Nationality (narodnost’) of Golden Age literature: The achievement of romanticism or the heritage of classicism

Abstract

The article counters the widely held opinion that the interest in nationality (narodnost’) and particular nature of nation is a characteristic feature of the Romantic literature. The criticism and aesthetics of the Golden Age (1810–1830s), transferring Western concepts to the Russian soil, sometimes too hastily correlated them with Russian artistic practice. So, in the early 1820s, when, as Petr Vyazemsky admitted, the Russian ideas of romanticism were still vague, nationality was declared the property of the romantic school (сf. the article On Romantic Poetry by Orest Somov, who was largely influenced by Germaine de Staёl). This point of view was reflected in later criticism which characterized such authors as Konstantin Batyushkov, Nikolay Gnedich, Anton Delvig, and Pavel Katenin as belonging to the Romantic school. Their interest in particular nature of nation, however, had absolutely different sources. Besides Herder’s Enlightenment ideas, it was the aesthetics of renewed classicism, advanced by Winkelmann and oriented at authentic antiquity that nurtured this interest. The antique culture, understood differently from French classicism, still served as a model for poets developing national themes. The influence of Greek Anthology upon Delvig’s Russian song, Greek motives in Gnedich’s Russian idyll, the Homeric simplicity, which permeated in Russian ballad, — all this resulted from deliberate integration of Russian content and high antiquity. National themes were born by the culture of classicism, affecting the entire Golden Age, but in the framework of the same transitional period were quickly “appropriated” by the adepts of Romantic movement.