One of the main poems of G. R. Derzhavin is his ode “Felitsa”. It is written in the form of an appeal from “a certain Murza” to the Kyrgyz-Kaisak princess Felitsa. The ode for the first time made contemporaries start talking about Derzhavin as a significant poet. The work was first published in 1789. In this poem, the reader has the opportunity to observe both praise and blame at the same time.

main character

In the analysis of the ode “Felitsa” it is imperative to indicate that it was dedicated to Empress Catherine II. The work is written in iambic tetrameter. The image of the ruler in the work is quite conventional and traditional, reminiscent in its spirit of a portrait in the style of classicism. But what is noteworthy is that Derzhavin wants to see in the empress not just a ruler, but also a living person:

“...And the food is the simplest

Happens at your table...”

Novelty of the work

In his work, Derzhavin portrays the virtuous Felitsa in contrast to the lazy and pampered nobles. Also in the analysis of the ode “Felitsa” it is worth noting that the poem itself is imbued with novelty. After all, the image of the main character is somewhat different compared to, for example, the works of Lomonosov. Mikhail Vasilyevich’s image of Elizabeth is somewhat generalized. Derzhavin points in his ode to specific deeds of the ruler. He also speaks of her patronage of trade and industry: “She orders us to love trade and science.”

Before Derzhavin’s ode was written, the image of the empress was usually built in poetry according to its own strict laws. For example, Lomonosov portrayed the ruler as an earthly deity who stepped from distant heavens to earth, a storehouse of infinite wisdom and boundless mercy. But Derzhavin dares to move away from this tradition. It shows a multifaceted and full-blooded image of the ruler - a statesman and an outstanding personality.

Entertainment of nobles, condemned by Derzhavin

When analyzing the ode “Felitsa”, it is worth noting that Derzhavin condemns laziness and other vices of the court nobles in a satirical style. He talks about hunting, and about playing cards, and about trips to buy newfangled clothes from tailors. Gavrila Romanovich allows herself to violate the purity of the genre in her work. After all, the ode not only praises the empress, but also condemns the vices of her careless subordinates.

Personality in ode

And also in the analysis of the ode “Felitsa”, the student can note the fact that Derzhavin also introduced a personal element into the work. After all, the ode also contains the image of Murza, who is sometimes frank and sometimes sly. In the image of nobles, contemporaries could easily find those close to Catherine who were discussed. Derzhavin also meaningfully emphasizes: “That’s how I am, Felitsa, depraved! But the whole world looks like me.” Self-irony is quite rare in odes. And the description of Derzhavin’s artistic “I” is very revealing.

Who is Felitsa opposed to?

A student can discover many new facts in the process of analyzing the ode “Felitsa”. The poem was in many ways ahead of its time. Also, the description of the lazy nobleman anticipated the image of one of the main characters in Pushkin’s works - Eugene Onegin. For example, the reader can see that after waking up late, the courtier lazily indulges in smoking a pipe and dreams of glory. His day consists only of feasts and love pleasures, hunting and racing. The nobleman spends the evening walking on boats along the Neva, and in a warm house, family joys and peaceful reading await him, as always.

In addition to the lazy Murza, Catherine is also contrasted with her late husband, Peter III, which can also be indicated in the analysis of the ode “Felitsa”. Briefly, this point can be highlighted as follows: unlike her husband, she first of all thought about the good of the country. Despite the fact that the Empress was German, she wrote all her decrees and works in Russian. Catherine also defiantly walked around in a Russian sundress. In her attitude, she was strikingly different from her husband, who felt only contempt for everything domestic.

Character of the Empress

In his work, Derzhavin does not give portrait descriptions of the empress. However, this shortcoming is compensated by the impression that the ruler makes on her environment. The poet seeks to emphasize her most important qualities. If it is necessary to analyze the ode “Felitsa” briefly, then these features can be described as follows: it is unpretentious, simple, democratic, and also friendly.

Images in ode

It should be noted that the image of Prince Chlorus also runs through the entire poem. This character is taken from The Tale of Prince Chlorus, which was written by the Empress herself. The ode begins with a retelling of this fairy tale; there are such images as Felitsa, Lazy, Murza, Chlorine, Rose without thorns. And the work ends, as it should be, with praise to the noble and merciful ruler. Just as happens in mythical works, the images in the ode are conventional and allegorical. But Gavrila Romanovich presents them in a completely new manner. The poet portrays the empress not just as a goddess, but also as one who is not alien to human life.

Analysis of the ode “Felitsa” according to plan

A student can use a plan something like this:

• Author and title of the ode.
• History of creation, to whom the work is dedicated.
• Composition of the ode.
• Vocabulary.
• Features of the main character.
• My attitude towards ode.

Who was the author of the ode making fun of?

Those who need to make a detailed analysis of the ode “Felitsa” can describe those nobles whom Derzhavin ridiculed in his work. For example, this is Grigory Potemkin, who, despite his generosity, was distinguished by his capriciousness and whimsicality. The ode also ridicules the ruler’s favorites Alexei and Grigory Orlov, revelers and horse racing enthusiasts.

Count Orlov was a winner of fist fights, a ladies' man, a gambling hunter, as well as the killer of Peter III and the favorite of his wife. This is how he remained in the memory of his contemporaries, and this is how he was described in Derzhavin’s work:

“...Or, taking care of all matters

I leave and go hunting

And I’m amused by the barking of dogs...”

We can also mention Semyon Naryshkin, who was the huntsman at Catherine’s court and was distinguished by his exorbitant love of music. And Gavrila Romanovich also puts himself in this row. He did not deny his involvement in this circle; on the contrary, he emphasized that he also belonged to the circle of the chosen ones.

Image of nature

Derzhavin also glorifies beautiful natural landscapes, with which the image of an enlightened monarch is in harmony. The landscapes he describes are in many ways similar to scenes from tapestries decorating the living rooms of the St. Petersburg nobility. Derzhavin, who was also fond of drawing, called poetry “talking painting” for a reason. In his ode, Derzhavin speaks of a “high mountain” and a “rose without thorns.” These images help make the image of Felitsa even more majestic.

“Felitsa” (its original full title: “Ode to the wise Kyrgyz-Kaysat princess Felitsa, written by some Murza, who has long lived in Moscow, and lives on his business in St. Petersburg. Translated from Arabic in 1782”) was written with a focus on the usual ode of praise. In its external form, it seems to even be a step back from “Birthday Poems...”; it is written in ten-line iambic stanzas, traditional for a solemn ode ("Poems for the birth..." are not divided into stanzas at all). However, in fact, “Felitsa” is an artistic synthesis of an even broader order.
The name of Catherine Felice (from the Latin felicitas - happiness) was suggested by one of her own literary works - a fairy tale written for her little grandson, the future Alexander I, and shortly before published in a very limited number of copies. The Kyiv prince Chlorus is visited by the Kyrgyz khan, who, in order to verify the rumor about the boy’s exceptional abilities, orders him to find a rare flower - “a rose without thorns.” On the way, the prince is beckoned by Murza Lazy, who is trying to tempt him away from an overly difficult undertaking with the temptations of luxury. However, with the help of the Khan's daughter Felitsa, who gives Chlorus her son's Reason as a guide, Chlorus reaches a steep rocky mountain; having climbed with great difficulty to the top of it, he finds there the sought-after “rose without thorns,” that is, virtue. Using this simple allegory, Derzhavin begins his ode:

Godlike princess
Kirghiz-Kaisak horde,
Whose wisdom is incomparable
Discovered the right tracks
To Tsarevich young Chlorus
Climb that high mountain
Where does a rose without thorns grow?
Where virtue lives!
She captivates my spirit and mind;
Let me find her advice.

Thus, conventionally allegorical images of a children's fairy tale travestically replace the traditional images of the canonical beginning of the ode - the ascent to Parnassus, the appeal to the muses. The very portrait of Felitsa - Catherine - is given in a completely new manner, sharply different from the traditional laudatory description. Instead of the solemnly heavy, long-cliched and therefore little expressive image of the “earthly goddess,” the poet, with great enthusiasm and hitherto unprecedented poetic skill, depicted Catherine in the person of the active, intelligent and simple “Kirghiz-Kaisak princess”:

Without imitating your Murzas,
You often walk
And the food is the simplest
Happens at your table;
Not valuing your peace,
You read and write in front of the lectern
And all from your pen
Shedding bliss to mortals,
Like you don't play cards,
Like me, from morning to morning.

A similar contrast between the “virtuous” image of Felitsa and the contrasting image of the vicious “Murza” is then carried out throughout the entire poem. This determines the exceptional, hitherto unprecedented genre originality of “Felitsa”. The laudatory ode in honor of the empress turns out to be at the same time a political satire - a pamphlet against a number of people in her inner circle. Even more sharply than in “Poems for the Birth of a Porphyry-Born Youth in the North,” the singer’s posture in relation to the subject of his chanting also changes here. Lomonosov signed his odes to the empresses - “the most submissive slave.” Derzhavin’s attitude towards Ekaterina-Felitsa, traditionally endowed by him with sometimes “god-like” attributes, while respectful, is not without at the same time, as we see, a certain playful shortness, almost familiarity.
The image contrasted with Felitsa characteristically doubles throughout the ode. In satirical places, this is a kind of collective image that includes the vicious features of all the Catherine’s nobles ridiculed here by the poet; to a certain extent, Derzhavin, who is generally prone to self-irony, introduces himself into this circle. In high pathetic places - this is the lyrical author's "I", again endowed with specific autobiographical features: Murza is indeed the real descendant of Murza Bagrim, the poet Derzhavin. The appearance in "Felitsa" of the author's "I", the living, concrete personality of the poet, was a fact of enormous artistic, historical and literary significance. Lomonosov’s odes of praise also sometimes begin in the first person:

Am I seeing Pindus under my feet?
I hear pure sisters' music.
I'm burning with the heat of Permes,
I flow hastily to their face.

However, the “I” that is being discussed here is not the individual personality of the author, but a certain conventional image of an abstract “singer” in general, an image that acts as an unchanging attribute of any ode of any poet. We encounter a similar phenomenon in satires, also a widespread and significant genre of poetry in the 18th century. The difference in this regard between odes and satyrs is only that in odes the singer always plays on one single string - “sacred delight”, while in satyrs one single, but indignantly accusatory string also sounds. Love songs of the Sumarokov school were equally “one-stringed” - a genre that, from the point of view of contemporaries, was considered generally semi-legal and, in any case, dubious.
In Derzhavin’s “Felitsa,” instead of this conventional “I,” the true living personality of the human poet appears in all the concreteness of his individual existence, in all the real diversity of his feelings and experiences, with a complex, “multi-stringed” attitude to reality. The poet here is not only delighted, but also angry; praises and at the same time blasphemes, denounces, slyly ironizes, and it is extremely important that this, first declaring itself in odic poetry of the 18th century. an individual personality also carries within itself the undoubted features of a nationality.
Pushkin said about Krylov’s fables that they reflect a certain “distinctive feature in our morals - a cheerful cunning of the mind, mockery and a picturesque way of expressing ourselves.” From under the conventionally “Tatar” guise of “Murza,” this feature first appears in Derzhavin’s ode to Felitsa. These glimpses of nationality are also reflected in the language of “Felitsa”. In accordance with the new character of this work is its “funny Russian style,” as Derzhavin himself defines it - borrowing its content from real everyday life, light, simple, playfully colloquial speech, directly opposite to the lushly decorated, deliberately elevated style of Lomonosov’s odes .
Odami continues to traditionally call his poems Derzhavin, theoretically linking them with the ancient model obligatory for classicism - the odes of Horace. But in reality he they make a genuine genre revolution. In the poetics of Russian classicism there were no poems “in general.” Poetry was divided into sharply demarcated, in no case mixed with each other, isolated and closed poetic types: ode, elegy, satire, etc. Derzhavin, starting with “Poems for the birth of a porphyry-born youth in the north” and, in particular, from "Felitsa", completely breaks the framework of traditional genre categories of classicism, merges ode and satire into one organic whole, in his other works, such as "On the Death of Prince Meshchersky", - ode and elegy.
In contrast to the one-dimensional genres of classicism, the poet creates complex and full-life, polyphonic genre formations that anticipate not only the “motley chapters” of Pushkin’s “Eugene Onegin” or the highly complex genre of his “Bronze Horseman,” but also the tone of many of Mayakovsky’s works.
“Felitsa” was a colossal success upon its appearance (“everyone who could read Russian found it in the hands of everyone,” a contemporary testifies) and generally became one of the most popular works of Russian literature of the 18th century. This enormous success clearly proves that Derzhavin’s ode, which produced a kind of revolution in relation to Lomonosov’s poetics, fully corresponded to the main literary trends of the era.
In "Felitsa" are united two opposite principles of Derzhavin’s poetry– positive, affirming, and revealing, – critical. The chanting of the wise monarch, Felitsa, is one of the central themes of Derzhavin’s work, to whom both his contemporaries and later criticism gave him the nickname “Felitsa’s Singer.” “Felitsa” was followed by the poems “Gratitude to Felitsa”, “Image of Felitsa”, and finally, almost as famous as “Felitsa”, the ode “Vision of Murza” (started in 1783, completed in 1790).

The ode “Felitsa” was written in 1782 and dates back to the early period of G. Derzhavin’s work. This poem made the poet's name famous. For the work, the author provides a clarification subtitle “Ode to the wise Kyrgyz-Kaisak princess Felitsa, written by the Tatar Murza, who has long settled in Moscow...”. With this clarification, the author hints at “The Tale of Prince Chlorus,” written by Catherine II, from which the name of the main character is taken. Empress Catherine II herself and the court nobility are “hidden” under the images of Felitsa and the nobles. The ode does not glorify them, but ridicules them.

The theme of the poem is a humorous depiction of the life of the empress and her entourage. The idea of ​​the ode “Felitsa” is twofold: the author exposes the vices of the queen, presenting an idealized image of Felitsa and, at the same time, shows what virtues a monarch should have. The ideological sound of the work is complemented by showing the shortcomings of the nobility.

The central place in the ode is occupied by the image of Queen Felitsa, in whom the poet embodies all the wonderful traits of a woman and a monarch: kindness, simplicity, sincerity, bright mind. The portrait of the princess is not “festive”, but everyday, but this does not spoil it at all, but makes it more beautiful, bringing it closer to the people and the reader. The queen lives luxuriously and righteously, knows how to “tame the excitement of passions,” eats simple food, sleeps little, giving preference to reading and writing... She has a lot of virtues, but if you consider that behind the mask of the Kirghiz-Kaisak princess hides the Russian empress, it’s not hard to guess that the image is idealized. Idealization in this ode is a tool of satire.

Enough attention is paid to the princess’s associates, who are preoccupied with wealth, fame, and the attention of beauties. Potemkin, Naryshkin, Alexey Orlov, Panin and others are easily recognizable behind the portraits created by Gavriil Derzhavin in the analyzed ode. The portraits are characterized by caustic satire; by daring to publish them, Derzhavin took a great risk, but he knew that the empress treated him favorably.

The lyrical hero remains almost unnoticeable among the gallery of bright satirical images, but his attitude towards the depicted is clearly visible. Sometimes he dares to give advice to the princess-empress herself: “From disagreement - agreement // And from fierce passions happiness // You can only create.” At the end of the ode, he praises Felitsa and wishes her all the best (this ending is traditional for an ode).

Metaphors, epithets, comparisons, hyperboles - all these artistic means have found a place in the poem “Felitsa”, but it is not they that attract attention, but the combination of high and low style. The work mixes book and colloquial vocabulary and vernacular.

The ode consists of 26 stanzas, 10 lines each. In the first four lines of the verse the rhyme is cross, then two lines have a parallel rhyme, the last four have a ring rhyme. The poetic meter is iambic tetrameter with pyrrhic. The intonation pattern corresponds to the ode genre: praises are occasionally reinforced by exclamatory sentences.

The ode “Felitsa” is the first embodiment of Russian life in “a funny Russian style,” as Derzhavin himself spoke of his creation.

In the last third of the 18th century, great changes took place in poetry, as well as in drama. The further development of poetry could not occur without change, disruption, and then destruction of familiar old forms. These violations began to be committed by the classic writers themselves: Lomonosov, Sumarokov, Maikov, and later by Kheraskov and the young poets from his circle.

But the real revolt in the world of genres was made by Derzhavin. The poet, having recognized true nature as a polyphonic and multi-colored world, in eternal movement and change, limitlessly expanded the boundaries of the poetic. At the same time, Derzhavin’s main enemies were all those who forgot the “public good”, the interests of the people, indulging in sybarism at court.

A significant expansion of the object of poetry required new forms of expression. Derzhavin began this search by changing the established genre system of classicism.

Derzhavin began the immediate “destruction” of the genre of solemn ode with his “Felitsa”, combining praise with satire in it.

The ode “Felitsa” was created in 1782 in St. Petersburg. The friends to whom Derzhavin read it passed an inexorable verdict on the work: the ode is excellent, but it is impossible to publish it due to the non-canonical image of the empress and the satirical portraits of Catherine’s nobles, easily recognizable by contemporaries. With a sigh, Derzhavin put the ode in the bureau drawer, where it remained for about a year. One day, while sorting out the papers, he laid out the manuscript on the table, where the poet Osip Kozodavlev saw it. He begged to read the manuscript, swearing that he would not show the poems to anyone. A few days later, the famous nobleman and lover of literature I.I. Shuvalov, in great alarm, sent for Derzhavin, informing him that His Serene Highness Prince Potemkin was asking for his poems to be read. “What poems? - the poet was surprised. - “Murza to Felitsa.” - “How do you know them?” - “Mr. Kozodavlev gave them to me out of friendship.” - “But how did Prince Potemkin recognize them?” - “Yesterday I had dinner with a company of gentlemen, such as: Count Bezborodko, Count Zavadovsky, Strekalov and others who love literature; when we were talking about how we don’t yet have an easy and pleasant poem, I read your creation to them.” One of the guests, as Shuvalov believed, wanting to please Prince Potemkin, immediately reported these verses to the empress’s favorite. Shuvalov, as an experienced courtier, advised Derzhavin to remove the lines from the ode concerning the “weaknesses” of his Serene Highness, but the poet did not deceive him, rightly believing that if Potemkin received the full text of the ode, he would consider himself insulted. Having received the poem and familiarized himself with it, the clever prince pretended that this work had nothing to do with him. Derzhavin breathed a sigh of relief.

In the spring of 1783, the President of the Russian Academy, Ekaterina Dashkova, anonymously published the ode “Felitsa” in the magazine “Interlocutor of Lovers of the Russian Word”, on the recommendation of Kozodavlev, without the knowledge of the author. Dashkova presented the first issue of the magazine to Empress Catherine P. After reading the ode, she was moved to tears and became interested in the author of the work. “Don’t be afraid,” she told Dashkova, “I’m just asking you about someone who knew me so closely, who could describe me so pleasantly that, you see, I’m crying like a fool.” The princess revealed the poet's name and told a lot of good things about him. After some time, Derzhavin received an envelope in the mail containing a gold snuff box sprinkled with diamonds and five hundred gold rubles. Soon the poet was introduced to the empress and was favored by her. The publication of the ode immediately made Derzhavin famous; he became one of the first poets of Russia.

Ode “Felitsa” is an innovative work, bold in thought and form. It includes high, odic, and low, ironic-satirical. Unlike Lomonosov’s odes, where the object of the image was the lyrical state of the poet, for whom state, national interests merged with personal ones, Derzhavin’s ode made the object of poeticization “the man on the throne” - Catherine II, her state affairs and virtues. “Felitsa” is close to a friendly literary message, a word of praise and at the same time a poetic satire.

The poet included in the ode a literary portrait of the empress, which has a moral, psychological, idealized character. Derzhavin tries to reveal the inner world of the heroine, her morals and habits through a description of the actions and orders of Catherine II, her acts of state:

Without imitating your Murzas,

You often walk

And the food is the simplest

Happens at your table;

Not valuing your peace,

You read and write in front of the lectern

And all from your pen

Shedding bliss to mortals...

The lack of portrait descriptions is compensated by the impression that the heroine of the ode makes on others. The poet emphasizes the most important, from his point of view, features of the enlightened monarch: her democracy, simplicity, unpretentiousness, modesty, friendliness, combined with an outstanding mind and talent as a statesman. The poet contrasts the high image of the queen with an ironic portrait of her courtier. This is a collective image that includes the features of Catherine II’s closest associates: His Serene Highness Prince Grigory Potemkin, who, despite his breadth of soul and brilliant mind, is distinguished by his whimsical and capricious disposition; favorites of the Empress Alexei and Grigory Orlov, guardsmen-revelers, lovers of fist fights and horse racing; Chancellor Nikita and Field Marshal Pyotr Panin, passionate hunters who forgot the affairs of public service for the sake of their favorite entertainment; Semyon Naryshkin, the huntsman of the imperial palace and a famous music lover, who was the first to host an orchestra of horn music; Prosecutor General Alexander Vyazemsky, who loved to enjoy reading popular popular stories in his spare time, and ... Gavrila Romanovich Derzhavin. The Russian poet, who by that time had become a state councilor, did not distinguish himself from this noble sphere, but, on the contrary, emphasized his involvement in the circle of the elite:

That's it, Felitsa, I'm depraved!

But the whole world looks like me.

Later, defending himself from reproaches that he had created an evil satire on famous and respectable courtiers, Derzhavin wrote: “In the ode to Felitsa, I turned ordinary human weaknesses onto myself... I contrasted the virtues of the princess with my stupidities.” The poet, laughing at the quirks of those close to the empress, is not alien to their inherent epicurean attitude to life. He does not condemn their human weaknesses and vices, for he understands that Catherine II surrounded herself with people whose talent serves the prosperity of the Russian state. Derzhavin is flattered to see himself in this company; he proudly bears the title of Catherine’s nobleman.

The poet glorifies the beautiful Nature and Man living in harmony with it. Landscape paintings are reminiscent of scenes depicted on tapestries decorating the salons and living rooms of the St. Petersburg nobility. It is no coincidence that the author, who was fond of drawing, wrote that “poetry is nothing more than talking painting.”

Drawing portraits of important dignitaries, Derzhavin uses the techniques of literary anecdote. In the 18th century, an anecdote was understood as an artistically processed story of folklore content about a famous historical person or event, having a satirical sound and instructive character. Derzhavin’s portrait of Alexei Orlov takes on an anecdotal character:

Or music and singers,

Suddenly with an organ and bagpipes,

Or fist fights

And I make my spirit happy by dancing;

Or, taking care of all matters

I leave and go hunting

And amused by the barking of dogs...

Indeed, a winner of fist fights, a guards officer, a prize-winner at horse races, a tireless dancer and a successful duelist, a reveler, a ladies' man, a gambling hunter, the killer of Emperor Peter III and the favorite of his wife - this is how Alexei Orlov remained in the memory of his contemporaries. Some lines depicting courtiers resemble epigrams. For example, about the “bibliophile” preferences of Prince Vyazemsky, who prefers popular literature to serious literature, it is said:

I like to rummage through books,

I will enlighten my mind and heart,

I read Polkan and Bova;

Over the Bible, yawning, I sleep.

Although Derzhavin’s irony was soft and good-natured, Vyazemsky could not forgive the poet: he “at least became attached to him, not only mocked him, but almost scolded him, preaching that poets are incapable of doing anything.”

Elements of satire appear in the ode where it concerns the reign of Anna Ioannovna. The poet indignantly recalled how the well-born prince Mikhail Golitsyn, at the whim of the empress, was married to an ugly old dwarf and made a court jester. In the same humiliating position were representatives of noble Russian families - Prince N. Volkonsky and Count A. Apraksin. “These jesters,” Derzhavin testifies, “while the empress was listening to mass in the church, “sat in baskets in the room through which she had to pass from the church to the inner chambers, and clucked like hens; the rest all the same "They laughed, straining themselves." The violation of human dignity at all times, according to the poet, is the greatest sin. The teaching contained in the satire is addressed to both the reader and the main character of the ode.

The poet, creating an ideal image of an enlightened monarch, insisted that she was obliged to obey the laws, be merciful, and protect the “weak” and “poor.”

Throughout the ode there are images and motifs of “The Tale of Prince Chlorus,” composed by the empress for her grandson. The ode begins with a retelling of the plot of the fairy tale, in the main part the images of Felitsa, Lazy, Grumpy, Murza, Chlorine, Rose without thorns appear; the final part has an oriental flavor. The ode ends, as it should, with praise to the empress:

I ask the great prophet

May I touch the dust of your feet,

Yes, your sweetest words

And I will enjoy the sight!

I ask for heavenly strength,

Yes, they spread out their sapphire wings,

They keep you invisibly

From all illnesses, evils and boredom;

May the sounds of your deeds be heard in posterity,

Like the stars in the sky, they will shine.

The theme and image of Catherine II in Derzhavin’s poetry is not limited only to Felitsa; He dedicates the poems “Gratitude to Felitsa”, “Vision of Murza”, “Image of Felitsa”, “Monument” and others to the empress. However, it was the ode “Felitsa” that became Derzhavin’s “calling card”; it was this work that V. G. Belinsky considered “one of the best creations” of Russian poetry of the 18th century. In “Felitsa,” according to the critic, “the fullness of feeling was happily combined with the originality of the form, in which the Russian mind is visible and Russian speech is heard. Despite its considerable size, this ode is imbued with an internal unity of thought and is consistent in tone from beginning to end.”

History of Russian literature of the 18th century Lebedeva O. B.

Odo-satirical world image in the solemn ode “Felitsa”

In formal terms, Derzhavin in “Felitsa” strictly adheres to the canon of Lomonosov’s solemn ode: iambic tetrameter, ten-line stanza with the rhyme aBaBVVgDDg. But this strict form of the solemn ode in this case is a necessary sphere of contrast, against the background of which the absolute novelty of the content and style plans appears more clearly. Derzhavin addressed Catherine II not directly, but indirectly - through her literary personality, using the plot of a fairy tale that Catherine wrote for her little grandson Alexander for his ode. The characters in the allegorical “Tale of Prince Chlorus” - the daughter of the Kyrgyz-Kaisak khan Felitsa (from the Latin felix - happy) and the young prince Chlorus are busy searching for a rose without thorns (an allegory of virtue), which they find, after many obstacles and overcoming temptations, on the top of a high mountain, symbolizing spiritual self-improvement.

This indirect appeal to the empress through her literary text gave Derzhavin the opportunity to avoid the protocol-odic, sublime tone of addressing the highest person. Taking up the plot of Catherine’s fairy tale and slightly aggravating the oriental flavor inherent in this plot, Derzhavin wrote his ode on behalf of “a certain Tatar Murza,” playing on the legend about the origin of his family from the Tatar Murza Bagrim. In the first publication, the ode “Felitsa” was called as follows: “Ode to the wise Kyrgyz-Kaisak princess Felitsa, written by some Tatar Murza, who had long settled in Moscow, and living on their business in St. Petersburg. Translated from Arabic."

Already in the title of the ode, no less attention is paid to the personality of the author than to the personality of the addressee. And in the text of the ode itself, two plans are clearly drawn: the author’s plan and the hero’s plan, interconnected by the plot motif of the search for a “rose without thorns” - virtue, which Derzhavin learned from “The Tale of Prince Chlorus”. The “weak”, “depraved”, “slave of whims” Murza, on whose behalf the ode was written, turns to the virtuous “god-like princess” with a request for help in finding a “rose without thorns” - and this naturally sets two intonations in the text of the ode: apology against Felitsa and denunciation against Murza. Thus, Derzhavin’s solemn ode combines the ethical principles of older genres - satire and ode, which were once absolutely contrasting and isolated, but in “Felitsa” united into a single picture of the world. This combination in itself literally explodes from within the canons of the established oratorical genre of ode and classicist ideas about the genre hierarchy of poetry and the purity of the genre. But the operations that Derzhavin performs with the aesthetic attitudes of satire and ode are even more daring and radical.

It would be natural to expect that the apologetic image of virtue and the denounced image of vice, combined in a single odo-satirical genre, would be consistently maintained in their traditional typology of artistic imagery: the abstract-conceptual embodiment of virtue would have to be opposed by the everyday image of vice. However, this does not happen in Derzhavin’s “Felitsa,” and both images, from an aesthetic point of view, represent the same synthesis of ideologizing and everyday-descriptive motifs. But if the everyday image of vice could, in principle, be subject to some ideologization in its generalized, conceptual presentation, then Russian literature before Derzhavin fundamentally did not allow the everyday image of virtue, and even a crowned one. In the ode “Felitsa”, contemporaries, accustomed to the abstract conceptual constructions of odic images of the ideal monarch, were shocked by the everyday concreteness and authenticity of the appearance of Catherine II in her daily activities and habits, listing which Derzhavin successfully used the motif of the daily routine, going back to the satire of II Cantemir “Filaret” and "Eugene":

Without imitating your Murzas,

You often walk

And the food is the simplest

Happens at your table;

Not valuing your peace,

You read and write in front of the lectern

And all from your pen

Shedding bliss to mortals:

Like you don't play cards,

Like me, from morning to morning (41).

And just as a descriptive picture of everyday life is not fully consistent in one typology of artistic imagery (“the bliss of mortals”, wedged into a number of concrete everyday details, although Derzhavin is also accurate here, meaning the famous legislative act of Catherine: “The Commission’s order on composing a draft of a new code"), the ideologized image of virtue also turns out to be rarefied by a concrete material metaphor:

You alone are only decent.

Princess! create light from darkness;

Dividing Chaos into spheres harmoniously,

The union will strengthen their integrity;

From disagreement to agreement

And from fierce passions happiness

You can only create.

So the helmsman, sailing through the show-off,

Catching the roaring wind under sail,

Knows how to steer a ship (43).

There is not a single verbal theme in this stanza that does not genetically go back to the poetics of Lomonosov’s solemn ode: light and darkness, chaos and harmonious spheres, union and integrity, passions and happiness, show-off and swimming - all this is familiar to the reader of the 18th century. a set of abstract concepts that form the ideological image of wise power in a solemn ode. But “the helmsman sailing through the show-off”, skillfully steering the ship, with all the allegorical meaning of this image-symbol of state wisdom, is incomparably more plastic and concrete than “Like a capable wind in a swimmer’s show-off” or “The feed flies between the watery depths” in the ode Lomonosov 1747

The individualized and specific personal image of virtue is opposed in the ode “Felitsa” by a generalized collective image of vice, but it is opposed only ethically: as an aesthetic essence, the image of vice is absolutely identical to the image of virtue, since it is the same synthesis of odic and satirical typology of imagery, deployed in the same plot motive of the daily routine:

And I, having slept until noon,

I smoke tobacco and drink coffee;

Transforming everyday life into a holiday,

My thoughts are spinning in chimeras:

Then I steal captivity from the Persians,

Then I direct arrows towards the Turks;

Then, having dreamed that I was a sultan,

I terrify the universe with my gaze;

Then suddenly, I was seduced by the outfit,

I’m off to the tailor for a caftan (41).

That's it, Felitsa, I'm depraved!

But the whole world looks like me.

Who knows how much wisdom,

But every person is a lie.

We do not walk the paths of light,

We run debauchery after dreams,

Between a lazy person and a grumbler,

Between vanity and vice

Did anyone accidentally find it?

The path of virtue is straight (43).

The only aesthetic difference between the images of Felitsa the virtue and Murza the vice is their correlation with the specific personalities of Derzhavin’s contemporaries. In this sense, Felitsa-Ekaterina is, according to the author's intention, an accurate portrait, and Murza - the mask of the author of the ode, the lyrical subject of the text - is a collective, but concrete to such an extent that to this day its concreteness tempts researchers of Derzhavin's work to see in the features This mask is similar to the face of the poet himself, although Derzhavin himself left unambiguous and precise indications that Potemkin, A. Orlov, P. I. Panin, S. K. Naryshkin with their characteristic properties and everyday preferences - “whimsical disposition”, “hunting for horse races”, “exercises in dress”, passion for “all kinds of Russian youth” (fist fighting, hound hunting, horn music). When creating the image of Murza, Derzhavin also had in mind “in general, ancient Russian customs and amusements” (308).

It seems that in the interpretation of the lyrical subject of the ode “Felitsa” - the image of the vicious “Murza” - I. Z. Serman is closest to the truth, seeing in his speech in the first person “the same meaning and the same meaning” as “speech in the first person” has faces in the satirical journalism of the era - in “The Drone” or “The Painter” by Novikov. Both Derzhavin and Novikov use the assumption common to the literature of the Enlightenment, forcing their exposed and ridiculed characters to talk about themselves with all possible frankness.”

And here it is impossible not to notice two things: firstly, that the technique of self-exposing characterization of vice in his direct speech genetically goes back directly to the genre model of Cantemir’s satire, and secondly, that, creating his own collective image of Murza as a lyrical subject ode “Felitsa” and forcing him to speak “for the whole world, for the entire noble society,” Derzhavin, in essence, took advantage of the Lomonosov odic method of constructing the image of the author. In Lomonosov’s solemn ode, the author’s personal pronoun “I” was nothing more than a form of expressing a general opinion, and the image of the author was functional only insofar as it was capable of embodying the voice of the nation as a whole - that is, it had a collective character.

Thus, in Derzhavin’s “Felitsa,” ode and satire, intersecting with their ethical genre-forming guidelines and aesthetic features of the typology of artistic imagery, merge into one genre, which, strictly speaking, can no longer be called either satire or ode. And the fact that Derzhavin’s “Felitsa” continues to be traditionally called an “ode” should be attributed to the odic associations of the theme. In general, this is a lyrical poem that has finally parted with the oratorical nature of the high solemn ode and only partially uses some methods of satirical world modeling.

Perhaps this is precisely this - the formation of a synthetic poetic genre belonging to the field of pure lyricism - that should be recognized as the main result of Derzhavin’s work of 1779-1783. And in the totality of his poetic texts of this period, the process of restructuring Russian lyric poetry is clearly revealed in line with the same patterns that we have already had the opportunity to observe in journalistic prose, fiction, poetic epic and comedy of the 1760-1780s. With the exception of dramaturgy - a type of verbal creativity that is fundamentally authorless in external forms of expression - in all these branches of Russian fine literature, the result of crossing high and low world images was the activation of forms of expression of the author's, personal beginning. And Derzhavin’s poetry was no exception in this sense. It is precisely the forms of expression of the personal author's principle through the category of the lyrical hero and the poet as a figurative unity that fuses the entire set of individual poetic texts into a single aesthetic whole that is the factor that determines the fundamental innovation of Derzhavin the poet relative to the national poetic tradition that preceded him.

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