V.A. Zhukovsky between two jubilees (1833-1902): Article 1. Time of jubilees, space of power, mechanisms of designing poetical biography

The paper considers strategies of forming V.A. Zhukovsky's biographical myth in the period of celebrating his jubilees: the centenary of his birth and the fiftieth anniversary of his death. A literary jubilee usually provokes a splash of interest to the figure of a person whose anniversary is celebrated and it becomes that very critical point which defines his classical or non-classical status. At the same time the peculiarities of jubilee celebrations and of the texts inspired by them are conditioned not only (and often - not so much) by the facts of life and creative activity of a living or already dead hero of the festivities, but, in the first place, by the social-literary context of the date itself. Celebrations in the honour of V.A. Zhukovsky, one of the creators of new Russian literature, give extensive material for both studying the ''cult'' of the first Russian romanticist, sociocultural reputation changing from epoch to epoch, and for understanding the ''mechanisms'' of jubilee celebrations as an act of the writer's historical canonization. The paper begins with the following proposition: the key trends of interpreting Zhukovsky's heritage, which were aimed in the jubilee year of 1883 and then strengthened during the following celebrations in 1902, formed in the end the main tendencies in comprehending Zhukovsky's oeuvres and biographical myth in the fin-de-siecle culture. The nearest context to celebrate the year of 1883 was the events of the early 1880s: the opening of the monument to A.S. Pushkin and the death of Alexander II. The opening of the monument to Pushkin in 1880 was a symbolic borderline in self-consciousness of Russian literature. Speeches made by Dostoevsky, Turgenev and Aksakov at the ceremonial opening of the monument conditioned further reflection about the sources of Russian literary classics. The death of Zhukovsky's crowned pupil inspired publication of a great number of documents connected with the emperor's biography and activity which could not be published during his life. Since that time energetic development of the theme Zhukovsky-pedagogue and Zhukovsky-tutor of the Tsar-Liberator began. Zhukovsky's jubilee of 1902 also added a juridical subtext to the symbolic one. According to the laws of the empire, fifty years from the date of a writer's death meant stopping his copyright after which his heritage became a universal property. A very important consequence of this transformation was the mass spread of this writer's oeuvres and such a practice confirmed the ideological strategies of popularization projected nineteen years before. The first step to promulgation of the Russian romanticist's poetry was publishing ''selected'' Zhukovsky's works for a folk school and staging his works in the Folk House. Among the attempts to conceptualise Zhukovsky's biography in the works published on the occasion of his jubilee several approaches should be singled out: popularizing, academic and romanticist. These tendencies in reception of Zhukovsky and his heritage are considered in the paper by example of the works by K.K. Leidlits, P. Zagarin (L.I. Polivanov) and N.S. Tikhonravov. The erection of the monument to the poet in Alexandrovsky Garden and renaming one of the central streets of the capital into Zhukovsky street became symbolic events timed for the jubilees in 1883 and 1902. In official symbols of Zhukovsky's memory - in the bust and in the street - the poet came out, first of all, as a tutor and a person close to the imperial family and only then as one of the forefathers of contemporary domestic poetry.

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