Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow by Irina Reyfman (top 10 novels of all time .txt) 📕

new syllabo-tonic system, the line of verse was determined by the number of fixed syllables arranged according to a regular pattern of unstressed and stressed vowels (the tonic element). Vasily Trediakovsky (1703–1769), Mikhailo Lomonosov (1711–1765), and Alexander Sumarokov (1717–1777) were instrumental in carrying out this reform. In the following paragraphs, both their positive and negative contributions to this reform are discussed.

110. The traveler’s interlocuter expresses regret over predominance of iambs in eighteenth-century Russian poetry, mentioning Lomonosov’s predominantly iambic transpositions of psalms and chapters 38–41 of Job, Sumarokov’s iambic tragedies Semiramis (Semira, written and staged 1751, published 1768) and Dimitry the Pretender (Dimitry Samozvanets, staged and published 1771), and Mikhail Kheraskov’s iambic epic poem Rossiada (1770–78).

111. Vasily Petrov’s translation of the Aeneid (1781–86) and Ermil Kostrov’s translation of cantos 1–6 of the Iliad (1787) are also written in iambs.

112. On Trediakovsky and his Tilemakhida, see the note to the dedication at the beginning of this book.

113. The first translation of Voltaire’s Henriade into Russian was done in unrhymed iambics by Yakov Knyazhnin (1740 or 1742–1791), published in 1777.

114. Radishchev wrote “Liberty” (“Vol’nost’”) in the early 1780s and first published it, with significant cuts, in his Journey. Despite the criticism of iambic meter in “Tver,” it follows the tradition originated with Lomonosov’s “Ode on the Capture of Chocim” (written in 1739, significantly revised for its first full publication in 1751) in using both iambic tetrameter and a ten-line stanza. In early manuscript versions of the Journey, after “Liberty” was included a metrically innovative “Creation of the World” oratory (pesnopenie).

115. Veche: see note 44.

116. Radishchev took an interest in the constitutional arrangements of the new American republic, curious about the relationship between states and a federal government. He also disagreed with Montesquieu and Rousseau that only small states can enjoy good government. See A. N. Radishchev, “Razroznennye zametki,” in his Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 3 (Moscow, Leningrad: Izd. AN SSSR, 1952), 47, item no. 7. This was in a way his response to their argument.

22. ZAVIDOVO

117. Radishchev’s mistake: it was Neptune who used this expression addressing the winds in Virgil’s Aeneid (see Book I, 135: “Quos ego—”). Radishchev quotes Virgil’s poem in Vasily Petrov’s translation, where these words are translated as “Ia vas! …”

118. Polkan: see note 25.

119. The address “His Excellency” signals that the passing bureaucrat is of the third or fourth class, which entitles him to six horses per carriage. The requirement of fifty horses satirically implies that he either travels in eight to ten carriages or wants more than six horses per carriage.

120. Radishchev refers to Denis Fonvizin’s satirical General Court Grammar (Vseobshchaia pridvornaia grammatika, 1786). Fonvizin (and Radishchev after him) puns on phonetic terms: glasnye (vowels, but also having a voice, able to speak out) and bezglasnye (voiceless, not able to speak out).

24. PESHKI

121. The original uses an idiom “golod—ne svoi brat” (“hunger isn’t one’s brother”), which means that hunger is difficult or impossible to ignore.

25. CHORNAYA GRYAZ

122. Slavo-Greco-Latin Academy: a religious school on Moscow founded in 1685 (classes began in 1678) and converted by Peter the Great to a state institution of higher education in 1701. Lomonosov was accepted as a student in January 1731 and left in late 1735, after he was selected, along with eleven other students, to be sent to Germany to be trained in mining. In 1734, he spent a year studying at the Kiev Academy.

123. Christian Wolff (1679–1754): German natural philosopher and mathematician. Lomonosov studied mathematics, physics, and mechanics under his supervision until his departure in July 1739 for Freiberg to study chemistry and metallurgy.

124. Before departing for Germany, Lomonosov bought Trediakovsky’s 1735 New and Brief Method for Composing Russian Verse (Novyi i kratkii sposob k slozheniiu rossiiskikh stikhov), in which Trediakovsky proposed first steps in reforming the syllabic versification system dominant in Russia at that time. Lomonosov’s copy of Trediakovsky’s book survived with Lomonosov’s extensive marginalia (the copy is preserved in the Archives of Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg, fond. 20, op. 2, no. 3).

125. All the figures listed here were renowned as orators. The Athenian Demosthenes was a statesman and a legendary rhetorician; the Roman Cicero was a senator and an important intellectual; (William) Pitt the Elder, a British prime minister in the mid-eighteenth century, was famed for his organlike voice. The figures from Radishchev’s generation are Edmund Burke, the Irish parliamentarian, philosopher, and enemy of the French Revolution but supporter of the American colonies; Charles James Fox, notorious as an antislavery campaigner and supporter of the French Revolution; and the comte de Mirabeau, a French revolutionary activist. These three figures used their eloquence to whip up political assemblies.

126. A reference to Lomonosov’s transposition of Psalm 103 (Orthodox Psalm 104); written before 1749, first published in 1784.

127. A reference to Lomonosov’s 1748 “Evening Meditation on the Greatness of God on the Occasion of Great Northern Lights” (“Vechernee razmyshlenie o Bozhiem velichestve pri sluchae velikogo severnogo siianiia”). In this deist poem, Lomonosov discusses several hypotheses explaining the aurora borealis.

128. Gudok: a primitive chordophone instrument mostly used in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by Russian jugglers (skomorokhi).

129. A reference to Lomonosov’s “Ode on the Day of the Ascension to the All-Russian Throne of … the Empress Elisaveta Petrovna, the Year 1747” (“Oda na den’ vosshestviia na vserossiiskii prestol … imperatritsy Elisavety Petrovny 1747 goda”), 1747.

130. Pyotr (Platon after becoming a monk) Levshin (1737–1812), the Metropolitan of Moscow from 1787 to 1812, a theologian and a gifted rhetorician. Radishchev refers to his 1772 oration given on the occasion of the Russian naval victory of Chesme. Radishchev also implies Levshin’s connection to Plato (Platon in Russian tradition) through his adopted name.

131. William Robertson (1721–1793): a Scottish historian; Andreas Sigismund Marggraf (1709–1782): a German chemist; Andreas Rüdiger (1673–1731): a German natural philosopher and physicist.

132. Radishchev is referring here to Georg Wilhelm Richmann (1711–1753), a Baltic German physicist, a member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. He was electrocuted while experimenting with lightning.