“Lenore” by Burger / Zhukovsky in the creative consciousness of Afanasy Fet: Russification, Orientalization and other alterations

The paper raises the problem of the role of the precedent text in the evolution of the Russian poetic ballad. This approach is based on the reader’s recognition of certain samples that serve as a model of the genre. The “Russian Lenore” played the role of such a prototype in the history of the Russian ballad. It was a translation of Gottfried Burger’s “Lenora”, which Vasily Zhukovsky translated three times: “Svetlana”, “Lyudmila”, and “Lenore”. The article considers one of the receptive scenarios in the fate of the Russian ballad - the perception and reinterpretation of the genre associated in the mind of a Russian reader with Zhukovsky in the poetic heritage of Afanasy Fet. The ballads by Fet and Zhukovsky, as well as the entire circle of lyrics and memoirs by both classical poets, are taken as primary sources. The theoretical basis of the research includes works by V.E. Vatsuro and Yu. V. Shatin on the history of genre formation; A. Fowler and K. Newsom on the cognitive theory of genre (prototype theory); V.S. Kiselev, R.G. Leibov and A.M. Panchenko on the historical and ideological implications of artistic works. In the course of the research, the biographical implications in Fet’s works were described. Like Zhukovsky before him, Fet reflected his personal story of “imposture” in the artistic coordinates of a ballad. In his poems, he “processed” two interconnected personal traumas: the “illegitimacy” of the poet’s descent and the death of his beloved Maria Lazich. Therefore, Fet’s early ballads, as a rule, poetically recreate the biographic plot on his mother, and the later ones are about a deceased lover. The first plot in Fet’s works demonstrates the “Orientality” of images and devices as a kind of a typological feature of the ballad. The next problem that is formulated and solved in the article is the problem of the typology of Fet’s ballads. As is shown, in the early works of the younger classic, two groups of plots can be distinguished: lyrical-epic -about a secret relationship; lyrical - about a child. The article analyzes in detail the aesthetic receptive connections of Fet’s ballads with the prototype pieces -“Lyudmila”, “Svetlana”, “Lenore”, “Erlkonig”, and “Aeolian Harp” by Zhukovsky. In conclusion, the key techniques of lyricizing the ballad genre in Fet’s work are identified and justified: changing the subject-figurative structure and active use of the lyrical “I” in ballads, eventlessness and miniaturization, strengthening the role of individual motifs. The components of genre poetics, previously reflected at the level of fabula, text structure and narration, descend in Fet’s works to the plot-motif level. Among these motifs we observe anxious expectation, mystery and circling/twisting. All of them are semantically connected with the illumination of the irrational side of human fate and nature, i.e. those aspects of life that entered Russian literature alongside with the ballad genre. The author declares no conflicts of interests.

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