Reading'' and image of Rome in Russian poetry of 1800-1840s

The paper describes the history of the formation of the world-image of Rome as a mental text, as a representation of the concept ''universal responsiveness'' of the Russian language culture in the Russian artistic consciousness, in the Russian poetry of the 1810-1840s. In the first part of the paper the basic parameters of the discovery of Rome as the symbol of this world-image. The Russian palindrome Rome-world captures the process of development of the Italian space as literary, virtual, dreamlike by the Russian poetry (poems by I. Kozlov, D. Venevitinov, N. Gogol). Woven of poetic cliches (Goethe, Byron, Madame de Stael), Zhukovsky's romantic philosophy of ''elevation of the soul'', the names of Raphael and Tasso, it was an all-romanticist topos of ''a wondrous dream'', a fantasy, a vision. Rome and Italy were seen as almost synonymous. Gradually, through the generalized image of Italy the Russian poetry of the 1820s draws the world-image of Rome as a historical reality. The parallels Moscow - ''the Third Rome'', St. Petersburg - Rome tell about the immersion in Roman history. Rome becomes a representative of the Russian public consciousness of the era of ''civil exaltation". So from Batyushkov to Gogol the Russian language culture forms the concept of ''reading Rome''. The poetry of the 1820s elaborates on this idea as on the idea of spiritual and mental enlightenment of Rome. Images of the Roman antiquity, the names of Roman historians, the orator Cicero, the poet Ovid determine the allusion subtexts of the Decembrist poetry (K. Ryleev, F. Glinka, W. Kuchelbecker, P. Katenin), create the peculiar atmosphere of a Roman political masquerade. Pushkin's poem ''To Licinius'', the message of A.A. Shishkov ''To Metellus'', the role masks of famous figures of Roman history and culture in ''Arzamas'', the shadows of Tasso and Ovid offer new features of the world-image of Rome. This material determines the content of the second part of the paper. The poetry of the 1830s in the atmosphere of the ''era of stagnation'' actualizes the image of Rome as a symbol of the loss of ideals and hopes. At the same time the poets of the salon of Zinaida Volkonskaya and visitors of her Roman villa outline the route of the Russian poetry to the world image of the visible Rome, Rome as a ''reality with a heart''. Poetry of E. Baratynsky and S. Shevyrev is the prologue to the understanding of Rome as a society and a philosophical model of existence. The route to the prose introduces the Roman carnival element as the element of people's lives to the genetic code of the Russian poetic culture. The 1840s is a new stage in the poetic reading of Rome. This was the route to the real picture of the world-image. From the burlesque poem by Ivan Myatlev ''Sensations and comments of Mrs. Kurdyukova abroad...'' to the poetic cycle of Apollon Maikov ''Sketches of Rome'' the Russian poetry made its way to the domestication of Rome, to its depicting in faces and scenes. The Eternal City is a symbol of eternal life. The poem ''Rome'' by P. Vyazemsky was a kind of resume of the journey of the Russian poetry in the reading and the image of Rome-world. Russian Poetry of the 1810-1840s successively opened Rome and its world-image as a polysemantic local text, and at the same time in the process it revealed the idea of ''universal responsiveness'' of the Russian literature.

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