boletus
4 Nov 2012
History / Polish relation about Russians, Ukrainians? [281]
Just so our foreign friends understand it well, Mickiewicz did not go to St. Petersburg for pleasure, he was rather on a tour organized by the tsarist police:
That's partially true. But most of it is just exaggeration. Much of what was said in the past about the friendship and mutual influence of these two poets was coloured by the politics of Communism ("Long live the fraternal love between Soviet Union and Polish People's Republic") and in the distant past - between a subdued nation and a nation doing the subduing. In the case of the latter, it did not cost much to pat the Poles on the back and show some patronizing attitude: as Mickiewicz was often being shown as a kind of a backdrop for the great Pushkin.
Much what was said about their eye to eye communication looks quite apocryphal and it does not make much sense when viewed from afar in the historical context.
Much what was written by the two poets shows how different they actually were: Mickiewicz, a romantic hapless revolutionary and Pushkin - less hysterically patriotic and actually the tsarist apologist. After all Pushkin committed three anti-Polish poems about the Russian military response to the 1830-31 Polish Uprising, which seemed starkly to contradict the ideals of poetry which scholars typically emphasize in both poets.
So much for the eternal friendship... :-)
pushkiniana.org/vol-4-articles--/227-dixon-article04.html
Start by reading up on Mickiewicz, how he was received in St. Petersburg's literary saloons
Just so our foreign friends understand it well, Mickiewicz did not go to St. Petersburg for pleasure, he was rather on a tour organized by the tsarist police:
In 1823 he was arrested, investigated for his political activities, specifically his membership in the Philomaths society, and in 1824 banished to central Russia.
his Crimean Sonnets, and how Russian writers were in turn influenced by him, and his views of Pushkin, who greatly admired him.
That's partially true. But most of it is just exaggeration. Much of what was said in the past about the friendship and mutual influence of these two poets was coloured by the politics of Communism ("Long live the fraternal love between Soviet Union and Polish People's Republic") and in the distant past - between a subdued nation and a nation doing the subduing. In the case of the latter, it did not cost much to pat the Poles on the back and show some patronizing attitude: as Mickiewicz was often being shown as a kind of a backdrop for the great Pushkin.
Much what was said about their eye to eye communication looks quite apocryphal and it does not make much sense when viewed from afar in the historical context.
Much what was written by the two poets shows how different they actually were: Mickiewicz, a romantic hapless revolutionary and Pushkin - less hysterically patriotic and actually the tsarist apologist. After all Pushkin committed three anti-Polish poems about the Russian military response to the 1830-31 Polish Uprising, which seemed starkly to contradict the ideals of poetry which scholars typically emphasize in both poets.
The "trilogy" includes the poems "Before the Sacred Tomb" ("Pered grobnitseiu sviatoi"), "To the Calumniators of Russia" ("Klevetnikam Rossii"), and "The Anniversary of Borodino" ("Borodinskaia godovshchina");...
Friends of Pushkin such as Viazemskii and the Turgenev brothers were horrified by the poem's jingoism. In them Pushkin asserts that Russia is within its rights to crush the romantic resistance of Poles to their fated rulers; the image of all Slavic rivers flowing into the Russian sea in "To the Calumniators of Russia" makes this clear ("slavianskie l′ ruch′i sol′iutsia v russkom more")....
Mickiewicz may have responded to these poems in his poem published in 1833, "To My Muscovite Friends" ("Do Przyjaciół Moskali") in which he reproaches those Russian poets who betrayed their Decembrist brothers in arms by remaining loyal to the tsar and taking payment for praising his victories. Pushkin may in turn have "responded" in his own poem of 1834, "He lived among us..." ("On mezhdu nami zhil") in which he reproaches Mickiewicz for giving in to the unruly crowd (buinaia chern′) of Polish émigrés in Europe.
Friends of Pushkin such as Viazemskii and the Turgenev brothers were horrified by the poem's jingoism. In them Pushkin asserts that Russia is within its rights to crush the romantic resistance of Poles to their fated rulers; the image of all Slavic rivers flowing into the Russian sea in "To the Calumniators of Russia" makes this clear ("slavianskie l′ ruch′i sol′iutsia v russkom more")....
Mickiewicz may have responded to these poems in his poem published in 1833, "To My Muscovite Friends" ("Do Przyjaciół Moskali") in which he reproaches those Russian poets who betrayed their Decembrist brothers in arms by remaining loyal to the tsar and taking payment for praising his victories. Pushkin may in turn have "responded" in his own poem of 1834, "He lived among us..." ("On mezhdu nami zhil") in which he reproaches Mickiewicz for giving in to the unruly crowd (buinaia chern′) of Polish émigrés in Europe.
Pushkin's own comments in letters to friends during the Polish Uprising of 1830-31 contributed to the picture of Mickiewicz as more "hysterical." Pushkin wrote to Sofia Khitrovo in December 1830 that "the love of country, such as it can exist in a Polish soul, has always been a funereal sentiment. Just look at their poet Mickiewicz."This cool assessment of Polish romanticism resonates with Pushkin's comment to Viazemskii in June 1831 about the length of the fighting and Poland's dramatic resistance: "All this is very well in a poetic sense. Nevertheless we must stifle them, and our delay is unbearable."
So much for the eternal friendship... :-)
pushkiniana.org/vol-4-articles--/227-dixon-article04.html