Correspondence Between V.A. Zhukovsky and F. Von Muller as a Monument to the Literature and Culture of Romanticism

Research was conducted at Tomsk State University and supported by the Russian Science Foundation (RSF) Grant No.19-18-00083 “Russian Epistolary Culture of the First Half of the 19th Century: Textology, Commentary, Publication”. The article dwells on the correspondence between the Russian poet and the Tsar's mentor and the Weimar Chancellor, poet and prominent cultural figure F. von Muller. Covering twenty years and including more than 60 letters, the correspondence has never been in the academic focus before. The author identifies the main plots in the life-creating epistolary dialogue of the two romanticists, which provide important facts of Zhukovsky's civilizing activity and his connections with the German world. The epistolary dialogue of the two poets and prominent political leaders of Russia and Germany of the first half of the 19th century has already been discussed by scholars, yet it has never been exposed to public as an integral whole. Meanwhile, the epistolary appears to be of paramount importance for understanding the literary and court life of Russia and Europe during the time of their thriving cultures, suffice it to recall the leading role of Chancellor von Muller in the institutional history of Weimar classicism as well as the preservation and enhancement of its heritage and the role of V.A. Zhukovsky as a poet, translator, thinker, patron of the arts and Alexander II's mentor. Among the main topics of the epistolary dialogue were the myth of Goethe, romantic travelogue, religious-romantic discourse about lowliness during life, and the philosophy of memory. The Goethe's figure has always been present in the friendship of the Chancellor and the Russian poet as a constant focus of attention in their letters and a companion of their personal meetings after Zhukovsky's move to Germany. That is why Goethe's name can hardly be found in the letters of the 1840s. For twenty years of their communication, Zhukovsky and Muller have bid farewell to more than a dozen common acquaintances, monarchs, relatives, writers, and friends. Most of the letters contained information about the decease of a dear person or a memorable response on a similar occasion. On the one hand, this constitutive plot cannot be considered only from an artistic and aesthetic perspective, since it is connected with actual extra-epistolary circumstances, yet, on the other hand, its deplorable position is in harmony with the correspondents' romanticism nature: Muller and Zhukovsky intentionally verbalize and recognize the importance of perpetuating the image of a person after his departure, understanding it as a guarantee of immortality in his life-affinity. First, this vector is realized in the corresponding poetic genre of dedication or the literary and journalistic obituary in prose. While Muller dubbed Zhukovsky as “a northern singer”, Zhukovsky considers the Chancellor a master of the memorial genre. Their joint work on the obituary of A.I. Turgenev reflects their philosophy of romantic memory. The correspondence between Muller and Zhukovsky epitomizes “progressive universal poetry” (“progressive Universalpoesie”) and tireless romantic search for the ideal synthetic form suitable for art to merge with natural life, poetry with philosophy and rhetoric. The Romantic poetry of the epistolary communication between V.A. Zhukovsky and F. von Muller “can be viewed as a mirror of the whole world, a reflection of the era” (F. Schlegel). The commented edition of the correspondence corpus in French and German with a Russian translation will become a new word in modern humanitarian knowledge.

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