The artistic paradox of the Russian ode

Abstract

The paper studies the Russian ode transformation during the three hundred years of its existence. The author considers that the main mechanisms of ode transformation were not only the result of its evolution but were initially embedded in the deep structure of the genre. In the 1750s, Sumarokov created his “Vzdornye ody,” mocking the principles of Lomonosov’s baroque poetics. Later, in 1782, Derzhavin composed the ode “Felitsa” and filled its content with specific features of the lifestyle of Catherine the Great while preserving some of the features of the solemn ode. After leaving the literary arena as the leading genre of lyric poetry, the ode retained its significance as the genre memory, with the process of disintegration of the unity of the signifier and the signified taking place. The signifier is associated with the traditional scheme of the odic decima - ababccdeed, and the signified retained the main core of the motifs characteristic of the solemn ode of the 18th century. At the same time, the decima itself actively penetrated the speech of large genres - the poem and the poetic story - as a quotation and thus restores the lost unity. In the 20th century, the irony penetrated the depths of nuclear motifs, preserving a secret meaning for the poet’s inner circle, for example, Akhmatova’s verses about Stalin. Thus, the poetic fate of the ode is somewhat similar to that of the novel, combining, to quote Boileau, the bizarre chaos of thoughts with the exceptional verification of its basic artistic parameters.