The echo of Goethe in Delvig's song

This article discusses the implementation of the motif of boy's tears in the noosphere of the world literature and in the space of cross-literary ties diachronically. The functioning of various implementations of this motif in the Gospel and in the Russian and German literary traditions of the age of sentimentalism is traced. The resonances in the development of motif of a male crying are established in the poems: Goethe's "Trost in Tranen" (1803), Zhukovsky's "Consolation in tears" (1817) and Delvig's "Not an autumn rapid rain" (1829). The motif of a men weep dates back to antiquity, the genre of crying is not necessarily associated with mourning women, also there were male mourners, the ritual of mourning the death of the god Osiris is known in ancient Egypt, also there were the biblical "Lamentations" and literary "Crying and consolation" by Sylvester Medvedev dedicated to the death of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. The period of sentimentalism put tears in the first row of his imagery as an expressive manifestation of emotionality, along with the "heart" and "soul." "The Complaint, or Night-Thoughts on Life, Death and Immortality" (1743-1745) by E. Young has been translated into Russian with the representative title "Lament." And even earlier, in 1774, so Goethe said about the hero of his first novel by wearing a mask of the publisher of his letters and diaries. In the early 1800s, when the era of sentimentalism was over, Goethe turned to folk couplets and created a poem "Trost in Tranen" (1803), forcing to cry not a girl longing for the darling (as in a folk song), but a young man. This story attracted Zhukovsky, who published in 1818 his free translation titled "Consolation in tears" bringing the motif of melancholy and sadness into the text. In the poem "Not an autumn, frequent rain" (1829) by Delvig mentioned patterns are clearly seen through in the motif of boy's tears as not a sign of weakness but a testimony of grief (sentimentalistic pretext), in dialogue form, in fine understatement not peculiar to folklore but inherent literary lyrics in the era of Goethe and Pushkin.

Keywords

Authors

References