Vladimir Korovin, Prof. Dr. Department of Russian Literary History, Faculty of Philology, Lomonosov Moscow State University E-mail: korovinv@yandex.ru
Dithyramb on the Immortality of the Soul by Jacques Delille (1794, publ. 1802) was popular both in Europe and in Russia, where four of its complete translations were published (by A.F. Labzin, A.A. Palitsyn, A.I. Pisarev, A.V. Sklabovsky). V.A. Zhukovsky in 1806 translated several stanzas from the middle of the Dithyramb, in which his main idea was formulated: the thought of the immortality of the soul should frighten tyrants and console innocent sufferers. Delille expressed the idea of M. Robespierre, who at the Convention in May 1794 just so proved the need for a decree recognizing the existence of the Supreme Being and the immortality of the soul. By his order, Delille wrote his Dithyramb, but, as its first publishers claimed, he acted not as a flatterer, but as an accuser of the tyranny of the Jacobins. The publication of Zhukovsky’s Excerpt from Delille’s Dithyramb in the magazine Vestnik Evropy in 1807 looked like a continuation of the poetry contest begun in the same magazine in 1802–1803, when it was published by N.M. Karamzin: the same stanzas from the Dithyramb were then published in translations by A.F. Labzin and Yu.A. Neledinsky-Meletsky. In contrast, Zhukovsky, in his Excerpt, seemed to obscure allusions to the events of the French Revolution, but immediately after him he published the fable The Falcon and the Dove (translated from Florian), which recalled the accusations of godlessness as a weapon of revolutionary terror. The article deals with these and some other contexts of this translation of Zhukovsky, including reflections of the ideas and images of Delille’s Dithyramb in the original works of the Russian poet – in the elegy Evening, the Song of the Bard over the coffin of the victorious Slavs and the poem Wandering Jew.
V.A. Zhukovsky; Jacques Delille and his Dithyramb for the Immortality of the Soul; The Great French Revolution; M. Robespierre; the cult of the Supreme Being in 1794; fables; J.-P.C. de Florian; magazine Vestnik Evropy; N.M. Karamzin; A.F. Labzin; Yu.A. Neledinsky-Meletsky; Napoleonic Wars.
20.02.2023
22.03.2023
Korovin, V.L. “V.A. Zhukovsky, J. Delille and M. Robespierre: On Some Contexts of the ‘Excerpt from Delille’s Dithyramb on the Immortality of the Soul’”. Literaturovedcheskii zhurnal, no. 2(60), 2023, pp. 9–28. (In Russ.) DOI: 10.31249/litzhur/2023.60.01
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