“Dorpat has a big role in my destiny...”: Vasily Zhukovsky in the Dorpat academic and literary coterie (1815–1819)

The article studies Vassily A. Zhukovsky’s creative persona and its role in the Dorpat (modern Tartu) academic and scholarly coterie in 18151819. On the one hand, the analysis is based on the information about Zhukovsky ’s life in Dorpat, a university city in Livonia: Sergey G. Isakov and Malle G. Salupere provided a broad overview of Zhukovsky’s acquaintances and interactions with the Dorpat intelligentsia, thus elucidating the key points of convergence between Zhukovsky and pivotal figures in the academia and cultural community. On the other hand, the author draws on the previously unstudied archival materials to specify the formats of the amicable relationships in Dorpat in 1815-1819. The fragments of the epistolary, published for the first time, including the letters to Zhukovsky from Evgeniya and Mariya Protasovas, August Weihrauch and his family, Timotheus von Bock, Johann Philipp Gustav von Ewers, Johann Parrot, demonstrate the intimate and lyrical nature of the relations, showing that Zhukovsky was quickly and heartily welcomed by the enlightened residents of Dorpat as a close and kindred person, a subtle thinker, and a keen feeler. The poetic messages to Zhukovsky from Georg Friedrich Parrot and Martin Asmuss emphasize the importance and advantage of aesthetic dialogue. In the changing poetic picture, Zhukovsky appears as an extraordinary personality, who is endowed with poetic inspiration from above and who, by his very nature, possesses a unique creative power of beauty and goodness. These two qualities are revealed and cognized precisely in a pure and sincere friendly feeling, equal to love. The author studies the principles of inclusion of Zhukovsky’s life and work in the two-volume anthology of Russian poetry and folk songs of the 18th-19th centuries, compiled in the early 1820s by Karl Borg. The eleven translations of different genres with a brief biographical essay highlight the high quality of Zhukovsky’s entire creative legacy. Zhukovsky’s aesthetic image is characterised by a synthesis of ideality and harmony, morality and beauty. The author declares no conflicts of interests.

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