In the summer of 1769, Russians were frightened by the sudden appearance of a huge comet. They immediately connected it with the escalating war and regarded its appearance as a threatening prophecy, a sign of God’s anger. Vasilii Petrov depicts the war as a kind of Biblical battle between the forces of good and Hell’s troops.
In his first military ode On the War with the Turks (На войну с турками, 1769), he presents an apocalyptic picture of the impending struggle:
The Sultan is enraged! Hell’s daughters, The Furies incited his anger.
The forest’s animals began to howl,
20 I. F. Bogdanovich, Stikhotvoreniia i poemy, 213.
21 Oeuvres complète de Voltaire, 10, 435. (‘’<…> The pasha washes his hands in my blood.’’)
The wolf and dog dropped their jaws;
The cries of night ravens Fill our places with horror, Foreboding blood and wounds;
The comet up above the seraglio Shakes down, from her fiery tail, Misfortunes on our midnight country!
Oh war, an awful war is in the air,
Oh Russia, right over your very head <...>.22
Petrov, in painting such a cosmological picture, explicitly repeats some of the metaphors from Lomonosov’s Ode on the Seizure of Khotin. In both odes, the enemy forces are “enraged,”
“inflamed,” “filled” with “anger,” “brimstone,” and “poison.” The physical towns, rivers, and countries become animated, and they act like historical heroes. Petrov also appropriates Lomonosov’s
“zoological” metaphors as necessary elements of his Baroque style.
By referring to Lomonosov, Petrov not only demonstrates his poetic legacy and his participation in the respectable and politically correct tradition. Through his use of Lomonosov’s poetic devices he also, as Lomonosov did, implies that current events can be most accurately described in the Biblical–Apocalyptic context.
In the conclusion of his extremely pessimistic ode, Petrov makes an attempt to offer a glimmer of hope for the future. He depicts the Russians as having defeated a terrible animal; this victory is symbolic of Catherine’s triumph over all enemies who supported the Turks, most of all France, called in all of Petrov’s works by its Latinized name — Sequana. Petrov, as an excellent translator and admirer of Latin poets, knew that, according to Gallo-Roman mythology, Sequana was the goddess of the river Seine.
In his ode, Petrov depicts France-Sequana as a serpent dying on the sand:
Worship Catherine,
Who has subdued the mighty Beast, And turned the battle into peace.
22 V. Petrov, Sochineniia, I, 34.
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She must be given honor as her trophy.
Yes, looking at the mother in laurels, Sequana will beat her chest in anger, Falling down in unbearable despair, Regretting her failed cunning.
She will shrivel up from envy,
Barely carrying her body on the river’s sands.23
Petrov’s images refer to passages in the Book of Revelations in which John the Baptist describes the struggle between
“a woman clothed with the sun,” and “a huge red dragon that had seven heads and ten horns, and on its heads were seven diadem crowns.” (Rev.12:1– 3) Petrov’s comet that rains misfortunes down upon Russia is also linked with the Biblical dragon: “the dragon’s tail swept away a third of the stars in heaven and hurled them to the earth.” (Rev. 12:4) The Dragon (or Serpent) in the military odes of that time always stands for Russia’s enemies, such as the Turks or France.
Petrov’s first military ode explores poetic language, style, and a system of metaphors. Petrov felt a close connection to Lomonosov and even exceeded the latter in terms of the density of his metaphoric devices and Slavonic lexicon, already too artificial for the time (Petrov’s language was even more archaic than Lomonosov’s!). This ode, written in a time when various writers were competing for the right to be Catherine’s exclusive court poet, also exhibits an enormous effort on Petrov’s part to find the most adequate style and language with which to worship the Empress during war. The success of the chosen discourse was more than a pure literary achievement: it “signified the state success of a poet and his aesthetics.”24
Petrov’s ode gave rise to the creation of another ode about the same comet. Mikhail Kheraskov, the poet and provost of Moscow University, composed an ode entitled The Comet, which appeared in 1767, at the beginning of the war with the Turks (Комета, явившаяся в
23 Ibid, 38.
24 Oleg Proskurin, “Burlesknyi kulachnyi boi I bor’ba za epopeiu: Elisei, ili Razdrazhennyi Vakkh, V. Maikova i Poema na pobedy Rossiiskogo voinstva, V. Petrova,” in Jews and Slavs, 14 (2004), 94.
1767 году при начале войны с турками). The poem came out only in 1783, in the magazine The Interlocutor of the Lovers of Russian Literature.25
Kheraskov also frames his ode in Biblical allusions, but rejects Petrov’s pessimistic and apocalyptical views. In his ode, the Russians’ struggle with the Ottoman Empire is considered a continuation of the historical clash between Christians and Muslims. The Russians, according to his opinion, inherited the European hope, and had the messianic task of liberating lands taken by the Porte, in particular, Jerusalem. He interprets the appearance of the comet as a dangerous sign only for the Turks: the comet looks, as he writes, like a “menacing sword” above their heads:
Oh, you! Who fell asleep in luxury, Wake up, wake up, and look, Istanbul, A sword is hung up above the moon’s disk;
It’s bloody and terrifying,
It threatens to depose your lofty throne And destroy you.
Visible in the sky from far away,
It’s a dangerous sign in the hands of the Russians;
Their sharp sword is your comet, Glinting in your eyes;
It wants to raze your town to the ground, To push Mahomet to Medina.
The Christian Church has woken up, And promises peace to the holy mountains, Their black clothing will fall down,
Jerusalem will arise , Crowned in gold will be Love, Faith, and Hope. <…>
Khotin is already brought to its knees,
25 The title of Kheraskov’s poem misled scholars in dating the ode, which suggests that it was written in 1767. However, in 1767 there was neither war with the Turks, nor any comet in the sky. Moreover, the author referred to the seizure of Khotin that took place in September 1769 as a recent event. Most probably, Kheraskov’s ode was written just after Petrov’s ode, in the autumn of 1769. Very cautiously, Kheraskov had decided not to publish his ode during the time of the apparent domination of Petrov, a young rising star of Catherine’s political propaganda machine.
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The East is trembling before the North, The holy faith is triumphing; <…>.26
The third military ode of the same time period (the end of 1769) belonged to Alexander Sumarokov, who made desperate attempts to overcome both Lomonosov and Petrov and regain the position of poetic leader. His poem of 1769 has a title that indicates not one, but two military victories, and contains a direct statement as to their cause: Ode to the Empress Catherine the Second, on the Seizure of Khotin and the Conquest of Moldavia (Ода Государыне Императрице Екатерине Второй на взятие Хотина и покорение Молдавии).
Sumarokov’s ode offers references to the Bible, a strict and pure
“high style” in terms of its lexicon, and a solemn intonation of “high swooping.” He filled his ode with implicit polemics addressed to his longtime rival Lomonosov, and through him, to Petrov, who claimed to be Lomonosov’s “apprentice.”
In 1739, Lomonosov opened his Ode on the Seizure of Khotin with a Pindaric preamble, which is saturated with “Pagan” images from Greek mythology. It depicts a joyful and ecstatic Poet who completes an imaginary ascent to the top of the famous Greek mountain Pindus. There he meets the Muses and drinks from the Castalian spring, the source of his poetic inspiration. Lomonosov writes:
A sudden ecstasy fills my mind;
It leads to a high mountain summit <…>
Is Pindus not beneath my feet?27
Sumarokov purposely deviates from this traditional
“preamble,” because it is too “pagan”; instead, he opens his ode with a picture of a spiritual ascent into Heaven. Sumarokov purifies his ode from any pagan mythology, using only Christian symbolism.
His poet finds his “inspiration” by visiting Christ and His Angels, not the Muses:
26 M. M. Kheraskov, Izbrannye proizvedeniia, 135– 136.
27 M. V. Lomonosov, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 8, 16, 18.
To the sky’s outermost heights, My spirit dared soar.
Out of the reach of arrows:
I find myself in Heaven.
I hear praying angels, Who speak to God <…>28
Sumarokov deliberately merges the genres of the military ode and the religious hymn. In a very important dispute between the followers of the French “ancients” and the French “moderns,” he takes the side of the latter, despite his theoretical sympathy toward the former. The theoreticians of the “ancients” believed it necessary to employ ancient mythology and images in the high genres, even in the depiction of modern events.29 Rejecting classical heritage, Sumarokov relies on Biblical symbolical capital. Like Petrov, he expresses his utmost concern with the war with the Turks by presenting it in apocalyptical visions:
Is this not Hell in its new mourning?
Is not the race of mortals going to drown?
Is not the world coming to an end?30
Apocalyptical motifs helped to maintain a high pathos in odes, but had become outdated by the beginning of the 1770s. The Apocalyptic anticipations surrounding the first months of war in 1769 contradicted the subsequent events of 1770, when the Russian triumphs over the Turks became quite clear. The ideology of war sought a new discourse, and more perceptive poets (like Petrov) had already begun to develop a kind of “Russian” Hellenistic style, which imitated Ancient Greek poetic forms, employing their metaphors and even their rhythms.
Meanwhile, Sumarokov was obstinate, and he continued to compose ode after ode, but success did not come. His archaic poetic principles, his too didactic style and his hymn-like structure
28 A. P. Sumarokov, Polnoe sobranie vsekh sochinenii v stikhakh i proze, 2, 106.
29 V. M. Zhivov, B. A. Uspenskii, “Metamorfozy antichnogo iazychestva v istorii russkoi kul’tury XVII– XVIII veka,” in Iz istorii russkoi kul’tury, IV (Moscow, 2000), 506– 518.
30 A. P. Sumarokov, Polnoe sobranie vsekh sochinenii v stikhakh i proze, 2, 107.
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failed to hit the mark. On September 23, 1770, he sent a new ode to Catherine’s secretary, G. V. Kozitskii. The poem was almost completely devoted to war, in spite of its title, Ode to the Empress Catherine the Second, on the Occasion of Her Coronation, September 22, 1770 (Ода Государыне Императрице Екатерине Второй, на день Коронования Ея Сентября 22 дня, 1770 года). Sumarokov assumed the ode would be the best of all his odes, and he asked Kozitskii to present it to the Empress. At the same time, in a rush, he sent a direct letter to the Empress in which he made some theoretical statements about the presentation of her image in war. In his letter, Sumarokov indicates the importance of contemporary aesthetic choices; he suggests accepting his “elevated” pathos in odes, and finally, he distinguishes himself from all modern poets who simply report the facts in their odes.
He writes to the Empress:
“As a poet, I cannot be silent when the whole universe witnesses the enormous victories of Your Highness and praises the name of Catherine the Great <…>. Perhaps, this is my best ode, and it seems to me, that my ode is quite different from the poems of all our poor poets. <…> Military reports along with a few compliments to your sacred person cannot constitute a live picture that might present to our progeny the whole glory of our century as well as your immortal name.
The rule of Augustus needs its Horace. <…> It should be: The fleet established by Peter the Great, led by God’s Providence and yours, for the first time, has crossed the Baltic and Midnight Seas, glimpsed the Western ocean, voyaged along Europe, and reached the Archipelagos where she ravaged the Turkish fleet and moved, with a great noise, all the winds, the seas, and the earth. And so, the following depiction is poor: Russian ships arrived, and after some clashes with the Turks, set the enemies’ ships on fire, and soon, they all burned down. The deeds of Catherine the Great require more sensitive explanations.”31
The letter aimed to convince the Empress to accept and promote Sumarokov’s aesthetic views. He justly considered the poet’s efforts to be equal to the deeds of a statesman. Not surprisingly, right
31 Pis’ma russkikh pisatelei XVIII veka (Leningrad, 1980), 143.
after his aesthetic declarations, the poet found it appropriate to ask Catherine for some financial assistance!
What did he want to prove? Sumarokov protested against using any kind of “narrative” structure in an ode. The ode should remain a poem, not a detailed “report” of facts. As a true high genre, the ode should be built not on plot, but on metaphors or, as he called them, “contrasts” which referred to the Bible.32 Sumarokov ridiculed the plain, narrative odes of his contemporaries who composed them based on newspapers. On the other hand, he attempted to oppose a pure Christian (Biblical) symbolism to the famous metaphorical
“chaos” of Lomonosov’s ode, which draws upon both Christian and
“pagan” sources.
As a result, Sumarokov’s odes consistently depict the war with the Turks against an apocalyptic background and place Catherine’s image between the forces of “light” and “darkness,” “paradise”
and “hell.” Sumarokov believed the high genres should not contain any kind of narrative plot, and even criticized Lomonosov for introducing one in his unfinished long poem Peter the Great (Петр Великий). He scorned the narrative as a distinctive feature of the
“lower” entertaining genres, like stories or novels.
In 1769, Sumarokov began to write an epic poem entitled the Dimitriade (Димитрияды), devoted to the struggle of Moscow’s prince Dimitrii Donskoi against the Golden Horde. He obviously meant to emphasize parallels with modern events. The poem was intended to prove his uncompromised view on the purity of genre as well as the necessity of eradicating Pagan gods and myths from poetry. The opening of his poem gives a picture of personified and animated “passions” (as substitutions for Pagan gods!) that are obstinately based exclusively on a dense Biblical symbolism. He stopped composing the poem, after several unsuccessful attempts to progress beyond the introduction.
32 Sumarokov juxtaposes narrative’s strategies of epic poems to contrasts’ poetics of the odes (V. M. Zhivov, B. A. Uspenskii, “Metamorfozy antichnogo iazychestva v istorii russkoi kul’tury XVII– XVIII veka,” 508).
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