The Phenomenon of Reading in the Russian Literature and Culture of the 1800s-1830s and the “Book-Friend” and “Book-Interlocutor” Metaphors

The Russian culture of the beginning of the 19th century, inheriting European traditions, endowed book and reading with special value and, at the same time, strove for sounding speech. Printed text and speech seemed to have made an amazing union: the pronounced printed word turned out to be an important element of social life: a friendly revel, a secret society, a literary salon. Oral speech was a kind of a poet's creative laboratory (the pronounced word, the colloquial style were to be studied and then reproduced in his works), and the rich sound of the poetic word was a measure of the aesthetic value of the text. In a situation of increased interest in a sounding word, a common metaphor for reading was talk or conversation, and the book itself or, metonymically, its author was called an interlocutor, a friend. The explanation of the love of Russian poets for tonal communication with the text (reading as a conversation, hearing the singer's voice), from the author's point of view, lies in ancient Greek mythology: here aletheia-the truth that the Olympic muses disclosed to ancient poets-required proclamation. The truth could and had to be heard. Following the ancient poets, Russian poets also called themselves singers because the texts needed to be read aloud with inspiration. The image of the poet-singer and the semantics of a free poetic voice were the components of creativity for all poets of the Pushkin era, including Decembrist poets. After 1825, these acoustic motifs and images (the sounds of fame and freedom, tyrannical songs, the free voice of the poet and singer) received a tragic coloring, but did not disappear. In the cold and boundless expanses of Siberia, the joy and necessity of lively communication, friendly conversation only intensified; here the “book-friend” turned out to be the salvation and replacement of friendly communication. That is why the Decembrists communicated with a “book-friend”. They comprehended the reading of texts in tonal semantics (for example, A.A. Bestuzhev wrote to his relatives: “I talk most of all with my friends who are always with us-books”). The book-friend, book-interlocutor/comrade metaphors are found in the letters and diaries of A.A. Bestuzhev, W. Kuchelbecker, V.F. Raevsky. The bibliography of the Decembrists in Siberia was extensive and diverse: scientific works went next to artistic and philosophical ones, ancient with modern; therefore, for the exiled, the cold space of Siberia was as a kind of a “university”, an “academy” (this is how M.S. Lunin, V.F. Raevsky speak about the years of Siberian reading). Thus, for the Russian noblemen of the 1810s-1830, freedom and reading-talk/conversation as a manifestation of this freedom, the value of a “book-friend”/“book-teacher”/“book interlocutor” turned out to be in a single semantic field.

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