fat fruit

Works by Semyon Bobrov published

Blessed is he who joins the hosts of the wicked/ Does not go to disastrous council,/ Abhors the ways of the obstinate/ And slanderous conversations, // His will only pleases/ One divine law;/ He directs all thoughts to the law,/ Denying sleep day and night. // He, like a tree planted / With currents of silver-streaming waters, / Always keeps fresh grain, / Gives fat fruit in time. This is how the Russian poet Semyon Bobrov translated the first psalm of David more than two centuries ago, filled with the mighty spirit of the “Jewish crowned bard.” The “fat fruit”, brought to the altar of literature by one of the most courageous poets of the turn of the 18th-19th centuries, was rejected by his successful contemporaries and forgotten by his descendants. But the hosts of sinners are wicked / Nothing, just light dust, / Which, scattered by a seething whirlwind, / rushes to the top, twists, twists in the swells. // And as on the day of judgment, / The troubled wicked spirit will be put to shame, / And the lawless one will not be included / In the bright circle of the righteous. // Our Lord only looks down/ On the right paths of the good/ And in terrible anger destroys/ The feet of the shrew only the evil ones.

Echoing the psalmist, Bobrov hoped for the triumph of justice. In vain. The brilliant and almost unprecedentedly evil epigrammatic sentences of Bobrov’s literary enemies, who did not leave him alone even after his death, fit into the history of literature much more firmly than his immense creations and sad fate. How difficult it is for Bibrus to get along with fame/ He drinks to write, and writes to get drunk - this is Batyushkov. There is no dispute that Bibris sang with the tongue of the gods; / Among mortals, no one understood him - this is Prince Vyazemsky.

And here's Bobrov: It's deep night! - and there - above the abyss / Urania, the soul of these spheres, / Among the multi-starred machine / Gives centuries a straight size; / The wheels of centuries run with noise. // I hear - a groan penetrates there; / The midnight hour has struck - the midnight hour has struck! / The battle groans - it dissolves the darkness, / For the last time it groans; / Isn’t the death of the world the sigh of time? // A century passes - and everything with centuries; / A single kind of tribes will fall / And creeps with worms, / As another rises from worms; / And everything takes on a new image . It is possible to understand the meaning of these gloomy, alarming and majestic stanzas even now.

The ode “The Centenary Song, or the Triumph of the Eighteenth Century of Russia” opens with “The Dawn of Midnight, or Contemplation of the glory, triumph and wisdom of the porphyry-bearing, battle-bearing and peaceful geniuses of Russia, followed by didactic, erotic and other experiments of various kinds in poetry and prose by Semyon Bobrov”, final on publication time (1804) four-volume work by a forty-year-old writer. The son of a Yaroslavl priest was doomed to follow the usual path of commoners hungry for learning: seminary, Gymnasium at the Moscow Imperial University, university. Burdened with extensive knowledge and already attached to literature (especially the latest English), Bobrov entered the public service with the insignificant rank of provincial secretary and did not achieve success in this field either in Moscow or in St. Petersburg. But he wrote poetry in all possible genres and tastes, and in the close circle of people writing at that time he was a notable figure: he was a member of the Society of Friends of Verbal Sciences, was familiar with Radishchev, and was published in “The Conversing Citizen.” In 1791, he moved to midday Russia, clearly not of his own free will: the decline of Catherine’s reign was not the best time for the writing brethren. The years of service under the commander of the Black Sea Fleet, Mordvinov (an enlightened, liberal nobleman with a penchant for philanthropy) were, it seems, the happiest times in the sad life of the poor, lonely, gloomy and secretly ambitious poet. At this time, the “lyrical-epic song” “Tavrida, or My Summer Day in Tauride Chersonis” was written, a grandiose natural-philosophical poem based on Crimean material. Its second, heavily revised edition - "Chersonis" - became the fourth part of "Dawn of Midnight". Later, Bobrov wrote another poem - “The Ancient Night of the Universe, or the Wandering Blind” (1807-1809). He did not have long to live - returning to St. Petersburg did not strengthen the poet’s financial position, he was not in good health before, the tendency to drink wine, noted by epigrammatists, did its job, literary achievements brought more troubles than joys... Bobrov died on March 25, 1810 - - in order to exist for many generations of readers in the clownish guise of a gloomy loser, a chaotic compiler of strange poems alien to true harmony, a pompous creator of unreadable works.

Nowadays, anyone who wants to see Russian poetry in its real volume can see how unfair the malicious myth about the mediocre Bibrus created by the younger Karamzinists is. “The Dawn of Midnight...” published by V.L. Korovin in the “Literary Monuments” series, one must hope that the painstaking work of the textual critic, commentator and biographer will be appreciated. As is the strange - sublime and crudely material, learned and passionate, clumsy and majestic - Bobrov's poetry.

O friend of nature, turn! / Look at this drawing! - grin! / And majestic heavens, / In the shades of some of this picture / Only they will arise, / Grow, - breathe and flourish, / And the noisy springs are sacred / And their streams are twisted / With the same footsteps / They will begin to gallop in the midst of this simple song, / Like in the original unparalleled / Inimitable - immortal. // Boast, O stone, of your destiny, / Boast of the immutable share, / That with the hand of meek wisdom, / The fruit of your hand is possible, / How much will be revived, / How much will be exalted!

Andrey NEMZER