those who created the “Elegiac Song” for four voices, accompanied by a string quartet.

The figurative and poetic content of the vocal elegy - a sad reflection on unrequited love, lost happiness or even death - determined its musical features: a melodious, smooth melody unfolding at a slow tempo. As a rule, elegies are written in a minor mode (although there are exceptions - major elegies). These features of vocal elegy were “inherited” by instrumental elegy - primarily piano - which arose in the 19th century. Similar plays were created by Edvard Grieg and Gabriel Fauré.

As for Massenet’s “Elegy,” with which we began our conversation, its history is very remarkable. The composer created it as a piano piece, and a few years later he arranged it for cello with piano accompaniment - in this form it was performed in the drama “Erinnies” by Leconte de Lille. Later, “Elegy” - like all the musical numbers for this drama - was rearranged for orchestra, and then the French poet Louis Galle wrote the text for it. So the instrumental elegy turned into a vocal one.

Did elegy exist in Russian music at that time? Of course it existed! Musical elegy came to Russia almost simultaneously with poetic elegy - examples of this genre can be found in the works of Pavel Ivanovich Fonvizin, Alexander Anisimovich Ablesimov, Denis Vasilyevich Davydov, but first of all, the birth of Russian poetic elegy is associated with the name of Vasily Andreevich Zhukovsky, more precisely, with his translation "The Country Cemetery", an elegiac poem written by the English poet Thomas Gray. Zhukovsky’s other elegies - “Evening”, “Slavyanka”, “Sea” - were no longer translated, but original. Many Russian poets of the 19th century created elegiac poems - Evgeniy Abramovich Baratynsky, Konstantin Nikolaevich Batyushkov, Nikolai Mikhailovich Yazykov. And if elegy came to Russian poetry, it could not help but come to Russian romance. A distinctive feature of the Russian elegiac romance was the combination of song and declamatory turns, as well as the relatively simple texture of the piano part, often reminiscent of accompaniment played on the guitar (however, the latter is not necessary). Examples of Russian romance-elegies are “Do not tempt”, “I remember deeply” by Alexander Sergeevich Dargomyzhsky, “For the shores of the distant fatherland”. Instrumental elegies were also created by Russian composers - both as separate pieces and as parts of cyclical works. For example, he called the first part of the mournful piano trio “In Memory of a Great Artist” “Elegy Piece”; one of the parts of his Serenade for string orchestra is called “Elegy” (this is one of those rare cases when the elegy has a major mode).

Composers of the 20th century also created elegies. Examples include the third movement of the Hungarian composer's Concerto for Orchestra, the "Elegiac Song" or Ernst Kshenek's "Elegy to the Memory of Webern".

All rights reserved. Copying is prohibited.

The word έ̓λεγος among the Greeks meant a sad song to the accompaniment of a flute. The elegy was formed from the epic around the beginning of the Olympiads among the Ionian tribe in Asia Minor, among whom the epic also arose and flourished.

Having the general character of lyrical reflection, the elegy of the ancient Greeks was very diverse in content, for example, sad and accusatory in Archilochus and Simonides, philosophical in Solon or Theognis, warlike in Callinus and Tyrtaeus, political in Mimnermus. One of the best Greek authors of elegy is Callimachus.

Elegy in Western European literature

Subsequently, there was only one period in the development of European literature when the word “elegy” began to designate poems with a more or less stable form. This period began under the influence of the famous elegy of the English poet Thomas Gray, written in 1750 and causing numerous imitations and translations in almost all European languages. The revolution produced by this elegy is defined as the onset of the period of sentimentalism in literature, which replaced false classicism.

Goethe's Roman Elegies are famous in German poetry. Elegies are Schiller's poems: “Ideals” (translated by Zhukovsky as “Dreams”), “Resignation”, “Walk”. Much of Matisson’s work belongs to elegies (Batyushkov translated it “On the ruins of castles in Sweden”), Heine, Lenau, Herwegh, Platen, Freiligrath, Schlegel and many others. others. Among the French, elegies were written by: Millvois, Debord-Valmore, Delavigne, A. Chenier (M. Chenier, his brother, translated Gray’s elegy), Lamartine, A. Musset, Hugo, etc. In English poetry, besides Gray, - Spencer , Young, Sidney, later Shelley and Byron. In Italy, the main representatives of elegiac poetry are Alamanni, Castaldi, Filicana, Guarini, Pindemonte. In Spain: Juan Boscan, Garcilaso de la Vega. In Portugal - Camões, Ferreira, Rodrigue Lobo, de Miranda. In Poland - Balinsky.

Elegy in Russian literature

Attempts to write elegies in Russia before Zhukovsky were made by such authors as Pavel Fonvizin, Bogdanovich, Ablesimov, Naryshkin, Nartov, Davydov and others.

Zhukovsky’s translation of Gray’s elegy (“Rural Cemetery,” 1802) marked the beginning of a new era in Russian poetry, which finally went beyond rhetoric and turned to sincerity, intimacy and depth. This internal change was reflected in the new methods of versification introduced by Zhukovsky, who is thus the founder of new Russian sentimental poetry and one of its great representatives. In the general spirit and form of Gray's elegy, that is, in the form of large poems filled with mournful reflection, such poems by Zhukovsky were written, which he himself called elegies, such as “Evening”, “Slavyanka”, “On the death of Cor. Wirtembergskaya". His “Theon and Aeschines” (elegy-ballad) is also considered an elegy. Zhukovsky also called his poem “The Sea” an elegy.

In the first half of the 19th century, it was common to call one’s poems elegies; the works of Batyushkov, Baratynsky, Yazykov and others were classified as elegies; subsequently, however, it went out of fashion. Nevertheless, many poems by Russian poets are imbued with an elegiac tone.

Sources

• Material from
• (link unavailable since 06/14/2016 (1170 days))

see also

Write a review about the article "Elegy"

Literature

• Gornfeld A.G.// Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron: in 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - St. Petersburg. , 1890-1907.

Excerpt characterizing Elegy

In addition to the robbers, the most diverse people, drawn - some by curiosity, some by duty of service, some by calculation - homeowners, clergy, high and low officials, merchants, artisans, men - from different sides, like blood to the heart - flowed to Moscow.
A week later, the men who arrived with empty carts to take away things were stopped by the authorities and forced to take the dead bodies out of the city. Other men, having heard about the failure of their comrades, came to the city with bread, oats, hay, lowering the price for each other to a price lower than the previous one. Artels of carpenters, hoping for expensive earnings, entered Moscow every day, and new ones were cut from all sides, and burnt houses were repaired. Merchants opened trade in booths. Taverns and inns were set up in burnt houses. The clergy resumed services in many churches that had not burned. Donors brought looted church items. The officials arranged their tables with cloth and cabinets with papers in small rooms. The higher authorities and the police ordered the distribution of the goods left behind by the French. The owners of those houses in which a lot of things brought from other houses were left complained about the injustice of taking all the things to the Faceted Chamber; others insisted that the French had brought things from different houses to one place, and therefore it was unfair to give the owner of the house those things that were found with him. They scolded the police; bribed her; they wrote ten times the estimates for the burnt government items; demanded assistance. Count Rastopchin wrote his proclamations.

At the end of January, Pierre arrived in Moscow and settled in the surviving outbuilding. He went to see Count Rastopchin and some acquaintances who had returned to Moscow, and was planning to go to St. Petersburg on the third day. Everyone celebrated the victory; everything was seething with life in the ruined and reviving capital. Everyone was happy to see Pierre; everyone wanted to see him, and everyone asked him about what he had seen. Pierre felt especially friendly towards all the people he met; but now he involuntarily kept himself on guard with all people, so as not to tie himself to anything. He answered all questions that were put to him, whether important or most insignificant, with the same vagueness; Did they ask him: where will he live? will it be built? when is he going to St. Petersburg and will he undertake to carry the box? - he answered: yes, maybe, I think, etc.
He heard about the Rostovs, that they were in Kostroma, and the thought of Natasha rarely came to him. If she came, it was only as a pleasant memory of the long past. He felt not only free from everyday conditions, but also from this feeling, which, as it seemed to him, he had deliberately brought upon himself.
On the third day of his arrival in Moscow, he learned from the Drubetskys that Princess Marya was in Moscow. Death, suffering, and the last days of Prince Andrei often occupied Pierre and now came to his mind with new vividness. Having learned at dinner that Princess Marya was in Moscow and was living in her unburned house on Vzdvizhenka, he went to see her that same evening.
On the way to Princess Marya, Pierre kept thinking about Prince Andrei, about his friendship with him, about various meetings with him, and especially about the last one in Borodino.
“Did he really die in the angry mood he was in then? Wasn’t the explanation of life revealed to him before his death?” - thought Pierre. He remembered Karataev, about his death, and involuntarily began to compare these two people, so different and at the same time so similar in love that he had for both, and because both lived and both died.
In the most serious mood, Pierre drove up to the old prince's house. This house survived. It showed signs of destruction, but the character of the house was the same. An old waiter with a stern face who met Pierre, as if wanting to make the guest feel that the prince’s absence did not disturb the order of the house, said that the princess deigned to go to her rooms and was received on Sundays.
- Report; maybe they’ll accept it,” said Pierre.
“I’m listening,” answered the waiter, “please go to the portrait room.”
A few minutes later the waiter and Desalles came out to see Pierre. Desalles, on behalf of the princess, told Pierre that she was very glad to see him and asked, if he would excuse her for her impudence, to go upstairs to her rooms.
In a low room, lit by one candle, the princess and someone else were sitting with her, in a black dress. Pierre remembered that the princess always had companions with her. Who these companions were and what they were like, Pierre did not know and did not remember. “This is one of the companions,” he thought, looking at the lady in a black dress.
The princess quickly stood up to meet him and extended her hand.
“Yes,” she said, peering into his changed face after he kissed her hand, “this is how you and I meet.” “He’s been talking about you a lot lately,” she said, turning her eyes from Pierre to her companion with a shyness that struck Pierre for a moment.

Despite the fact that the elegy has spent most of its (quite long) existence in the shadow of other, more popular lyrical genres, its history in itself is quite interesting: like a pulp novel, it is full of ups and downs, transformations and journeys. The elegy visited battlefields, the boudoirs of aristocrats and gloomy cemeteries. Remaining in a secondary role, she nevertheless played her role in the development of other genres and many European literatures, not least Russian.

Type of literature: lyrics

Appearance time: around 7th century BC.

Place of appearance: Ancient Greece

Canon: strict, changed over time

Spreading: European literatures

Origins

We will start, as expected, from the beginning. And the beginning of the elegy lies in Ancient Greece. It is not precisely established where the word ἐλεγεία itself appeared in ancient Greek (most scientists believe that it arose from the Phrygian word denoting the name of a musical instrument), but it is known that the Romans borrowed it from the Greeks, and from Latin it passed into many European languages. The ancestor of the elegy genre was lamentation, a mournful cry for the deceased, and the theme of death has long been one of the most popular among elegiac poets (remember “Rural Cemetery” by V.A. Zhukovsky).

However, initially the elegy was not necessarily mournful in nature. For example, the elegies of Callinus from Ephesus (the oldest of those that have survived to this day) were of a military-patriotic nature, calling to bravely fight and defend their homeland from invaders: “ You cannot escape fate, and often the fate of death overtakes a person who has fled from the battlefield in the home. No one pities a coward, no one honors him; the hero, on the contrary, is mourned by the entire people, and during his lifetime they honor him as a deity».

This theme sounded even stronger and more expressive in the elegies of the Spartan Tyrtaeus, which were used as war songs in Sparta.

The political elegies of Solon, the philosophical elegies of Xenophanes and the mythical elegies of a number of ancient Greek poets became widely known. The distinctive features of the elegy lay not in the themes described and the images used, but in the very structure of the elegies. They were written in a special system, the so-called. an elegiac distich, which was an alternation of hexameter and pentameter. The elegies of Callinus and Tyrtaeus were supposed to inspire and educate young men, instill in them a love of military affairs and instill in them high moral qualities, and it was for this purpose that the distich was used: unlike the classical hexameter, the alternation of lines and non-standard size made it possible to focus attention on the content contained in them morals, teachings, advice and warnings.

So at what point did the familiar sad elegy appear? As a rule, Mimnermus from Colophon is considered “responsible” for its occurrence. He was the first to use the elegiac distic to express his feelings, especially his love for the beautiful flutist Nanno. Mimnermus's erotic elegies are permeated with mournful reflections on the short duration of happiness, the fading of youth, the approach of old age and inevitable death.

Mimnermus had a significant influence on the ancient elegiac poets, both Greek and Roman, but, unfortunately, not all of his poems reached his descendants. Therefore, the founder of the genre of “real,” sad elegy is considered to be Guy Valery Catullus.

Mimnermus's erotic elegies are permeated with mournful reflections on the short duration of happiness, the fading of youth, the approach of old age and inevitable death.

The power of Catullus's feelings and experiences was so vividly described by him in his elegies that for his followers - Tibullus, Propertius - it became a prerequisite, a canon of the genre, and they wrote their elegies according to the model of Catullus. The difference was that while their mentor's lyrics were sincere, inspired by real love experiences, then for them they were purely exercises in poetic skill.

The age of imitative love elegy did not last long. Ovid, a follower of Tibullus and Propertius, tried to return to the style of Catullus: his elegies were also based on real feelings and experiences. Ovid drew inspiration from real feelings, from the vicissitudes of his own fate. It is not for nothing that his best works - “Sad Elegies” (Tristia) - were written in exile on the shores of the Black Sea. The sincerity of his feelings was highly appreciated by subsequent generations of poets.

I. Teodorescu-Sion. "Ovid in Exile" (1915)

N. Boileau in his “Poetic Art” wrote: “No, the living words were not funny to love / What Cupid dictated to Tibullus in days gone by / And his melody sounded artlessly / When he taught Ovid songs // Elegy is strong only with an unfeigned feeling” (Translation by E.L. Linetskaya).

Mimnermus's elegies were, in part, a happy accident, a successful find of the poet, an experiment with a still rather poorly developed genre. His work served as an example for many ancient elegiacs, but Mimnermus had no real followers who would continue his work. If it were not for the miraculous collections that have reached our time, perhaps we would not even know his name. The situation is completely different with the elegies of Catullus: in them we see systematicity, thoughtfulness, and purposeful development of the genre. There was a galaxy of poets who were students of Catullus.

Their work even had a political background: after the fall of the republic and the establishment of the tyranny of Augustus, civic activity came to naught, the new regime required only obedient servants and court flatterers, there was no place for opposition-minded, free-thinking artists, and the only way to preserve their creative independence was for them it became a departure into the world of personal life, intimate feelings and experiences, expressed by them through their elegies.

Revival of Elegy

Fifteen hundred years passed before elegy again occupied a prominent place in literature. The increased interest in ancient culture, which swept across Europe during the Renaissance, contributed to the revival of a number of literary genres, including elegy. Elegies were written by the Pleiades poets, especially Pierre de Ronsard and Joachin Du Bellay, and by a number of famous European poets such as Mathurin Regnier, Edmund Spenser and Luis de Camoes. Renaissance poetry, with its cult of a free, sensitive and comprehensively developed personality, needed genres capable of expressing the ideas of the new time, and elegy perfectly suited these requirements.

With the advent of the era of classicism, the situation changed again. The individual, directly emotional elegy did not fit well into the rigid, rational framework of the new direction, and therefore it was relegated to the background by such genres as the hymn and ode. Let us return to the “Poetic Art” of the classicism theorist Boileau, whose name we have already mentioned. He wrote: “In mourning clothes, looking down sadly / Elegy, mourning, sheds tears over the coffin // Her verse’s flight is not impudent, but high // She paints us lovers’ laughter, and tears / And joy, and sadness, and jealousy threats.”

Renaissance poetry, with its cult of a free, sensitive and comprehensively developed personality, needed genres capable of expressing the ideas of the new time, and elegy perfectly suited these requirements.

In general, the 17th - early 18th centuries were a period of decline in elegy. Its peculiarity has always been a certain rebellion, individuality, the poets’ opposition of their inner world to the external, cold and cruel world, but in the era of the heyday of classicism, these boundaries between the internal and external worlds were erased, poetry, limited by the framework of rationalism, began to be used for socio-political purposes and in there was no place for elegiac individuality. The destiny of elegy becomes the so-called. Precious poetry is the mannered and pretentious poetry of aristocrats.

Romanticization

However, soon the elegy again rose to the top of the poetic Olympus, becoming the herald of pre-romantic trends. It was precisely those qualities that relegated her to the background during classicism that became her salvation with the advent of romanticism. Due to certain features of historical development, the country in which elegy was (again) revived was England. This did not happen by chance, of course: in England, which was the first to encounter bourgeois society in Europe, a critical attitude towards it arose before anyone else. The poets again turned to the intimate individuality of the Roman elegy, but this time contrasting it not with the despotism of prudent politicians, but with the bourgeois dullness of the bourgeoisie. An interesting feature of the English elegy was the contrast between rural romance and boring city life, the idealization of the rural way of life.

The most prominent example of elegies of that time was “Elegy Written in a Country Cemetery” (1750) by Thomas Gray, which Zhukovsky translated decades later (“Rural Cemetery”): “In the foggy twilight the surroundings disappear // There is silence everywhere; Everywhere there is a dead sleep / Only occasionally, buzzing, an evening beetle flashes / Only the dull ringing of horns can be heard in the distance.”

I. Levitan. "Evening" 1877

We see a return to the ancient roots of elegy, to lamentations with all the themes and images that will dominate the genre for another century: crosses, graves, evening, moon, ringing bells and reflections on human fate, on the inevitable death and futility of existence. Such a setting partly blurs the line between the real world and the imagination, and tends to emphasize the strength of experienced feelings against the backdrop of a weakened reality, because for the romantic poets, experienced emotions were much more important than fleeting reality.

Russian classical elegy

It is no coincidence that we described the main milestones that elegy passed in its development before moving on to the description of Russian elegy. In addition to the influence of foreign contemporaries, many Russian poets felt themselves to be ideological followers of the elegiacs of antiquity. For example, K.N. Batyushkov was close in spirit to the work of Tibullus. Particularly close to him was Tibullus's desire to resist the despotism of his time, which he expressed through his creativity. A.S. Pushkin, on the contrary, was impressed by Ovid, who knew how to uniquely express the depth and strength of his feelings and experiences. In addition, Pushkin was one of the first poets to again turn to the elegiac distic.

Surprisingly, one of the important sources from which Russian poets drew inspiration was folklore, in particular - as was the case in the times of Ancient Greece - laments and lamentations.

Such a setting partly blurs the line between the real world and the imagination, and tends to emphasize the strength of experienced feelings against the backdrop of a weakened reality, because for the romantic poets, experienced emotions were much more important than fleeting reality.

Thus, elegies were often compared in the reader’s perception to traditional lamentations, appeals to the dead with questions and requests. This is quite natural: the reflections contained in the elegy must be addressed to someone, but not every listener is suitable for the role of addressee. This must be a sensitive person who understands the poet’s mental turmoil. Do such ideals exist? It's hard to imagine. A dead person is a completely different matter: even without knowing the person, you can easily imagine him as exactly the addressee the author needs, and “communicate” with him accordingly. He will not answer (God forbid!), will not interrupt, will listen carefully and understand all the sorrow the poet has put into his creation.

Elegy, which is usually considered not the most significant and noticeable genre, fell on the good soil of the broad and deeply feeling Russian soul, and became entrenched in Russian literature for almost two centuries. During this time, domestic poets, starting with Sumarokov and ending with Balmont and Bryusov, managed to try on all its types and varieties and create their own, unique version. In general, the Russian elegy reflected the despair, melancholy and sorrow of Russian poets (in it, in particular, their characteristic thirst for reflection found its place). ■

Natalya Drovaleva

Elegy is lyrical genre, a poem of medium length, meditative or emotional content (usually sad), most often in the first person, without a distinct composition. Elegy originated in Greece in the 7th century BC. (Kallin, Tyrtaeus, Theognis), initially had predominantly moral and political content; then, in Hellenistic and Roman poetry (Tibullus, Propertius, Ovid), love themes become predominant. The form of ancient elegy is the elegiac distich. In imitation of ancient examples, elegies are written in Latin poetry of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance; in the 16th and 17th centuries. Elegy. transitions into new language poetry (P. de Ronsard in France, E. Spencer in England, M. Opitz in Germany, J. Kochanowski in Poland), but has long been considered a secondary genre. The heyday comes in the era of pre-romanticism and romanticism (“sad elegies” by T. Gray, E. Jung, C. Milvois, A. Chenier, A. de Lamartine, “love elegies” by E. Parni, restoration of ancient elegies in “Roman Elegies”, 1790, J.W. Goethe); then the elegies gradually lose their genre distinctness and the term falls out of use, remaining only as a sign of tradition (“Duino Elegies”, 1923, R. M. Rilke; “Bukov Elegies”, 1949, B. Brecht).

Elegy in Russian poetry

In Russian poetry, elegy appears in the 18th century by V.K. Trediakovsky and A.P. Sumarokov, and flourishes in the works of V.A. Zhukovsky, K.N. Batyushkov, A.S. Pushkin (“The daylight has gone out...”, 1820; “The clouds are thinning...”, 1820; “The faded joy of crazy years...”, 1830), E.A. Baratynsky, N.M. Yazykov; from the second half of the 19th and into the 20th centuries, the word “elegy” is used only as the title of cycles (A.A. Fet) and individual poems of some poets (A.A. Akhmatova, D.S. Samoilov). See also Meditative lyrics.

The word elegy comes from Greek elegeia and from elegos, which translated means a plaintive song.