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Bunyn - копия

Prince Antioch Kantemir is recognized as the first Russian writer to merge life and poetry, using satire to critique Russian society while employing an unnatural syllabic verse. Vasily Trediakovsky later liberated Russian poetry with a syllabo-tonic system, while Mikhail Lomonosov established stylistic criteria for poetry and founded the University of Moscow. Lomonosov's work, alongside Aleksandr Petrovich Sumarokov, integrated neoclassical principles into Russian literature.

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6 views1 page

Bunyn - копия

Prince Antioch Kantemir is recognized as the first Russian writer to merge life and poetry, using satire to critique Russian society while employing an unnatural syllabic verse. Vasily Trediakovsky later liberated Russian poetry with a syllabo-tonic system, while Mikhail Lomonosov established stylistic criteria for poetry and founded the University of Moscow. Lomonosov's work, alongside Aleksandr Petrovich Sumarokov, integrated neoclassical principles into Russian literature.

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Prince Antioch Kantemir (1708-1744) is widely considered the first Russian writer to

“blend life and poetry in his works.” Kantemir served as Russian ambassador to London
and Paris, and as a confirmed neoclassicist concurred with Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux
that the highest of literary forms were the ode and the satire, which he used to attack
reactionary Russian political and social elements. Kantemir’s language is realistic, but
his satires are framed in the imported syllabic verse dependent on fixed accents, a form
of versification unnatural to the Russian language. Kantemir’s less talented and
nonnoble contemporary Vasily Trediakovsky (1703-1769) freed Russian poetry from
these unnatural constraints by introducing a syllabo-tonic system based on equal
bisyllabic metrical feet, a rhythm found in the Russian popular ballad.

Mikhail Lomonosov (1711-1765), a peasant poet, achieved scientific fame abroad and
returned to found the University of Moscow in 1756. Lomonosov’s Pismo o pravilakh
rossiyskogo stikhotvorstva (1739; letter concerning the rules of Russian prosody) set
stylistic criteria for poetry: a “Noble Style,” employing Old Church Slavonic elements,
used for heroic poetry and tragedy; a “Middle Style,” for ordinary drama; and a colloquial
“Low Style,” for correspondence, farce, and everyday usage. Lomonosov’s syllabotonic
odes exhibit conventional patriotic themes, but as Marc Slonim has noted, Lomonosov’s
meditations are “still living poetry.” With Lomonosov, the aristocratic poet Aleksandr
Petrovich Sumarokov (1718-1777) established the principles of Boileau and Voltaire as
paramount in Russian letters.

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