V.A. Zhukovsky between two jubilees (1833-1902): Article 2. Festivities of the year 1902: combination of jubilees, strategies of self-canonisation

The article considers a new stage in the development of Zhukovsky's sociocultural reputation in connection with the jubilee festivities of 1902. The analysis of the documents and jubilee materials, which were timed for the fifty years of the poet's death, allows to single out not only the official comprehension of his personality and traditional direct projections of his biography on poetry but also the interferences of Zhukovsky's and Gogol's ''cults'', the emergence of a kind of ''self-canonisation'', the strengthening of this or that living author's or topical edition's charisma ''under the aegis'' of Zhukovsky's myth. The key points of this article are the following. Firstly, the official recognition of the poet and celebration in honour of his memory in the jubilee 1902 was confirmed by the Imperial Decree. It is connected with the fact that the state policy of forming a literary canon originated on the border of the centuries. The policy manifested itself, first of all, in glorification of Zhukovsky and Gogol. Secondly, the jubilee year of 1902 saw a new rise of documentary and fictional publications. The publishing activity consisted in presenting Zhukovsky's heritage and its most significant event was the first complete works of the poet edited by A.S. Arkhangelsky, which was issued in the jubilee year. Thirdly, it should be noted that the jubilee in 1902 had a ''double'' nature because in the most part of the celebration events of 1902-1903 the names of Zhukovsky and Gogol stood side by side. In ''double'' jubilee articles of 1902 more was said about Gogol the Writer and Zhukovsky the Person and the reconciliation of poetic ideals with life realised by the Russian romanticist becomes a leitmotif in describing his biography. Another important event, which coincided with this date, was the centenary of ''Vestnik Evropy'' journal whose editor in the early 19th century was Zhukovsky. By the initiative of V.S. Solovyov, another jubilee - the centenary of the birth of Russian poetry - was timed for 1902. By the jubilee of 1902 Zhukovsky had already been recognised as a key figure of Russian literature: his name was associated with the beginning of its "classical" period. At the same time in the history of native literature the poet was given the role of an important bonding link. The researches of Zhukovsky made at the end of the 19th century demonstrated that due to the peculiarities of his life-building scenario he had become an inalienable part of almost all outstanding biographies of his time, thus connecting them in a single semantic field. Therefore, the pathos of Zhukovsky's jubilee of 1902 sounded different than twenty years before: combined with Gogol's jubilee the festivities in Zhukovsky's honour turned into the jubilee of the Russian classics, and linked with the jubilee of Karamzin's "Vestnik Evropy" they turned into the jubilee of Russian journalism and culture of new time in general.

Keywords

Authors

References