Fables and parables of Sumarokov. Analysis of the fable "Beetles and bees". Fables, parables and works of other genres A.P. Sumarokov When Sumarokov began to write fables

The genre in which Sumarokov the satirist was a true innovator was a fable. He himself, following the established national tradition, called his fables parables. With this, Sumarokov, apparently, wanted to emphasize the teaching sense of the genre, to remind about the allegory inherent in his parables, since the notion of "fable" could be associated with a playful kind of entertaining fairy tales.

During his lifetime, Sumarokov published three books of Proverbs (1762-1769). Before that, many of them were published in various periodicals of the 1750s-1760s. And only in 1781 in Sumarokov's "Complete collection of all works ..." Novikov published 6 books of parables, containing everything written by the author in this genre, about 380 works in total.

The genre of the parable perfectly matched the ardent, irrepressible nature of Sumarokov with his sharp mind of a born polemicist and satirist. The Russian poetic fable also owes its structural features to Sumarokov.

In fact, it is he who is credited with creating that classic manner of fable narration, which is based on the use of a flexible and mobile iambic. The dynamically rich free iambic verse turned out to be an ideal means both for conveying dialogue and for sketching everyday scenes.

The abundant saturation of the vocabulary of parables with vulgarisms, vernacular phraseology created the basis for a special intonation and that rude humor that distinguishes Sumarokov's best parables. For him, edifying moralizing gives way to a scathing mockery, a mockery full of irony. It is no coincidence that Sumarokov's traditional morality is often absent or is replaced by the author's maxim-reflection, constituting not so much a morality as a kind of concentration of the idea embedded in the parable itself.

But, perhaps, Sumarokov's main merit was that he surprisingly accurately guessed the widest possibilities for satire inherent in this poetic form. For the first time in Russian literature, the abstract general human properties of fable animal characters are supplemented with details indicating that these characters belong to a certain social environment.

Thus, allegory begins to form the basis of satirical denunciation in a poetic fable. For example, here is his parable "Two Rats", which tells how two rats who met in a tavern shared the beer remaining in a bowl.

Two rats met at a tavern,

And they started screaming

Burlack songs to sing and to tear the throat

Around the misa placed here ...

One of the rats sees that there is not enough beer in a bowl for two, and immediately “comes to mind”:

I'm losing this fun

When my sister disdains the statutes

And she will drink all the nectar

One to the bottom ...

The fact that the quick-witted rat remembered about the "regulations" is by no means accidental: in the way of expressing thoughts, there is a reference to a well-defined social environment. The further course of the rat's reasoning leaves no doubt about the ideological orientation of Sumarok's parable:

I have been in orders

And I lived with the clerks;

I know the statutes,

And she said to her: “My dear!

You eat, joy, water

And honor in me, my friend, the governor;

I whit it,

And about the owner, sister, your

Not only hearing,

Yes, and no spirit ", -

And I drank the beer to dryness ...

Full of sarcasm and the ending of the parable:

The sister grumbles and spoke like this:

“I will not fondle such a conversation in the future,

And to the pub

I’m chasing the voivodship's rats. ”

Sumarokov does not give any morality. Yes, there is no need for it, because his parable is not a morality, but a caustic satire clothed in a fable form, and a social satire. These rats are familiar with the unwritten regulations of the bureaucratic hierarchy. Sumarokov openly makes it clear what the impudent shamelessness of the voivodship rat is based on.

Its moral code is determined by the laws of morality that prevail in the human world. The unusually subtle nuance of the psychological appearance of the characters in this parable is striking, especially that of the rats that picked up their minds in the provincial mansions. This is achieved by means of style.

The voivodship rat not only takes away the share that belongs to his girlfriend, but convinces her of the justice of this order. And she does it with such genuine cordiality, with such expressions of friendship that more than one clerk with whom she "visited" could envy her art of hypocrisy.

A whole set of the most affectionate and gentle addresses, one warmer than the other, contains her speech to her friend: "darling", "joy", "sister", "darling". And behind all this - one goal: to snatch more at the expense of the same "sister". In his findings, Sumarokov in a peculiar way anticipates Krylov's method. And this was reflected in his pioneering role in shaping the image of Russian poetic fable.

Sumarokov's success is largely due to the fact that he chose the works of the French fabulist La Fontaine as a model. A distinctive feature of La Fontaine's manner in fables was the graceful ease of style, reminiscent of a good-natured conversation between the author and the reader, full of sparkling jokes and irony.

Sumarokov, of course, could not completely transfer the La Fontaine style to Russian soil. But in the main thing - in rethinking the moralizing function of the fable genre - La Fontaine's example for Sumarokov turned out to be decisive in his own search. But at the same time Sumarokov never ceased to feel like a Russian writer.

He constantly strove to give his parables a national flavor, to bring their content as close as possible to the concepts and ideas of the Russian reader. This can be seen especially clearly when Sumarokov turns to the treatment of traditional fable plots that were widespread internationally. The Russification of the plots used by him is often emphatically declared.

Who will not pretend how,

The All-Seer will not be deceived.

I will turn Phaedra into Russian

And I want to weave a fable with a Russian model -

Sumarokov begins the parable "The Thief", the plot of which is taken from the fable of the Roman fabulist Phaedrus "The Holy Father" (book 4, fable 10). And accordingly, Sumarokov's altar fire turns into a candle, and the Temple of Jupiter turns into an Orthodox church with images, a clock. There are even elements of Christian prayer in the text of the parable.

The very change in the situation in the parables is associated with Sumarokov's desire to actualize the critical orientation of their content. He supplements traditional plots with such details that translate the meaning of the abstract morality of the original source into the plane of satirical denunciation of certain social phenomena of Russian reality in the 18th century.

An illustrative example of such a reworking is his parable "The Hare", the plot of which is borrowed from La Fontaine's fable "Les oreilles du Lievre". The hare is frightened by rumors about the persecution of animals with large horns. And in Sumarokov's reasoning of the Hare, a motive very typical for satire of the 18th century intrudes - the denunciation of the clerk's trickery:

The Hare's fear wins;

And the Hare reasons:

The clerk's fierce

The clerk's rogue;

Clerical souls

Big ears will be easy on the horns;

And if the judges and the court

I will be sent

So certificates, extracts alone will crush me.

This whole tirade about clerks was naturally absent from La Fontaine. But with its introduction into the parable, the satirical acuteness of the latter sharply increased, for the abstract allegory of the anecdotal plot found concrete socio-political application.

In the process of Russification of international fable plots, Sumarokov turned to the traditions of national folklore and to the traditions of democratic satire. Sumarokov sometimes trusts a popular proverb or saying the function of morality: “A big bird in the sky is worse than a tit in the hands” (“A fisherman and a fish”); “When you come to the water, taste the ford first; You will burst head over heels into the water without that ”(“ The Spider and the Fly ”); “Where there are many mothers, so there is a child without an eye” (“Unity”), etc.

Sometimes the entire content of a parable appears as a kind of expanded illustration of folk wisdom, recorded in a proverb. Thanks to this, the system of world perception, captured in Sumarokov's parables, often merges with the ideological position of folklore monuments.

This is especially evident in those cases when folklore and works of satirical humor spread among the democratic lower classes of society serve as a source of parable plots for Sumarokov. Approximately one third of the subjects of his parables have a similar origin.

He actively used everyday and satirical folk tales, comic anecdotes, which turned into democratic satire plots of the Renaissance European facets. Handwritten collections of facets have been widespread in Russia since the end of the 17th century. and enjoyed great success.

Sumarokov's appeal to facets and folk anecdotes as sources of plots for his parables is also significant in the sense that it testifies to the stability of the traditions of laughter culture in the literary consciousness of Russian classicism. The humorous coloring of the style of Sumarokov's parables explains the reason for their wide popularity among contemporaries of various social strata.

The leader of Russian enlightenment NI Novikov called Sumarokov's parables "the treasure of Russian Parnassus." On the other hand, about a dozen of Sumarok's parables received their second life in popular popular prints.

The extraordinary breadth of the thematic content of Sumarokov's parables fully corresponds to the richness of forms that the author chooses in his desire to subordinate the genre to the tasks of satire. In the structure of his parables, almost all possible methods and techniques of satirical denunciation are presented, from parodic travesty of the manner of literary opponents ("Paris Court", "Alexandrov's Glory") to the most acute invective of a political nature ("Pretentious Pig", "Axis and Bull").

Parable-parody and parable-joke, parable-pamphlet and parable-meditation, parable-anecdote and parable-political invective - this is not a complete list of genre forms that determine the structural appearance of Sumarok's parables. Despite the edification of the fable genre, which Sumarokov has repeatedly emphasized, in his parables he himself least of all acts as a moralizer.

Rather, he appears in them as a judge and accuser. Sumarokov's main merit in this area, as we noted above, was that he was able to impart broad functions of social satire to the traditionally moralizing genre.

In order to give an idea of the ideological position of Sumarokov, the author of parables, and thus about the place of his parable heritage in the literary movement of the 1760s-1770s, at least in general terms, we will give one illustrative example. In the third book of Proverbs, published in 1769, Sumarokov places the parable "The Gun":

In the midst of white days, the wolf runs to the sheep:

The shepherd had a gun; dozed off, the gun was lying;

So the wolf is not very angry and trembles.

The gun frightens him

And he promises to shoot:

And the wolf answers: your thunderstorm is small;

The gun does not work, with it there is no when the shooter:

Thin without him you gladden the sheep,

And dragging a sheep from the flock to the forest,

..................

The wolf hid, a sheep for his labor is his reward.

Carrying a sheep into the forest, the wolf continues to mock the useless gun. And Sumarokov concludes the parable with a maxim that directly translates the meaning of the allegorical narrative into the political plane:

If the holy rulers do not heed the truth,

And the wicked do not slumber without punishment;

What is the law for?

Or just so that it was written?

In its pathos, the parable is a typical example of Sumarokov's socio-political satire. The topicality of its content especially increased against the background of the recent failure of the advertised venture of Catherine II with the convocation of the Commission to draw up the New Code.

In an environment when the empress herself acted as the first legislator of Russia, Sumarokov's statements similar to the above fit in their own way into the general controversy that unfolded in satirical journalism at the turn of the 1760s and 1770s. It is no coincidence that Novikov chose the epigraph to the second part of his satirical weekly "Truten" (1770) the final couplet of Sumarokov's parable "Satyr and Vile People" from the same third book of parables:

It is dangerous to be instructed strictly,

Where there are many atrocities and madness.

If we consider that the first part of The Drone (1769) was accompanied by an epigraph taken from Sumarokov's parable “Beetles and Bees” (“They work, and you eat their labor”), then the public resonance that Sumarokov's parables had will become even more obvious in the literary and ideological struggle of those years. For the educator Novikov, Sumarokov the satirist turned out to be an ally in the struggle.

It would, of course, be inappropriate, on the basis of what has been said, to draw conclusions about Sumarokov's opposition to the existing social system as a whole. His position in relation to the foundations of the noble-absolutist statehood, with the recognition of the dominant position in society for the nobility, has always remained unchanged.

One can single out a whole group of parables, which openly declare the idea of the inviolability of the estate rights of the nobility and a sharp rejection of the practice of introducing into the nobility of people from the social lower classes, especially from clerks and former tax farmers ("Owl", "Mouse Bear", "Request of the Fly", "Kite in peacock feathers", "Flea").

Raised in the forest with bliss,

Under heavy rubbing axle cart

And not greased screams;

And the bull, which is lucky, is silent.

This is the parable plot that goes back to Aesop's fable "Oxen and Axis". It contains a universal human morality of an abstract nature: usually the one who does the least thing shouts. Sumarokov completely rethinks the essence of morality, transferring the action of the parable plot to the conditions of Russian reality and translating the conclusion of morality into a purely social plane:

Depicts the axis of the gentleman to me is tender.

Who keeps a bad score:

In Russian mot;

And the peasant's bull is diligent.

Suffering from debt burdened mot,

And he will not remember this,

That a plowman is pouring out sweat,

He works hard and pulls tax on his cards.

Sumarokov's exactingness to the representatives of the ruling class was fully consistent with his position as the ideological leader of the Russian nobility.

History of Russian Literature: in 4 volumes / Edited by N.I. Prutskov and others - L., 1980-1983

Vasily Kirillovich Trediakovsky, whose fables are written in a simple and understandable language, worked in the 18th century. Having made a comparison with the works of other fabulists of this era, we can highlight some common features that make it possible to characterize each of the poets.

The fable has attracted many writers

Speaking of such a genre as a fable, one immediately recalls famous authors who presented the world with many interesting works. Writers are such dissimilar people, but they were all united by a passion for the allegorical genre. Each of them had similar works of this direction. But what was the same in their work, and what is the difference?

Trediakovsky and his style

He wrote fables not for entertainment: his constant experiments with the Russian language, versification were not in vain for him. He invented a version of writing rhythmic smooth verses, showed what the role of stress in verse is. M.V. learned to write from his book. Lomonosov, who went further than his teacher, who wrote in a simple Russian word.

Vasily Kirillovich was able to write, but in many ways he imitated the Frenchman Lafontaine. The works belonging to his pen were very difficult to read because of the constructions rarely used in Russian. And this genre demanded simplicity and intelligibility. This is necessary so that the reader can easily grasp the moral for the sake of which the works written in the lowest style were created.

Trediakovsky, whose fables were based on tradition, used mainly high style and such as: voice, song.

Sumarokov and his fables

Sumarokov is the most famous surname in literary circles of the 18th century. His fables became incredibly popular. The number of works of this genre, written by his hand, reaches four hundred. His works are written in living language, the characters are recognizable, the mocked vices are obvious.

Comparison of the fables of Trediakovsky, Sumarokov, Krylov occurs when studying this topic in literature in the fifth grade. In the fables of Vasily Kirillovich, there are many words of Old Church Slavonic origin, inversions. He put the main word at the very end of the poetic line. For example, "Take away the cheese part happened." A.P. Sumarokov replenishes the already completely mastered genre of fable with elements of his native Russian speech. Ivan Andreevich Krylov writes his fables in a colloquial style and with figurative folk-poetic intonation. The many words with diminutive suffixes are a vivid confirmation of this.

Similarity in the works of fabulists

The disclosure of the so-called "eternal" themes unites the fabulists. How skillfully a flatterer can find an approach to any heart. What she (flattery) has unlimited power over heeding false words.

Sumarokov - "The Crow and the Fox";
Trediakovsky - "The Crow and the Fox";
Krylov - "The Crow and the Fox".

Only a slight difference in the shape of the bird chosen makes the lines slightly different from each other, although the basic idea is the same. The fables of all three fabulists are written on the plots of La Fontaine and Aesop.

Difference of fables

How do the fables of Trediakovsky, Sumarokov, Krylov differ? Each author gives only him a characteristic interpretation of the event taking place in the fable. In fables, the author's and life experience, the ideals of the people that existed during the period of creativity of this or that fabulist find expression. Krylov loved to create fables, in which he often identified himself with the main character. He looked at the world through the eyes of a Fox or Vaska the Cat. The characters described in the works also differ: Aesop writes about a raven and meat, and Krylov talks about a raven and cheese. V.K.Trediakovsky, whose fables also describe what is happening in the animal world, in this case uses the Crow as the main character, and this bird appeared in Sumarokov and Krylov much later. Sumarokov does not have a clearly written morality, Krylov does.

Poetry of Sumarokov. Sumarokov's poetry is striking in its diversity, richness of genres, themes, forms. Considering himself the creator of Russian literature, Sumarokov strove to show his contemporaries and leave to posterity samples of all types of literature admitted in the theory of classicism in that volume; which he himself, Sumarokov, took as the basis of his creative work. With feverish haste, he moved from one genre to another, from month to month discovering new aspects of his unusually diverse talent. In general, he wrote exceptionally a lot and, apparently, quickly. In one year, he wrote 75 poems, freely transcribing biblical psalms. Many of these transcriptions belonged to the poetry masterpieces of the mid-18th century.

Sumarokov wrote songs, elegies, idylls, eclogs, parables (fables), satires, epistles, sonnets, stanzas, epigrams, madrigals, solemn odes, philosophical odes, "different odes" - not to mention tragedies, comedies, operas, articles and speeches in prose, etc. He used all the broadest possibilities of Russian verse, wrote in all sizes, antique stanzas, created the most complex rhythmic combinations, wrote in free tonic verse without dimensions. A hundred and fifty years of development of Russian verse after Sumarokov added only a few new rhythmic forms to the stock of those that he developed. Of all the genre forms of classicism of the 18th century, Sumarokov did not use only a few, primarily various types of epic, poem; true, he began to write the epic poem "Dmitriada" about Dmitry Donskoy, but only the first page of it has come down to us; probably the Sumaroks did not write more.

Fables. In the most general terms, the entire poetic heritage of Sumarokov can be divided into two large groups: lyric poetry in the proper sense of the word and satirical poetry, including parables (fables). Perhaps it is the parables that occupy the central place in this second section. Sumarokov wrote fables during almost his entire creative life. His first fables were published in 1755. In 1762 two books were published: "The Proverbs of Alexander Sumarokov". In 1769 - the third; after his death, two more books of fables were published and several more fables that were not included in these two books. In total, Sumarokov wrote 374 parables. Contemporaries could not find words to glorify them. Numerous students of Sumarokov - V. Maikov, Kheraskov, Rzhevsky, Bogdanovich and others - diligently imitated him in fable creativity.

Indeed, Sumarokov's fables belong to the finest achievements of Russian poetry in the 18th century. It was Sumarokov who discovered the genre of fable for Russian literature. He borrowed a lot from La Fontaine (he translated many fables from him - however, freely). However, it would be completely wrong to regard Sumarokov as an imitator of La Fontaine. Sumarokov's fables, both in content and style, are characteristically different from the works of the great French fabulist.

The genre of fables was known to Russian literature even before Sumarokov. The prose translation of Aesop was published during the reign of Peter I. In 1752 Trediakovsky published "Several Aesop's Fables", translated by equestrian chorea and iambic. In the "Rhetoric" of Lomonosov in 1748 three fables were placed (on borrowed subjects). But all these poems were deprived of that structure of a living satirical story, as well as that size, free iambic of different feet, which became an integral feature of Russian fable, starting with Sumarokov. Sumarokov himself also wrote some of his early fables in an equal-foot iambic six-foot (Alexandrian verse), in the manner of a dry narrative that continued the old tradition. One might think that the reading of La Fontaine's fables prompted Sumarokov to create a new manner of fable verse and presentation. Then Sumarokov got acquainted with the fables of Gellert and other French and German fabulists, the motives of which he used in his parables along with the motives of Aesop and Phaedrus. However, many of Sumarokov's fables do not have any foreign plot motives; some are based on Russian anecdotal folklore; the plot of one, for example, is borrowed from an anecdote told in a sermon by Feofan Prokopovich ("Kiselnik") *.

* The question of the sources of Sumarokov's fables was investigated in K. Zaustsinsky's detailed work Sumarokov's Fables (Warsaw University News 1884, No. 3-5.) The source of the Kiselnik fable is indicated by MI. Sukhomlinov in "Notes on Sumarokov" (Izvestiya Akademii Nauk, 1855, issue 4.)

The parables of Sumarokov, like his other satirical works, are often topical, aimed at ridiculing the specific turmoil of Russian social life of his time. Their thematic coverage is very large, as is the number of satirical images created in them by Sumarokov. Not all of Sumarokov's fables are allegorical, i.e. by no means all of them are animals or objects. No wonder Sumarokov himself called his fables parables. Very often Sumarokov's parable is a small essay or feuilleton in verse, a witty and evil satirical joke scene, sometimes very small in volume: at the same time, people act in such parables, typical satirical masks, generalizing the vices of certain social groups of Sumarokov's time. The entire Russian society passes before us in cursory sketches of Sumarok's parables. His lions are kings, as later in Krylov, or great people; at the same time, the Sumaroks know how to speak freely about the kings. He gives embittered hostile characteristics of Russian bureaucrats, nobles, clerks, bribe-takers who are arrogant and rob the population of the country. The disarray of the apparatus of the monarchy causes him a whole series of poisonous attacks. Then Sumarokov attacks the tax farmers, who have become rich merchants. Often he speaks in parables about the peasants, who look to him rather harmless, but completely wild creatures in need of supervision, guidance, and harsh management of them. Finally, the most important theme of Sumarokov's fables is the Russian nobility. He does not find enough energetic words to stigmatize the uncultured landowners who cruelly treat their serfs and squeeze their last juices out of them,

Fables and parables are found in Russian poetry even before Sumarokov. Kantemir, Trediakovsky, and Lomonosov tried to write them. And yet Sumarokov made this genre popular. Other fabulists will follow in his footsteps, for example, the poet I.I. Chemnitser. And half a century later, the genre will find a brilliantly completed form in the work of I.A. Krylov. "Blockhead", "Donkey in lion's skin", "Feast at the lion", "Flea", "Minx", "War of the eagles" and many other fables were written by Sumarokov. As is customary in this genre, fools, ignoramuses, arrogant bosses, bribe-takers, rogues, swindlers are most often portrayed as animals or insects. At the same time, the poet looks into the most different corners of his contemporary society.

Fable, like an epigram, is an ancient genre. It traces its origin, as the legend tells, from the ancient Greek fabulist Aesop, who lived in the 6th-5th centuries BC. Many fable plots originate in his work. In the fable, there is always an allegory, that is, the image of human mores and relationships in the form of the behavior of animals or insects. This allegorical manner is commonly called "Aesopian language". Here is one of the famous fables of Sumarokov "Beetles and Bees" (1752):

I will fold the pribaska And tell a fairy tale Ignorant Beetles Crawled into science And began to teach Bees to make molasses. Bees do not age to be silent, That they are being fooled; The great noise in the hive has begun. Apollo went down to them from Parnassus And he drove all the Zhukov out, Said: "My friends, get out of the manure; They work, and you eat their labor, But you harm by stinginess and molasses."

The rules for constructing a fable, that is, its compositional norms, are strictly observed here. At the beginning of the work, the author addresses the reader. Then follows the expositional part, which gives an initial picture of what is happening ("Ignorant beetles crawled into science"). The action develops: we observe a live scene, snatched from real life and projected onto relations in society. Ignorant people ("beetles"), invested with power, teach knowledgeable and skillful workers of the "bees" what they themselves do not understand a single gram of. Well, isn't it funny: bees teach bees to make honey syrup! And here is the culmination (highest point) of the action: the bees are tired of obeying stupidity and being silent, and they raised a "great noise". The denouement of events in a fable is always fair and wise. So it is here. In the instructive result - at the same time it is a witty conclusion - the author's mocking voice clearly sounds:

... put it in the manure; They work, and you eat their work.

Reading the fable, let's put the stress in the word "bugs" on the first syllable. Otherwise, the verse rhythm of the work will be violated, and with it the natural sounding. And let us remember that the orthoepic norms, that is, the stress norms of Russian words, change from century to century. In addition, the poet always retains the copyright in his own way to change the stress in the word, so that the verse sounds more expressive and does not get out of the general rhythmic movement.

Sumarokov's fables were adopted by Russian satirical journalism in the 1760s and 1770s. The wonderful satirist N.I. Novikov will make a line from "Beetles and Bees" as an epigraph to his journal "Drone" (1769). The title page of its first issue read: "They work, and you eat their work." By the way, Sumarokov did not put an acute social meaning into this line. He meant literary affairs. Poets-theoreticians "crept into science", took a high position and now teach talented young authors how to write poetry. And they themselves do not really own the pen.

Novikov grasped the semantic ambiguity of the line, and of the entire work as a whole, and turned the conversation into an acute social plane. Landowners, like drones, are idle, but at the same time they dispose of both labor and the lives of their forced laborers-peasants. It was a bold attack on serfdom, the main evil of Russian life at that time. Novikov also has a high appraisal of all Sumarokov's activities: "He gained great and immortal fame, not only from the Russians, but also from foreign Academies and the most glorious European writers, with various kinds of poetry and prose works."

What is the main merit of Sumarokov the poet? Let's go back to where we started this chapter. The brightest trace in the history of Russian poetry was left by his elegies. It was in them that the poet spoke excitedly and sincerely, avoiding classic conventions and deliberate beauty in depicting feelings. He strove for "simplicity and clarity of the syllable" in conveying the mood and experiences of a person. He hardly succeeded in doing this! And nevertheless, the orientation towards the national structure of Russian speech, combined with the boldness of the creative manner, led to success. In Russian elegiac lyrics, thanks to Sumarokov, psychological truth began to emerge in the depiction of people's behavior and their characters. The poet correctly remarked: "No one speaks curly in sorrow."