Prince Meshchersky. History

The poet's friend Gavriil Derzhavin died , the hospitable prince Meshchersky. The poet was saddened by his departure so much that he responded with an ode. Despite the lack of the odd dimensions and majesty inherent in the genre, these eighty-eight lines touch the reader's soul so much that the search for information about who Prince Meshchersky is and what he is known is inevitably beginning? It turns out - nothing. The most ordinary person, although a representative of an ancient family. Prince Alexander, about whom Derzhavin was so grieved, greatly surpassed his descendant - Vladimir, who wrote as a publicist, and also edited and edited the magazine "Grazhdanin". But Prince Vladimir began publishing in 1887, and Derzhavin's ode "To the death of Prince Meshchersky" was written in 1779, almost a hundred years ago.

Oh yeah

Death and eternity are two topics concerning each and constantly intersecting in Derzhavin's clothes, unprecedented sincerity and penetration of lyrics - that's why these poems quickly became known and loved the reader. In their lines a deep philosophy is laid down concerning the insignificant human existence and a huge incomprehensible universe, within which Prince Meshchersky is still alive. It is comforting to the reader that Derzhavin shows humanity as a part of nature that is eternal, so people are also a part of this eternity, although each individual life is certainly finite, short-lived and transitory. After all, any person - noble and insignificant - must die.

The genius of Derzhavin was able to unite life with death in a joyful sensation of the first and tragic experience of the latter, and the deceased Prince Meshchersky, from the poet's easy hand, received an eternally welcome life-the poet so deeply and passionately empathized with the poet to his close acquaintance. Death is gloomy, inexorable, it is indifferent to the fact that the whole life of the hero of the lines of Derzhavin's ode was festive, full of beauty and contentment, luxury and harmony. To the limit, dramaticism intensifies precisely with this opposition: it is impossible to react to the death of Prince Meshchersky with the word "exhausted". The very collision unfolding in the clothing is controversial, as well as the figurative system used by the author.

The conflict inherent in the structure of odes leads to an understanding that the dialectical essence of the universe is contradictory and can not be brought to unity with a single human destiny. "Where the table was a lawn - there is a coffin there ..." - an exceptional verse in its saturation. "On the death of Prince Meshchersky" - an ode to eleven stanzas, where in every line life tries to resist death.

Confrontation

Eight lines of any stanza of this ode necessarily state about the confrontation between life and death. This is affirmed at various levels of submission of poetic material. An imaginary series, construction of syntactic constructions, changes in rhythmic patterns of sounding and so on. Derzhavin very abundantly uses the paths - poetical allegories, which eventually, already in the works of his followers, will be shaped like an oxymoron. This is a fairly complex path, but also extremely expressive: Gogol's Dead Souls, Tolstoy's Living Corpse, Bondarev's Hot Snow-the very names convey the whole ambiguity of experiences, feelings, and states of mind in the transmission of certain events.

Derzhavin became the founder of this means of expressiveness in the literary language. Absolutely opposite senses coexist in the same image - this is an oxymoron. Ambiguity, contradictions in everything - not only in every act of man, in his behavior, but all life is an oxymoron alone, hence the high degree of truthfulness in the lines of this ode. Analysis of the poem "On the death of Prince Meshchersky" clearly shows those beginnings that will subsequently be developed, improved and to the maximum will increase the psychological load of the work. For example, the phrase: "Today is God, and tomorrow dust." This means the following: we are born to die, and with death our life is acceptable. This is how the main idea sounds and Derzhavin's super-task in this work.

Prince Alexander Meshchersky

Ode, composed Derzhavin and published anonymously in the St. Petersburg Gazette of 1779, made this man famous. Young Ivan Dmitriev was so impressed with these lines that he wanted to certainly meet the author, and not only him. The city, and later the country, buzzed, exchanging raptures. Even Pushkin, many years after the publication of this work, was impressed so that he took the Derzhavin line as an epigraph to the head of Dubrovsky. After all, it would seem, it is impossible to express thoughts about life and death more specifically and shorter. The whole picture of man's existence is being pushed to an unlimited extent. Strings aphoristically chased do not convey almost anything biographical about their lyrical, suddenly deceased hero.

Son of luxury, a man of prosperity and very good health. What was amazing was his death for friends, relatives and acquaintances. Ode is usually written about historically significant persons, at least it prescribes all the laws of classicism. And here - just an acquaintance of the poet. Ordinary mortal, nothing of the total number of contemporaries is not outstanding. It's not Suvorov, not Potemkin, but an ordinary prince. Why did Derzhavin's poem "On the Death of Prince Meshchersky" make such an indelible impression not only on contemporaries, but also on distant descendants? This is also an innovation: at that time no poet has shown so much the power and commonality of the laws of the universe through the fate of the most ordinary of people.

The image of death

Death is written out Derzhavin in all its power - in detail and colorfully. Its image is shown in dynamics - consistently and unfolded. From grinding the teeth to trimming the oblique days of human life - in the first stanza. From swallowing entire kingdoms and smashing ruthlessly everything around - in the second.

Then the scope takes on cosmic dimensions: the stars are crushed, the sun goes out, all worlds face death. There is also some "grounding" here, so as not to fly away into this cosmos irrevocably. Derzhavin switches the reader to life-understanding by a small mocking scene: death stares, grinning at the kings, at the magnificent rich men, at the proud wise men - and sharpens, everything sharpens the blade of his braid.

Keynotes

The clarity of the division into stanzas does not at all break the smoothness of the narrative. A number of special artistic techniques set Derzhavin to his service for this purpose. The stanzas seem to flow one into another (the technique first used in Russian literature is so full and clear). Concentrating the main idea in the last line of the stanza, the poet repeats it in the first line of the next, developing then and amplifying. The idea and image, which are repeated throughout the text, are called the leitmotif, and Derzhavin used it. Ode "To the death of Prince Meshchersky" that's why it turned out to be such a harmonious and consistent work. The main leitmotifs were indifferent and impassive death and a fleeting life, like a dream.

Metaphysical text

Prince Meshchersky was not given high posts, prominent posts, he did not become famous in any way - neither by military, nor by administrative, nor by art department. A man without special talents, with pleasant features of purely Russian hospitality (which practically everybody possessed then). The first name Derzhavin gave to his work, and at all attributed it to the genre of the poetic message, but not to the canonical dress: "To S. V. Perfiliev, to the death of Alexander Ivanovich Meshchersky." However, the pathos of the true ode, sounded like a bell, gave out a genre accessory from the first stanza: "The verb of the times! Metal ringing!".

And then metaphysical problems are clarified. The death of anyone - even an unknown person at all - makes humanity a little less complete, and everyone lives a little less than full. The death of a friend is shown as an existential event in the streams of amazing poetic revelations. Talking about the death of the prince, Derzhavin clearly compares it with his own. The unity of each person with the whole of mankind is the metaphysics of this idea. And at the same time the ode "To the death of Prince Meshchersky" speaks of the confrontation of death, because each line suggests a reflection on the meaning of the existence of a particular person in the general universe, despite his unbroken laws.

The semantic structure

Original metamorphosis awaits the reader in every verse: the pioneer of Russian poetry first introduced absolutely new categories into literature: high-low, eternal-temporal, private-general, abstract-concrete. Of course, all this is known since the time of Aristotle. But only Derzhavin, these categories cease to sound as mutually exclusive, entering into a synthesis.

Ody, elated, enthusiastic sounding states the most disappointing of his postulates. Human life and its meaning: only a mortal does not think to die. Such oxymorons are numerous, and all of them in this dress are tragic, so it feels them Derzhavin. "On the death of Prince Meshchersky" - an ode that placed the reader in the face of death as the only constant, since any entity tomorrow or a thousand years, like a baobab, still dies.

Warning to the reader

The existence of such a constant is doubtful and illusory, because being-being, as it were, does not make sense, and, therefore, the essence is not true if there are no traces in the future from it. Derzhavin added meaning to the satiated, but for the most part senseless existence of his acquaintance, the ode "To the death of Prince Meshchersky."

The analysis of this work is made not only by philologists, but also by philosophers, where all its details are related to the model of the universe, where there is no self-grounded being of the individual, since individuality is devoid of beingness. However, the poet's inner experience comes into dispute with inevitability, as if warning the reader that he is on the verge of the abyss, that the chain of transformations will not be interrupted, that everything will disappear in this cosmic mystery without the slightest trace.

Another Prince Meshchersky

Derzhavin to Prince Meshchersky Vladimir Pavlovich could not have had a relationship, although his ancestor was awarded an ode to his death. Prince Alexander Ivanovich was an State Counselor, he served in the customs office. He loved literature and the St. Petersburg English Society (club). The Meshchersky family descended from the Tatar princes of the thirteenth century, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries - owned by Meshchera, among the representatives of the clan there were voevods - policemen and regimental. This and all that is known about the princes of Meshchersky, nothing special. But in 1838, the grandson of Karamzin, Prince Vladimir Meshchersky, was born, a person not of Derzhavin's odious character. This is one of the main characters of Russian social life of the nineteenth century, the character of not only astonishing rumors, but also scabric anecdotes. He worked hard, published a magazine (later - a newspaper), wrote "Conservative speeches," which were fairly well known among contemporaries.

His father - the Guard lieutenant colonel Peter Meshchersky, mother - the eldest daughter of the famous historiographer and writer Nikolai Karamzin. Parents are morally beautiful people, enlightened and believing in ideals. The son, according to his own words, had a character that was bad and of a nature. He dreamed of exploits in the name of the Motherland and about sexual attention from outsiders. Literary path was chosen by chance. In 1981 he described the arrival of the emperor to Potemkin, with whom he was in friendship. Shortly, Prince Meshchersky was granted chambers-Junkers. And work in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, after which the road to the well-known circle formed nearby was opened. And the rapid rise of the prince in the elite of the statehood of Russia began.

Counselor of the Sovereign

He liked the prince's heir-Count Stroganov, Prince Meshchersky liked it, so the circle of communication between the prince was located on the heights beyond the clouds-he became a close friend of the Tsarevich Nicholas (this meaning is invested, despite the attitude towards the future Russian monarch). Secular life was given to Vladimir Meshchersky not so simply as it seems: then Stroganov will call "a bad courtesan," then they giggle and laughed too loudly behind their backs. However, the adviser for the entire environment of the heir and himself Meshchersky still became. The Cesarevitch was very sick, and the prince accompanied him to Europe for treatment, for which the chief of the interior affairs department, Valuev, called him "intimate at court."

After the death of Nicholas (they talked about homicide on the basis of homosexuality) Meshchersky was given another czarevich, in the future - Alexander III, who had feelings for the cousin of the prince. This attachment of the future monarch Meshchersky was neutralized, taking fire on himself, for which the imperial family remained very grateful to him. By this time, the writer's itch became very annoying to the prince, and with the help of the crown prince, the real stronghold of autocracy-the magazine Citizen-was established. Thanks to the excellent successors, the founder of the magazine remained in the memory of the people. After all, his people, such as Dostoyevsky, Tyutchev, Maikov, continued his work. And Meshchersky himself on the pages of "Citizen" mercilessly wrestled with secular education, zemstvo, jury, peasant self-government and intelligent Jews. "Sodom prince and citizen Gomorrah," according to Vladimir Solovyov.