Author’s name:
Vera G. Sibirtseva – National Research University “Higher School of Economics”, Nizhny Novgorod, Russia
Abstract:
The sociocultural phenomenon named “literary reputation” in Russian literary criticism is made up of the total artistic value of an author’s works and their popularity among their contemporaries, as well as their significance for posterity. Russian literature in the late 1790s and the early 1800s was greatly influenced by French literature and, to a lesser extent, English and German literature. While French writers’ names are widely known, and their works have been studied extensively, but, for most Russian readers, many German authors, such as Gottsched, Klopstock, or Lessing remain only as entries in encyclopedias and anthologies on literature. This article describes the first stage in the formation of the literary reputation of the German poet Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, who has been known in Russia for more than two and a half centuries. Klopstock’s name first appeared in the Russian press at the end of the 18th century when Russian readers got acquainted with his epic poem “Der Messias” (“The Messiah”). The withdrawal of the first translations of Klopstock’s religious epic from sale and the imperfections of Russian poetic translation art at the time made any wide reading and discussion of the Ger-man poet’s works in Russia next to impossible. Despite the high appreciation of Klopstock’s work in N. M. Karamzin’s magazines and the compulsory inclusion of Klopstock’s works in syllabi of educational institutions, he was practically forgotten by the end of the 19th century. Klopstock’s name started appearing in fiction in comic contexts, as a sign of ostentatious learning or an excuse to interrupt a long-drawn, uninteresting conversation. The mention of the poet in memoirs was often accompanied by remarks about the awful boredom caused by reading his works. At the same time, the availability of Klopstock’s texts in Russian was limited to a really difficult epic and a few odes, the translations of which were far from perfect. The reception of Klopstock in Russia was driven by the dissonance between the schoolboy-level knowledge of Klopstock as an outstanding author and almost complete ignorance of his work.
| Section | CROSS-CULTURAL ASPECTS OF LITERARY DISCOURSE |
| DOI: | 10.47388/2072-3490/lunn2023-62-2-191-205 |
| Downloads | 293 |
| Key words | Klopstock; Karamzin; literary reputation; “Der Messias”; “Vestnik Evropy” |