Who did Karamzin know? N.m. Karamzin as a historian and his methods of studying the past. Mature creativity. "History of Russian Goverment"

We often use familiar words like charity, attraction, and even love. But few people know that if it were not for Nikolai Karamzin, then perhaps they would never have appeared in the Russian dictionary. Karamzin's work was compared with the works of the outstanding sentimentalist Stern, and even put the writers on the same level. Possessing deep analytical thinking, he managed to write the first book, “History of the Russian State.” Karamzin did this without describing a separate historical stage, of which he was a contemporary, but by presenting a panoramic image of the historical picture of the state.

Childhood and youth of N. Karamzin

The future genius was born on December 12, 1766. He grew up and was brought up in the house of his father, Mikhail Yegorovich, who was a retired captain. Nikolai lost his mother early, so his father was completely involved in his upbringing.

As soon as he learned to read, the boy took books from his mother’s library, among which were French novels, works by Emin and Rollin. Nikolai received his primary education at home, then studied at the Simbirsk noble boarding school, and then, in 1778, he was sent to the boarding school of Professor Moskovsky.

Even as a child, he began to be interested in history. This was facilitated by a book on the history of Emin.

Nikolai's inquisitive mind did not allow him to sit still for long; he began studying languages ​​and went to listen to lectures at Moscow University.

Carier start

Karamzin's creativity dates back to the time when he served in the Preobrazhensky Guards Regiment in St. Petersburg. It was during this period that Nikolai Mikhailovich began to try himself as a writer.

Words and the acquaintances he made in Moscow contributed to the formation of Karamzin as an artist. Among his friends were N. Novikov, A. Petrov, A. Kutuzov. During the same period, he became involved in social activities - he helped in the preparation and publication of the children's magazine “Children's Reading for the Heart and Mind.”

The period of service was not only the beginning of Nikolai Karamzin, but also shaped him as a person and gave him the opportunity to make many acquaintances that were useful. After the death of his father, Nikolai decides to quit his service, never to return to it. In the world at that time, this was regarded as insolence and a challenge to society. But who knows, if he had not left the service, he would have been able to publish his first translations, as well as original works, which show a keen interest in historical topics?

Trip to Europe

Karamzin’s life and work radically changed their usual structure when, from 1789 to 1790. he travels around Europe. During the trip, the writer visits Immanuel Kant, which made a remarkable impression on him. Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin, whose chronological table is supplemented by his presence in France during the Great French Revolution, subsequently writes his “Letters of a Russian Traveler.” It is this work that makes him famous.

There is an opinion that this book marks the beginning of a new era of Russian literature. This is not unreasonable, since such travel notes were not only popular in Europe, but also found their followers in Russia. Among them are A. Griboyedov, F. Glinka, V. Izmailov and many others.

This is where the comparison between Karamzin and Stern “grows.” The latter’s “Sentimental Journey” is reminiscent of Karamzin’s works in theme.

Arrival in Russia

Returning to his homeland, Karamzin decides to settle in Moscow, where he continues his literary activity. In addition, he becomes a professional writer and journalist. But the apogee of this period is, of course, the publication of the Moscow Journal - the first Russian literary magazine, which published Karamzin’s works.

At the same time, he published collections and almanacs that strengthened him as the father of sentimentalism in Russian literature. Among them are “Aglaya”, “Pantheon of Foreign Literature”, “My Trinkets” and others.

Moreover, Emperor Alexander I established the title of court historiographer for Karamzin. It is noteworthy that after that no one was awarded a similar title. This not only strengthened Nikolai Mikhailovich, but also strengthened his status in society.

Karamzin as a writer

Karamzin joined the writing class while already in the service, since attempts to try himself in this field at the university were not crowned with great success.

Karamzin’s creativity can be conditionally divided into three main lines:

• literary prose, which forms a significant part of the heritage (listed: stories, novellas);
• poetry - there is much less of it;
• fiction, historical works.

In general, the influence of his works on Russian literature can be compared with the influence of Catherine on society - changes took place that made the industry humane.

Karamzin is a writer who became the starting point of new Russian literature, the era of which continues to this day.

Sentimentalism in the works of Karamzin

Karamzin Nikolai Mikhailovich turned the attention of writers, and, as a result, their readers, to feelings as the dominant feature of human essence. It is this feature that is fundamental to sentimentalism and separates it from classicism.

The basis of a normal, natural and correct existence of a person should not be a rational principle, but the release of feelings and impulses, the improvement of the sensual side of a person as such, which is given by nature and is natural.

The hero is no longer typical. It was individualized and given uniqueness. His experiences do not deprive him of strength, but enrich him, teach him to feel the world subtly and respond to changes.

“Poor Liza” is considered to be the programmatic work of sentimentalism in Russian literature. This statement is not entirely true. Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin, whose work exploded literally after the publication of “Letters of a Russian Traveler,” introduced sentimentalism precisely with travel notes.

Karamzin's poetry

Karamzin's poems occupy much less space in his work. But their importance should not be underestimated. As in prose, Karamzin the poet becomes a neophyte of sentimentalism.

The poetry of that time was guided by Lomonosov and Derzhavin, while Nikolai Mikhailovich changed course towards European sentimentalism. There is a reorientation of values ​​in literature. Instead of the external, rational world, the author delves into the inner world of man and is interested in his spiritual powers.

Unlike classicism, the heroes become characters of simple life, everyday life; accordingly, the object of Karamzin’s poem is simple life, as he himself claimed. Of course, when describing everyday life, the poet refrains from pompous metaphors and comparisons, using standard and simple rhymes.

But this does not mean at all that poetry becomes poor and mediocre. On the contrary, to be able to select those that are available so that they produce the desired effect and at the same time convey the hero’s experiences - this is the main goal pursued by Karamzin’s poetic work.

The poems are not monumental. They often show the duality of human nature, two ways of looking at things, unity and the struggle of opposites.

Karamzin's prose

Karamzin’s aesthetic principles reflected in prose are also found in his theoretical works. He insists on moving away from the classicist fixation on rationalism to the sensitive side of man, his spiritual world.

The main task is to incline the reader to maximum empathy, to make him worry not only about the hero, but also with him. Thus, empathy should lead to an internal transformation of a person, forcing him to develop his spiritual resources.

The artistic side of the work is structured in the same way as that of the poems: a minimum of complex speech patterns, pomp and pretentiousness. But so that the same traveler’s notes are not dry reports, in them the focus on displaying mentality and characters comes to the fore.

Karamzin's stories describe what is happening in detail, focusing on the sensual nature of things. But since there were many impressions from the trip abroad, they were transferred to paper through the sieve of the author’s “I”. He does not become attached to associations that are firmly established in his mind. For example, he remembered London not for the Thames, bridges and fog, but in the evenings, when the lanterns are lit and the city shines.

The characters find the writer themselves - these are his fellow travelers or interlocutors whom Karamzin meets during the journey. It is worth noting that these are not only noble people. He communicates without hesitation with both socialites and poor students.

Karamzin - historian

The 19th century brings Karamzin to history. When Alexander I appoints him court historiographer, Karamzin’s life and work again undergo dramatic changes: he abandons literary activity completely and immerses himself in writing historical works.

Oddly enough, Karamzin dedicated his first historical work, “A Note on Ancient and New Russia in Its Political and Civil Relation,” to criticism of the emperor’s reforms. The purpose of the “Note” was to show conservative-minded sections of society, as well as their dissatisfaction with liberal reforms. He also tried to find evidence of the futility of such reforms.

Karamzin - translator

Structure of the “History”:

• introduction - describes the role of history as a science;
• history up to 1612 from the time of nomadic tribes.

Each story or narrative ends with conclusions of a moral and ethical nature.

The Meaning of "Stories"

As soon as Karamzin completed his work, “The History of the Russian State” literally sold out like hot cakes. Within a month, 3,000 copies were sold. Everyone was engrossed in “history”: the reason for this was not only the filled-in blank spots in the history of the state, but also the simplicity and ease of presentation. Based on this book, more than one was later created, since “History” also became a source of plots.

“History of the Russian State” became the first analytical work on the subject. It also became a template and example for the further development of interest in history in the country.

Karamzin Nikolai Mikhailovich was born on December 12 (December 1), 1766 in Simbirsk (now Ulyanovsk) into a noble family. The future writer received his primary education at home. Soon his father sent him to a noble boarding school in Simbirsk, and in 1778 to a private boarding school in Moscow. At the same time, Karamzin was actively studying languages ​​and attending lectures at Moscow University.

Military service

In 1781, Nikolai Mikhailovich, at the insistence of his father, entered military service in the Preobrazhensky Regiment. In 1783, the writer made his debut in print with the work “Wooden Leg”. In 1784, Karamzin’s short biography as a military man ended, and he retired with the rank of lieutenant.

Early literary activity

In 1785, Karamzin, whose biography sharply changed its direction, moved from his native Simbirsk to Moscow. Here the writer meets N.I. Novikov and the Pleshcheev family. Having become interested in Freemasonry, Nikolai Mikhailovich joined the Moscow Masonic circle, where he began to communicate closely with I. S. Gamaleya, A. M. Kutuzov. At the same time, Karamzin participated in the publication of the first children's magazine in Russia - “Children's Reading for the Heart and Mind.”

Travel to Europe

In 1789 - 1790 Karamzin traveled around Europe. The writer visited Germany, England, France, Switzerland, met many famous personalities of that era - C. Bonnet, I. Kant, J. F. Marmontel, I. G. Herder, I. K. Lavater, attended the speeches of M. Robespierre , O. G. Mirabeau. During the trip, Nikolai Mikhailovich created the famous “Letters of a Russian Traveler,” which were published in 1791-1792 and brought the writer wide literary fame.

Mature creativity. "History of Russian Goverment"

Upon returning to Moscow, Karamzin continued to engage in literary activities, writing works of art, critical articles and notes. In 1791, Nikolai Mikhailovich began publishing the literary “Moscow Journal”, in which he first published the stories “Poor Liza”, “Natalia, the Boyar’s Daughter”. Soon Karamzin released several sentimental almanacs - “Aglaya”, “Aonids”, “Pantheon of Foreign Literature”, “My Trinkets”. In 1802, the story “Martha the Posadnitsa, or the Conquest of Novagorod” was published.

In 1803, Emperor Alexander I granted Karamzin the title of historiographer, and all libraries and archives were opened to the writer.

Until the last day of his life, Nikolai Mikhailovich worked on his most important work - “The History of the Russian State.” The book covers events from ancient times to the Time of Troubles and includes 12 volumes. The first eight volumes were published in 1818, the next three were published in 1821–1824. The last part of “History...” was published after Karamzin’s death.

Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin died on May 22 (June 3), 1826 in St. Petersburg. The writer was buried at the Tikhvin cemetery of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra.

Other biography options

• Karamzin's prose and poetry largely influenced the development of the Russian literary language; the writer was the first to use neologisms, barbarisms, and moved away from church vocabulary.
• Karamzin was married twice. The first wife, E.I. Protasova, was the sister of A.I. Pleshcheeva. The second wife, E. A. Kolyvanova, was the illegitimate daughter of Prince A. I. Vyazemsky.
• The story “Poor Liza” by Karamzin is the most striking example of Russian sentimentalism and is studied by schoolchildren in the 9th grade.
• Karamzin was the first to discover a famous literary monument - the work of Afanasy Nikitin “Walking across Three Seas”.
• Thanks to Karamzin, words such as “moral”, “industry”, “scene”, “catastrophe”, “concentrate”, “aesthetic”, “future”, “era”, “harmony”, “fall in love” have appeared in the everyday life of the modern Russian language. ", "entertaining", "impact", "impression", "touching".

Biography test

Try to answer the test questions on Karamzin's short biography.

Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin(December 1, 1766, family estate Znamenskoye, Simbirsk district, Kazan province (according to other sources - the village of Mikhailovka (now Preobrazhenka), Buzuluk district, Kazan province) - May 22, 1826, St. Petersburg) - an outstanding historian, the largest Russian writer of the era of sentimentalism, nicknamed Russian Stern.

Honorary member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences (1818), full member of the Imperial Russian Academy (1818). Creator of the “History of the Russian State” (volumes 1-12, 1803-1826) - one of the first generalizing works on the history of Russia. Editor of the Moscow Journal (1791-1792) and Vestnik Evropy (1802-1803).

Karamzin went down in history as a great reformer of the Russian language. His style is light in the Gallic manner, but instead of direct borrowing, Karamzin enriched the language with tracing words, such as “impression” and “influence,” “falling in love,” “touching” and “entertaining.” It was he who introduced into use the words “industry”, “concentrate”, “moral”, “aesthetic”, “era”, “scene”, “harmony”, “catastrophe”, “future”.

Biography

Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin was born on December 1 (12), 1766 near Simbirsk. He grew up on the estate of his father, retired captain Mikhail Egorovich Karamzin (1724-1783), a middle-class Simbirsk nobleman, a descendant of the Tatar Murza Kara-Murza. Received home education. In 1778 he was sent to Moscow to the boarding school of Moscow University professor I.M. Schaden. At the same time, he attended lectures by I. G. Schwartz at the University in 1781-1782.

Carier start

In 1783, at the insistence of his father, he entered service in the Preobrazhensky Guards Regiment of St. Petersburg, but soon retired. The first literary experiments date back to his military service. After retirement, he lived for some time in Simbirsk, and then in Moscow. During his stay in Simbirsk, he joined the Masonic lodge of the Golden Crown, and after arriving in Moscow, for four years (1785-1789) he was a member of the Friendly Scientific Society.

In Moscow, Karamzin met writers and writers: N.I. Novikov, A.M. Kutuzov, A.A. Petrov, and participated in the publication of the first Russian magazine for children - “Children’s Reading for the Heart and Mind.”

Trip to Europe

In 1789-1790 he made a trip to Europe, during which he visited Immanuel Kant in Königsberg, and was in Paris during the great French Revolution. As a result of this trip, the famous “Letters of a Russian Traveler” were written, the publication of which immediately made Karamzin a famous writer. Some philologists believe that it is from this book that modern Russian literature begins. Be that as it may, in the literature of Russian “travels” Karamzin truly became a pioneer - quickly finding both imitators and worthy successors (, N. A. Bestuzhev,). It is since then that Karamzin has been considered one of the main literary figures in Russia.

Return and life in Russia

Upon returning from a trip to Europe, Karamzin settled in Moscow and began working as a professional writer and journalist, starting the publication of the Moscow Journal 1791-1792 (the first Russian literary magazine, in which, among other works of Karamzin, the story “Poor” appeared, which strengthened his fame Liza"), then published a number of collections and almanacs: “Aglaya”, “Aonids”, “Pantheon of Foreign Literature”, “My Trinkets”, which made sentimentalism the main literary movement in Russia, and Karamzin its recognized leader.

Emperor Alexander I, by personal decree of October 31, 1803, granted the title of historiographer to Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin; 2 thousand rubles were added to the rank at the same time. annual salary. The title of historiographer in Russia was not renewed after Karamzin’s death.

From the beginning of the 19th century, Karamzin gradually moved away from fiction, and from 1804, having been appointed by Alexander I to the post of historiographer, he stopped all literary work, “taking monastic vows as a historian.” In 1811, he wrote “A Note on Ancient and New Russia in its Political and Civil Relations,” which reflected the views of conservative layers of society dissatisfied with the liberal reforms of the emperor. Karamzin’s goal was to prove that no reforms were needed in the country.

“A Note on Ancient and New Russia in its Political and Civil Relations” also played the role of an outline for Nikolai Mikhailovich’s subsequent enormous work on Russian history. In February 1818, Karamzin released the first eight volumes of “The History of the Russian State,” the three thousand copies of which sold out within a month. In subsequent years, three more volumes of “History” were published, and a number of translations of it into the main European languages ​​appeared. Coverage of the Russian historical process brought Karamzin closer to the court and the tsar, who settled him near him in Tsarskoe Selo. Karamzin's political views evolved gradually, and by the end of his life he was a staunch supporter of absolute monarchy. The unfinished XII volume was published after his death.

Karamzin died on May 22 (June 3), 1826 in St. Petersburg. His death was the result of a cold contracted on December 14, 1825. On this day Karamzin was on Senate Square.

He was buried at the Tikhvin Cemetery of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra.

Karamzin - writer

Collected works of N. M. Karamzin in 11 volumes. in 1803-1815 was printed in the printing house of the Moscow book publisher Selivanovsky.

“Karamzin’s influence on literature can be compared with Catherine’s influence on society: he made literature humane,” wrote A. I. Herzen.

Sentimentalism

Karamzin’s publication of “Letters of a Russian Traveler” (1791-1792) and the story “Poor Liza” (1792; separate publication 1796) ushered in the era of sentimentalism in Russia.

Sentimentalism declared feeling, not reason, to be the dominant of “human nature,” which distinguished it from classicism. Sentimentalism believed that the ideal of human activity was not the “reasonable” reorganization of the world, but the release and improvement of “natural” feelings. His hero is more individualized, his inner world is enriched by the ability to empathize and sensitively respond to what is happening around him.

The publication of these works was a great success among readers of that time; “Poor Liza” caused many imitations. Karamzin's sentimentalism had a great influence on the development of Russian literature: it inspired, among other things, the romanticism of Zhukovsky and the work of Pushkin.

Karamzin's poetry

Karamzin's poetry, which developed in line with European sentimentalism, was radically different from the traditional poetry of his time, brought up on odes and. The most significant differences were the following:

Karamzin is not interested in the external, physical world, but in the internal, spiritual world of man. His poems speak “the language of the heart,” not the mind. The object of Karamzin’s poetry is “simple life”, and to describe it he uses simple poetic forms - poor rhymes, avoids the abundance of metaphors and other tropes so popular in the poems of his predecessors.

Another difference between Karamzin’s poetics is that the world is fundamentally unknowable for him; the poet recognizes the existence of different points of view on the same subject.

Karamzin's language reform

Karamzin's prose and poetry had a decisive influence on the development of the Russian literary language. Karamzin purposefully refused to use Church Slavonic vocabulary and grammar, bringing the language of his works to the everyday language of his era and using the grammar and syntax of the French language as a model.

Karamzin introduced many new words into the Russian language - as neologisms (“charity”, “love”, “freethinking”, “attraction”, “responsibility”, “suspiciousness”, “industry”, “refinement”, “first-class”, “humane” ") and barbarisms ("sidewalk", "coachman"). He was also one of the first to use the letter E.

The changes in language proposed by Karamzin caused heated controversy in the 1810s. The writer A. S. Shishkov, with the assistance of Derzhavin, founded in 1811 the society “Conversation of Lovers of the Russian Word”, the purpose of which was to promote the “old” language, as well as criticize Karamzin, Zhukovsky and their followers. In response, in 1815, the literary society “Arzamas” was formed, which ironized the authors of “Conversation” and parodied their works. Many poets of the new generation became members of the society, including Batyushkov, Vyazemsky, Davydov, Zhukovsky, Pushkin. The literary victory of “Arzamas” over “Beseda” strengthened the victory of the linguistic changes that Karamzin introduced.

Despite this, Karamzin later became closer to Shishkov, and, thanks to the latter’s assistance, Karamzin was elected a member of the Russian Academy in 1818.

Karamzin - historian

Karamzin developed an interest in history in the mid-1790s. He wrote a story on a historical theme - “Martha the Posadnitsa, or the Conquest of Novagorod” (published in 1803). In the same year, by decree of Alexander I, he was appointed to the position of historiographer, and until the end of his life he was engaged in writing “The History of the Russian State,” practically ceasing his activities as a journalist and writer.

Karamzin’s “History” was not the first description of the history of Russia; before him there were the works of V.N. Tatishchev and M.M. Shcherbatov. But it was Karamzin who opened the history of Russia to a wide educated public. According to A.S. Pushkin, “Everyone, even secular women, rushed to read the history of their fatherland, hitherto unknown to them. She was a new discovery for them. Ancient Russia seemed to be found by Karamzin, like America by Columbus.” This work also caused a wave of imitations and contrasts (for example, “The History of the Russian People” by N. A. Polevoy)

In his work, Karamzin acted more as a writer than a historian - when describing historical facts, he cared about the beauty of the language, least of all trying to draw any conclusions from the events he described. Nevertheless, his commentaries, which contain many extracts from manuscripts, mostly first published by Karamzin, are of high scientific value. Some of these manuscripts no longer exist.

Karamzin took the initiative to organize memorials and erect monuments to outstanding figures of Russian history, in particular, K. M. Minin and D. M. Pozharsky on Red Square (1818).

N. M. Karamzin discovered Afanasy Nikitin’s “Walking across Three Seas” in a 16th-century manuscript and published it in 1821. He wrote: “Until now, geographers did not know that the honor of one of the oldest described European journeys to India belongs to Russia of the Ioannian century... It (the journey) proves that Russia in the 15th century had its own Taverniers and Chardenis, less enlightened, but equally courageous and enterprising ; that the Indians heard about it before they heard about Portugal, Holland, England. While Vasco da Gamma was only thinking about the possibility of finding a way from Africa to Hindustan, our Tverite was already a merchant on the banks of Malabar ... "

Karamzin - translator

In 1792-1793, N. M. Karamzin translated a wonderful monument of Indian literature (from English) - the drama “Sakuntala”, authored by Kalidasa. In the preface to the translation he wrote:

“The creative spirit does not live in Europe alone; he is a citizen of the universe. A person is a person everywhere; He has a sensitive heart everywhere, and in the mirror of his imagination he contains heaven and earth. Everywhere Nature is his mentor and the main source of his pleasures. I felt this very vividly while reading Sakontala, a drama composed in an Indian language, 1900 years before this, by the Asian poet Kalidas, and recently translated into English by William Jones, a Bengali judge ... "

"History of Russian Goverment"
is not only the creation of a great writer,
but also a feat of an honest man.
A. S. Pushkin

Karamzin Nikolai Mikhailovich (1766 1826), writer, historian.

Born on December 1 (12 NS) in the village of Mikhailovka, Simbirsk province, in the family of a landowner. Received a good home education.

At the age of 14 he began studying at the Moscow private boarding school of Professor Schaden. Having graduated from it in 1783, he came to the Preobrazhensky Regiment in St. Petersburg, where he met the young poet and future employee of his “Moscow Journal” Dmitriev. At the same time he published his first translation of S. Gesner’s idyll “The Wooden Leg”. Having retired with the rank of second lieutenant in 1784, he moved to Moscow, became one of the active participants in the magazine “Children's Reading for the Heart and Mind,” published by N. Novikov, and became close to the Freemasons. He began translating religious and moral works. Since 1787, he regularly published his translations of Thomson's The Seasons, Genlis's Country Evenings, W. Shakespeare's tragedy Julius Caesar, Lessing's tragedy Emilia Galotti.

In 1789, Karamzin’s first original story, “Eugene and Yulia,” appeared in the magazine “Children’s Reading...”. In the spring, he went on a trip to Europe: he visited Germany, Switzerland, France, where he observed the activities of the revolutionary government. In June 1790 he moved from France to England.

In the fall he returned to Moscow and soon undertook the publication of the monthly "Moscow Journal", in which most of the "Letters of a Russian Traveler", the stories "Liodor", "Poor Liza", "Natalia, the Boyar's Daughter", "Flor Silin", essays, stories, criticism and poems. Karamzin attracted Dmitriev and Petrov, Kheraskov and Derzhavin, Lvov Neledinsky-Meletsky and others to collaborate in the magazine. Karamzin’s articles approved a new literary direction - sentimentalism. In the 1790s, Karamzin published the first Russian almanacs “Aglaya” (part 1 2, 1794 95) and “Aonids” (part 1 3, 1796 99). The year 1793 came, when at the third stage of the French Revolution the Jacobin dictatorship was established, which shocked Karamzin with its cruelty. The dictatorship aroused in him doubts about the possibility for humanity to achieve prosperity. He condemned the revolution. The philosophy of despair and fatalism permeates his new works: the story “The Island of Bornholm” (1793); "Sierra Morena" (1795); poems “Melancholy”, “Message to A. A. Pleshcheev”, etc.

By the mid-1790s, Karamzin became the recognized head of Russian sentimentalism, which was opening a new page in Russian literature. He was an indisputable authority for Zhukovsky, Batyushkov, and young Pushkin.

In 1802 1803 Karamzin published the journal "Bulletin of Europe", in which literature and politics predominated. In Karamzin’s critical articles, a new aesthetic program emerged, which contributed to the emergence of Russian literature as nationally distinctive. Karamzin saw the key to the uniqueness of Russian culture in history. The most striking illustration of his views was the story “Marfa Posadnitsa”. In his political articles, Karamzin made recommendations to the government, pointing out the role of education.

Trying to influence Tsar Alexander I, Karamzin gave him his “Note on Ancient and New Russia” (1811), causing his irritation. In 1819 he submitted a new note, “Opinion of a Russian Citizen,” which caused even greater displeasure to the Tsar. However, Karamzin did not abandon his belief in the salvation of an enlightened autocracy and later condemned the Decembrist uprising. However, Karamzin the artist was still highly valued by young writers, even those who did not share his political convictions.

In 1803, through M. Muravyov, Karamzin received the official title of court historiographer.

In 1804, he began to create the “History of the Russian State,” which he worked on until the end of his days, but did not complete. In 1818, the first eight volumes of "History" - Karamzin's greatest scientific and cultural feat - were published. In 1821 the 9th volume was published, dedicated to the reign of Ivan the Terrible, in 1824 the 10th and 11th, about Fyodor Ioannovich and Boris Godunov. Death interrupted work on the 12th volume. This happened on May 22 (June 3, n.s.) 1826 in St. Petersburg.

It turns out that I have a Fatherland!

The first eight volumes of the History of the Russian State were published all at once in 1818. They say that, having slammed the eighth and final volume, Fyodor Tolstoy, nicknamed the American, exclaimed: “It turns out that I have a Fatherland!” And he wasn't alone. Thousands of people thought, and most importantly, felt this very thing. Everyone was engrossed in History: students, officials, nobles, even society ladies. They read it in Moscow and St. Petersburg, they read it in the provinces: distant Irkutsk alone bought 400 copies. After all, it is so important for everyone to know that he has it, the Fatherland. Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin gave this confidence to the people of Russia.

Need a story

In those days, at the beginning of the 19th century, ancient, age-old Russia suddenly turned out to be young and new. She was about to enter the big world. Everything was born anew: the army and navy, factories and manufactories, science and literature. And it might seem that the country has no history - was there anything before Peter except the dark ages of backwardness and barbarism? Do we have a story? “Yes,” answered Karamzin.

Who is he?

We know very little about Karamzin’s childhood and youth; no diaries, letters from relatives, or youthful writings have survived. We know that Nikolai Mikhailovich was born on December 1, 1766, not far from Simbirsk. At that time it was an incredible wilderness, a real bear corner. When the boy was 11 or 12 years old, his father, a retired captain, took his son to Moscow, to a boarding school at the university gymnasium. Karamzin stayed here for some time, and then entered active military service - this was at the age of 15! The teachers prophesied for him not only Moscow Leipzig University, but somehow it didn’t work out.

Karamzin's exceptional education is his personal merit.

Writer

I didn’t go to military service; I wanted to write: compose, translate. And at the age of 17, Nikolai Mikhailovich was already a retired lieutenant. You have your whole life ahead of you. What should I dedicate it to? Literature, exclusively literature decides Karamzin.

What was it like, Russian literature of the 18th century? Also young, a beginner. Karamzin writes to a friend: “I am deprived of the pleasure of reading much in my native language. We are still poor in writers. We have several poets who deserve to be read.” Of course, there are already writers, and not just a few, but Lomonosov, Fonvizin, Derzhavin, but there are no more than a dozen significant names. Are there really not enough talents? No, they exist, but it became a matter of language: the Russian language has not yet adapted to convey new thoughts, new feelings, or describe new objects.

Karamzin focuses on the lively spoken language of educated people. He writes not scholarly treatises, but travel notes ("Notes of a Russian Traveler"), stories ("Bornholm Island", "Poor Lisa"), poems, articles, and translates from French and German.

Journalist

Finally, they decide to publish a magazine. It was called simply: "Moscow Journal". The famous playwright and writer Ya. B. Knyazhnin picked up the first issue and exclaimed: “We didn’t have such prose!”

The success of the "Moscow Magazine" was enormous - as many as 300 subscribers. A very large figure for those times. This is how small not only writing and reading Russia is!

Karamzin works incredibly hard. He also collaborates in the first Russian children's magazine. It was called "Children's Reading for the Heart and Mind." Only FOR this magazine Karamzin wrote two dozen pages every week.

Karamzin was the number one writer for his time.

Historian

And suddenly Karamzin takes on the gigantic task of compiling his native Russian history. On October 31, 1803, Tsar Alexander I issued a decree appointing N.M. Karamzin as a historiographer with a salary of 2 thousand rubles a year. Now for the rest of my life I am a historian. But apparently it was necessary.

Chronicles, decrees, codes of law

Now write. But for this you need to collect material. The search began. Karamzin literally combs through all the archives and book collections of the Synod, the Hermitage, the Academy of Sciences, the Public Library, Moscow University, the Alexander Nevsky and Trinity-Sergius Lavra. At his request, they are looking for it in monasteries, in the archives of Oxford, Paris, Venice, Prague and Copenhagen. And how many things were found!

Ostromir Gospel of 1056 1057 (this is still the oldest dated Russian book), Ipatiev and Trinity Chronicles. Code of Law of Ivan the Terrible, a work of ancient Russian literature “The Prayer of Daniil the Prisoner” and much more.

They say that having discovered the new chronicle of Volynskaya, Karamzin did not sleep for several nights with joy. Friends laughed that he had become simply unbearable because he only talked about history.

What will it be like?

The materials are being collected, but how to take on the text, how to write a book that even the simplest person can read, but from which even an academician will not wince? How to make it interesting, artistic, and at the same time scientific? And here are these volumes. Each is divided into two parts: in the first a detailed story written by a great master this is for the common reader; in the second detailed notes, links to sources this is for historians.

This is true patriotism

Karamzin writes to his brother: “History is not a novel: a lie can always be beautiful, but only some minds like the truth in its garb.” So what should I write about? Set forth in detail the glorious pages of the past, and only turn over the dark ones? Maybe this is exactly what a patriotic historian should do? No, Karamzin decides, patriotism does not come at the expense of distorting history. He doesn’t add anything, doesn’t invent anything, doesn’t glorify victories or downplay defeats.

By chance, drafts of the VIIth volume were preserved: we see how Karamzin worked on every phrase of his “History”. Here he writes about Vasily III: “in relations with Lithuania, Vasily... always ready for peace...” It’s not the same, it’s not true. The historian crosses out what was written and concludes: “In relations with Lithuania, Vasily expressed peace in words, trying to harm her secretly or openly.” Such is the impartiality of the historian, such is true patriotism. Love for one's own, but not hatred for someone else's.

Ancient Russia seemed to be found by Karamzin, like America by Columbus

The ancient history of Russia is being written, and modern history is being made around it: the Napoleonic Wars, the Battle of Austerlitz, the Peace of Tilsit, the Patriotic War of 12, the fire of Moscow. In 1815, Russian troops enter Paris. In 1818, the first 8 volumes of the History of the Russian State were published. Circulation is a terrible thing! 3 thousand copies. And everything sold out in 25 days. Unheard of! But the price is considerable: 50 rubles.

The last volume stopped at the middle of the reign of Ivan IV, the Terrible.

Some said: Jacobin!

Even earlier, the trustee of Moscow University, Golenishchev-Kutuzov, submitted to the Minister of Public Education a document, to put it mildly, in which he thoroughly proved that “Karamzin’s works are filled with freethinking and Jacobin poison.” “If only he should have been given an order, it would have been time to lock him up long ago.”

Why is this so? First of all, for independence of judgment. Not everyone likes this.

There is an opinion that Nikolai Mikhailovich has never betrayed his soul even once in his life.

Monarchist! - exclaimed others, young people, future Decembrists.

Yes, the main character of Karamzin’s “History” is the Russian autocracy. The author condemns bad sovereigns and sets good ones as examples. And he sees prosperity for Russia in an enlightened, wise monarch. That is, we need a “good king”. Karamzin does not believe in revolution, much less a quick one. So, before us is truly a monarchist.

And at the same time, the Decembrist Nikolai Turgenev would later remember how Karamzin “shed tears” when he learned about the death of Robespierre, the hero of the French Revolution. And here is what Nikolai Mikhailovich himself writes to a friend: “I do not demand either a constitution or representatives, but in my feelings I will remain a republican, and, moreover, a loyal subject of the Russian Tsar: this is a contradiction, but only an imaginary one.”

Why then is he not with the Decembrists? Karamzin believed that Russia’s time had not yet come, the people were not ripe for a republic.

Good king

The ninth volume has not yet been published, and rumors have already spread that it is banned. It began like this: “We begin to describe the terrible change in the soul of the king and in the fate of the kingdom.” So, the story about Ivan the Terrible continues.

Previous historians did not dare to openly describe this reign. Not surprising. For example, Moscow’s conquest of free Novgorod. Karamzin the historian, however, reminds us that the unification of the Russian lands was necessary, but Karamzin the artist gives a vivid picture of exactly how the conquest of the free northern city was carried out:

“John and his son were tried in this way: every day they presented to them from five hundred to a thousand Novgorodians; they beat them, tortured them, burned them with some kind of fiery mixture, tied them with their heads or feet to a sleigh, dragged them to the bank of the Volkhov, where this river does not freeze in winter, and They threw whole families into the water, wives with husbands, mothers with infants. Moscow warriors rode in boats along the Volkhov with stakes, hooks and axes: whoever of those thrown into the water floated up was stabbed and cut into pieces. These killings lasted five weeks and concluded by common robbery."

And so on almost every page - executions, murders, burning of prisoners upon the news of the death of the tsar's favorite villain Malyuta Skuratov, the order to destroy an elephant who refused to kneel before the tsar... and so on.

Remember, this is written by a man who is convinced that autocracy is necessary in Russia.

Yes, Karamzin was a monarchist, but during the trial the Decembrists referred to the “History of the Russian State” as one of the sources of “harmful” thoughts.

December 14

He didn't want his book to become a source of harmful thoughts. He wanted to tell the truth. It just so happened that the truth he wrote turned out to be “harmful” for the autocracy.

And then December 14, 1825. Having received news of the uprising (for Karamzin this is, of course, a rebellion), the historian goes out into the street. He was in Paris in 1790, was in Moscow in 1812, in 1825 he walks towards Senate Square. “I saw terrible faces, heard terrible words, five or six stones fell at my feet.”

Karamzin, of course, is against the uprising. But how many of the rebels are the Muravyov brothers, Nikolai Turgenev Bestuzhev, Kuchelbecker (he translated “History” into German).

A few days later Karamzin would say this about the Decembrists: “The delusions and crimes of these young people are the delusions and crimes of our century.”

After the uprising, Karamzin fell fatally ill; he caught a cold on December 14. In the eyes of his contemporaries, he was another victim of that day. But he is dying not only from a cold - the idea of ​​the world has collapsed, faith in the future has been lost, and a new king has ascended to the throne, very far from the ideal image of an enlightened monarch.

Karamzin could no longer write. The last thing he managed to do was, together with Zhukovsky, he persuaded the tsar to return Pushkin from exile.

And volume XII froze at the interregnum of 1611 1612. And here are the last words of the last volume about the small Russian fortress: “Nut did not give up.”

Now

More than a century and a half has passed since then. Today's historians know much more about ancient Russia than Karamzin, how much has been found: documents, archaeological finds, birch bark letters, finally. But Karamzin’s book history-chronicle is one of a kind and there will never be another like it.

Why do we need it now? Bestuzhev-Ryumin said this well in his time: “A high moral feeling still makes this book the most convenient for cultivating love for Russia and goodness.”

On December 12 (December 1, Old Style), 1766, Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin was born - Russian writer, poet, editor of the Moscow Journal (1791-1792) and the journal Vestnik Evropy (1802-1803), honorary member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences ( 1818), full member of the Imperial Russian Academy, historian, first and only court historiographer, one of the first reformers of the Russian literary language, founding father of Russian historiography and Russian sentimentalism.

Contribution of N.M. It is difficult to overestimate Karamzin's contribution to Russian culture. Remembering everything that this man managed to do in the short 59 years of his earthly existence, it is impossible to ignore the fact that it was Karamzin who largely determined the face of the Russian 19th century - the “golden” age of Russian poetry, literature, historiography, source studies and other humanitarian areas of scientific research. knowledge. Thanks to linguistic research aimed at popularizing the literary language of poetry and prose, Karamzin gave Russian literature to his contemporaries. And if Pushkin is “our everything,” then Karamzin can safely be called “our Everything” with a capital letter. Without him, Vyazemsky, Pushkin, Baratynsky, Batyushkov and other poets of the so-called “Pushkin galaxy” would hardly have been possible.

“No matter what you turn to in our literature, everything began with Karamzin: journalism, criticism, stories, novels, historical stories, journalism, the study of history,” V.G. rightly noted later. Belinsky.

“History of the Russian State” N.M. Karamzin became not just the first Russian-language book on the history of Russia, accessible to a wide reader. Karamzin gave the Russian people the Fatherland in the full sense of the word. They say that, having slammed the eighth and final volume, Count Fyodor Tolstoy, nicknamed the American, exclaimed: “It turns out that I have a Fatherland!” And he wasn't alone. All his contemporaries suddenly learned that they lived in a country with a thousand-year history and had something to be proud of. Before this, it was believed that before Peter I, who opened a “window to Europe,” there was nothing in Russia that was even remotely worthy of attention: the dark ages of backwardness and barbarism, boyar autocracy, primordially Russian laziness and bears in the streets...

Karamzin’s multi-volume work was not completed, but, having been published in the first quarter of the 19th century, it completely determined the historical identity of the nation for many years to come. All subsequent historiography was never able to generate anything more consistent with the “imperial” self-awareness that developed under the influence of Karamzin. Karamzin’s views left a deep, indelible mark in all areas of Russian culture in the 19th and 20th centuries, forming the foundations of the national mentality, which ultimately determined the path of development of Russian society and the state as a whole.

It is significant that in the 20th century, the edifice of Russian great power, which had collapsed under the attacks of revolutionary internationalists, was revived again by the 1930s - under different slogans, with different leaders, in a different ideological package. but... The very approach to the historiography of Russian history, both before 1917 and after, largely remained jingoistic and sentimental in Karamzin style.

N.M. Karamzin - early years

N.M. Karamzin was born on December 12 (1st century), 1766 in the village of Mikhailovka, Buzuluk district, Kazan province (according to other sources, in the family estate of Znamenskoye, Simbirsk district, Kazan province). Little is known about his early years: there are no letters, diaries, or memories of Karamzin himself about his childhood. He did not even know exactly his year of birth and almost all his life he believed that he was born in 1765. Only in his old age, having discovered the documents, did he become “younger” by one year.

The future historiographer grew up on the estate of his father, retired captain Mikhail Egorovich Karamzin (1724-1783), an average Simbirsk nobleman. Received a good home education. In 1778 he was sent to Moscow to the boarding school of Moscow University professor I.M. Shadena. At the same time, he attended lectures at the university in 1781-1782.

After graduating from the boarding school, in 1783 Karamzin entered service in the Preobrazhensky Regiment in St. Petersburg, where he met the young poet and future employee of his “Moscow Journal” Dmitriev. At the same time he published his first translation of S. Gesner’s idyll “The Wooden Leg”.

In 1784, Karamzin retired as a lieutenant and never served again, which was perceived in the society of that time as a challenge. After a short stay in Simbirsk, where he joined the Golden Crown Masonic lodge, Karamzin moved to Moscow and was introduced into the circle of N. I. Novikov. He settled in a house that belonged to Novikov’s “Friendly Scientific Society” and became the author and one of the publishers of the first children’s magazine “Children’s Reading for the Heart and Mind” (1787-1789), founded by Novikov. At the same time, Karamzin became close to the Pleshcheev family. For many years he had a tender platonic friendship with N.I. Pleshcheeva. In Moscow, Karamzin published his first translations, in which his interest in European and Russian history is clearly visible: Thomson’s “The Seasons,” Zhanlis’s “Country Evenings,” W. Shakespeare’s tragedy “Julius Caesar,” Lessing’s tragedy “Emilia Galotti.”

In 1789, Karamzin’s first original story, “Eugene and Yulia,” appeared in the magazine “Children’s Reading...”. The reader practically did not notice it.

Travel to Europe

According to many biographers, Karamzin was not inclined towards the mystical side of Freemasonry, remaining a supporter of its active and educational direction. To be more precise, by the end of the 1780s, Karamzin had already “become ill” with Masonic mysticism in its Russian version. Perhaps the cooling towards Freemasonry was one of the reasons for his departure to Europe, where he spent more than a year (1789-90), visiting Germany, Switzerland, France and England. In Europe, he met and talked (except for influential Freemasons) with European “masters of minds”: I. Kant, I. G. Herder, C. Bonnet, I. K. Lavater, J. F. Marmontel, visited museums, theaters, secular salons. In Paris, Karamzin listened to O. G. Mirabeau, M. Robespierre and other revolutionaries at the National Assembly, saw many outstanding political figures and was familiar with many. Apparently, revolutionary Paris in 1789 showed Karamzin how powerfully a word can influence a person: in print, when Parisians read pamphlets and leaflets with keen interest; oral, when revolutionary speakers spoke and controversy arose (an experience that could not be acquired in Russia at that time).

Karamzin did not have a very enthusiastic opinion about English parliamentarism (perhaps following in the footsteps of Rousseau), but he very highly valued the level of civilization at which English society as a whole was located.

Karamzin – journalist, publisher

In the fall of 1790, Karamzin returned to Moscow and soon organized the publication of the monthly “Moscow Journal” (1790-1792), in which most of the “Letters of a Russian Traveler” were published, telling about the revolutionary events in France, the stories “Liodor”, “Poor Lisa” , “Natalia, the boyar’s daughter”, “Flor Silin”, essays, stories, critical articles and poems. Karamzin attracted the entire literary elite of that time to collaborate in the magazine: his friends Dmitriev and Petrov, Kheraskov and Derzhavin, Lvov, Neledinsky-Meletsky and others. Karamzin’s articles approved a new literary direction - sentimentalism.

The Moscow Journal had only 210 regular subscribers, but for the end of the 18th century, this is the same as a hundred thousand circulation at the end of the 19th century. Moreover, the magazine was read by precisely those who “made the difference” in the literary life of the country: students, officials, young officers, minor employees of various government agencies (“archive youths”).

After Novikov’s arrest, the authorities became seriously interested in the publisher of the Moscow Journal. During interrogations in the Secret Expedition, they ask: was it Novikov who sent the “Russian traveler” abroad on a “special mission”? The Novikovites were people of high integrity and, of course, Karamzin was shielded, but because of these suspicions the magazine had to be stopped.

In the 1790s, Karamzin published the first Russian almanacs - “Aglaya” (1794 -1795) and “Aonids” (1796 -1799). In 1793, when the Jacobin dictatorship was established at the third stage of the French Revolution, which shocked Karamzin with its cruelty, Nikolai Mikhailovich abandoned some of his previous views. The dictatorship aroused in him serious doubts about the possibility of humanity to achieve prosperity. He sharply condemned the revolution and all violent methods of transforming society. The philosophy of despair and fatalism permeates his new works: the story “The Island of Bornholm” (1793); "Sierra Morena" (1795); poems “Melancholy”, “Message to A. A. Pleshcheev”, etc.

During this period, real literary fame came to Karamzin.

Fedor Glinka: “Out of 1,200 cadets, it was rare that he did not repeat by heart some page from The Island of Bornholm.”.

The name Erast, previously completely unpopular, is increasingly found in lists of nobility. There are rumors of successful and unsuccessful suicides in the spirit of Poor Lisa. The poisonous memoirist Vigel recalls that important Moscow nobles had already begun to make do with “almost like an equal with a thirty-year-old retired lieutenant”.

In July 1794, Karamzin’s life almost ended: on the way to the estate, in the steppe wilderness, he was attacked by robbers. Karamzin miraculously escaped, receiving two minor wounds.

In 1801, he married Elizaveta Protasova, a neighbor on the estate, whom he had known since childhood - at the time of the wedding they had known each other for almost 13 years.

Reformer of the Russian literary language

Already in the early 1790s, Karamzin was seriously thinking about the present and future of Russian literature. He writes to a friend: “I am deprived of the pleasure of reading much in my native language. We are still poor in writers. We have several poets who deserve to be read.” Of course, there were and are Russian writers: Lomonosov, Sumarokov, Fonvizin, Derzhavin, but there are no more than a dozen significant names. Karamzin is one of the first to understand that it is not a matter of talent - there are no less talents in Russia than in any other country. It’s just that Russian literature cannot move away from the long-outdated traditions of classicism, founded in the middle of the 18th century by the only theorist M.V. Lomonosov.

The reform of the literary language carried out by Lomonosov, as well as the theory of the “three calms” he created, met the tasks of the transition period from ancient to modern literature. A complete rejection of the use of familiar Church Slavonicisms in the language was then still premature and inappropriate. But the evolution of the language, which began under Catherine II, actively continued. The “Three Calms” proposed by Lomonosov were based not on lively colloquial speech, but on the witty thought of a theoretical writer. And this theory often put the authors in a difficult position: they had to use heavy, outdated Slavic expressions where in the spoken language they had long been replaced by others, softer and more elegant. The reader sometimes could not “cut through” the piles of outdated Slavicisms used in church books and records in order to understand the essence of this or that secular work.

Karamzin decided to bring the literary language closer to the spoken one. Therefore, one of his main goals was the further liberation of literature from Church Slavonicisms. In the preface to the second book of the almanac “Aonida,” he wrote: “The thunder of words alone only deafens us and never reaches our hearts.”

The second feature of Karamzin’s “new syllable” was the simplification of syntactic structures. The writer abandoned lengthy periods. In the “Pantheon of Russian Writers” he decisively declared: “Lomonosov’s prose cannot serve as a model for us at all: his long periods are tiresome, the arrangement of words is not always consistent with the flow of thoughts.”

Unlike Lomonosov, Karamzin strove to write in short, easily understandable sentences. This is still a model of good style and an example to follow in literature.

Karamzin’s third merit was the enrichment of the Russian language with a number of successful neologisms, which became firmly established in the main vocabulary. Among the innovations proposed by Karamzin are such widely known words in our time as “industry”, “development”, “sophistication”, “concentrate”, “touching”, “entertainment”, “humanity”, “public”, “ generally useful”, “influence” and a number of others.

When creating neologisms, Karamzin used mainly the method of tracing French words: “interesting” from “interessant”, “refined” from “raffine”, “development” from “developpement”, “touching” from “touchant”.

We know that even in the era of Peter the Great, many foreign words appeared in the Russian language, but they mostly replaced words that already existed in the Slavic language and were not a necessity. In addition, these words were often taken in their raw form, so they were very heavy and clumsy (“fortecia” instead of “fortress”, “victory” instead of “victory”, etc.). Karamzin, on the contrary, tried to give foreign words a Russian ending, adapting them to the requirements of Russian grammar: “serious”, “moral”, “aesthetic”, “audience”, “harmony”, “enthusiasm”, etc.

In his reform activities, Karamzin focused on the lively spoken language of educated people. And this was the key to the success of his work - he writes not scholarly treatises, but travel notes (“Letters of a Russian Traveler”), sentimental stories (“Bornholm Island”, “Poor Lisa”), poems, articles, translations from French, English and German .

"Arzamas" and "Conversation"

It is not surprising that most of the young writers contemporary to Karamzin accepted his transformations with a bang and willingly followed him. But, like any reformer, Karamzin had staunch opponents and worthy opponents.

A.S. stood at the head of Karamzin’s ideological opponents. Shishkov (1774-1841) – admiral, patriot, famous statesman of that time. An Old Believer, an admirer of Lomonosov's language, Shishkov, at first glance, was a classicist. But this point of view requires significant qualifications. In contrast to Karamzin's Europeanism, Shishkov put forward the idea of ​​nationality in literature - the most important sign of a romantic worldview that was far from classicism. It turns out that Shishkov also joined for romantics, but not of a progressive, but of a conservative direction. His views can be recognized as a kind of forerunner of later Slavophilism and Pochvenism.

In 1803, Shishkov presented his “Discourse on the old and new syllables of the Russian language.” He reproached the “Karamzinists” for succumbing to the temptation of European revolutionary false teachings and advocated for the return of literature to oral folk art, to the vernacular, to Orthodox Church Slavonic books.

Shishkov was not a philologist. He dealt with the problems of literature and the Russian language, rather, as an amateur, so Admiral Shishkov’s attacks on Karamzin and his literary supporters sometimes looked not so much scientifically substantiated as unsubstantiated ideological. Karamzin’s language reform seemed to Shishkov, a warrior and defender of the Fatherland, unpatriotic and anti-religious: “Language is the soul of the people, the mirror of morals, a true indicator of enlightenment, an incessant witness of deeds. Where there is no faith in the hearts, there is no piety in the language. Where there is no love for the fatherland, the language does not express domestic feelings.”.

Shishkov reproached Karamzin for the excessive use of barbarisms (“epoch”, “harmony”, “catastrophe”), he was disgusted by neologisms (“coup” as a translation of the word “revolution”), artificial words hurt his ear: “future”, “well-read” and etc.

And we must admit that sometimes his criticism was pointed and accurate.

The evasiveness and aesthetic affectation of the speech of the “Karamzinists” very soon became outdated and fell out of literary use. This is precisely the future that Shishkov predicted for them, believing that instead of the expression “when travel became a need of my soul,” one could simply say: “when I fell in love with traveling”; the refined and periphrased speech “motley crowds of rural oreads meet with dark bands of reptile pharaohs” can be replaced with the understandable expression “gypsies come to meet the village girls”, etc.

Shishkov and his supporters took the first steps in studying the monuments of ancient Russian writing, enthusiastically studied “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign,” studied folklore, advocated the rapprochement of Russia with the Slavic world and recognized the need to bring the “Slovenian” style closer to the common language.

In a dispute with the translator Karamzin, Shishkov put forward a compelling argument about the “idiomatic nature” of each language, about the unique originality of its phraseological systems, which make it impossible to literally translate a thought or true semantic meaning from one language to another. For example, when translated literally into French, the expression “old horseradish” loses its figurative meaning and “means only the thing itself, but in the metaphysical sense it has no circle of signification.”

In defiance of Karamzin, Shishkov proposed his own reform of the Russian language. He proposed to designate concepts and feelings missing in our everyday life with new words formed from the roots not of French, but of Russian and Old Church Slavonic. Instead of Karamzin’s “influence” he suggested “influx”, instead of “development” - “vegetation”, instead of “actor” - “actor”, instead of “individuality” - “intelligence”, “wet feet” instead of “galoshes” and “wandering” instead "labyrinth". Most of his innovations did not take root in the Russian language.

It is impossible not to recognize Shishkov’s ardent love for the Russian language; One cannot help but admit that the passion for everything foreign, especially French, has gone too far in Russia. Ultimately, this led to the fact that the language of the common people, the peasant, became very different from the language of the cultural classes. But we cannot ignore the fact that the natural process of the language evolution that had begun could not be stopped. It was impossible to forcefully return into use the already outdated expressions that Shishkov proposed at that time: “zane”, “ugly”, “like”, “yako” and others.

Karamzin did not even respond to the accusations of Shishkov and his supporters, knowing firmly that they were guided exclusively by pious and patriotic feelings. Subsequently, Karamzin himself and his most talented supporters (Vyazemsky, Pushkin, Batyushkov) followed the very valuable instructions of the “Shishkovites” on the need to “return to their roots” and examples of their own history. But then they could not understand each other.

The pathos and ardent patriotism of A.S.’s articles. Shishkova evoked a sympathetic attitude among many writers. And when Shishkov, together with G. R. Derzhavin, founded the literary society “Conversation of Lovers of the Russian Word” (1811) with a charter and its own magazine, P. A. Katenin, I. A. Krylov, and later V. K immediately joined this society Kuchelbecker and A. S. Griboyedov. One of the active participants in the "Conversation...", the prolific playwright A. A. Shakhovskoy, in the comedy "New Stern" viciously ridiculed Karamzin, and in the comedy "A Lesson for Coquettes, or Lipetsk Waters" in the person of the "balladeer" Fialkin created a parody image of V. A Zhukovsky.

This caused a unanimous rebuff from young people who supported Karamzin’s literary authority. D. V. Dashkov, P. A. Vyazemsky, D. N. Bludov composed several witty pamphlets addressed to Shakhovsky and other members of the “Conversation...”. In “Vision in the Arzamas Tavern” Bludov gave the circle of young defenders of Karamzin and Zhukovsky the name “Society of Unknown Arzamas Writers” or simply “Arzamas”.

The organizational structure of this society, founded in the fall of 1815, was dominated by a cheerful spirit of parody of the serious “Conversation...”. In contrast to the official pomposity, simplicity, naturalness, and openness prevailed here; a large place was given to jokes and games.

Parodying the official ritual of the “Conversation...”, upon joining Arzamas, everyone had to read a “funeral speech” to his “late” predecessor from among the living members of the “Conversation...” or the Russian Academy of Sciences (Count D.I. Khvostov, S.A. Shirinsky-Shikhmatov, A.S. Shishkov himself, etc.). “Funeral speeches” were a form of literary struggle: they parodied high genres and ridiculed the stylistic archaism of the poetic works of the “talkers.” At the meetings of the society, the humorous genres of Russian poetry were honed, a bold and decisive struggle was waged against all kinds of officialdom, and a type of independent Russian writer, free from the pressure of any ideological conventions, was formed. And although P. A. Vyazemsky, one of the organizers and active participants of the society, in his mature years condemned the youthful mischief and intransigence of his like-minded people (in particular, the rituals of “funeral services” for living literary opponents), he rightly called “Arzamas” a school of “literary fellowship” and mutual creative learning. The Arzamas and Beseda societies soon became centers of literary life and social struggle in the first quarter of the 19th century. “Arzamas” included such famous people as Zhukovsky (pseudonym Svetlana), Vyazemsky (Asmodeus), Pushkin (Cricket), Batyushkov (Achilles) and others.

"Conversation" disbanded after Derzhavin's death in 1816; "Arzamas", having lost its main opponent, ceased to exist by 1818.

Thus, by the mid-1790s, Karamzin became the recognized head of Russian sentimentalism, which opened not just a new page in Russian literature, but Russian fiction in general. Russian readers, who had previously devoured only French novels and the works of enlighteners, enthusiastically accepted “Letters of a Russian Traveler” and “Poor Liza,” and Russian writers and poets (both “besedchiki” and “Arzamasites”) realized that it was possible must write in their native language.

Karamzin and Alexander I: a symphony with power?

In 1802 - 1803, Karamzin published the journal “Bulletin of Europe”, in which literature and politics predominated. Largely thanks to the confrontation with Shishkov, a new aesthetic program for the formation of Russian literature as nationally distinctive appeared in Karamzin’s critical articles. Karamzin, unlike Shishkov, saw the key to the uniqueness of Russian culture not so much in adherence to ritual antiquity and religiosity, but in the events of Russian history. The most striking illustration of his views was the story “Martha the Posadnitsa or the Conquest of Novagorod.”

In his political articles of 1802-1803, Karamzin, as a rule, made recommendations to the government, the main one of which was educating the nation for the sake of the prosperity of the autocratic state.

These ideas were generally close to Emperor Alexander I, the grandson of Catherine the Great, who at one time also dreamed of an “enlightened monarchy” and a complete symphony between the authorities and a European educated society. Karamzin’s response to the coup of March 11, 1801 and the accession to the throne of Alexander I was “Historical eulogy to Catherine the Second” (1802), where Karamzin expressed his views on the essence of the monarchy in Russia, as well as the duties of the monarch and his subjects. The “eulogium” was approved by the sovereign as a collection of examples for the young monarch and was favorably received by him. Alexander I, obviously, was interested in Karamzin’s historical research, and the emperor rightly decided that the great country simply needed to remember its no less great past. And if you don’t remember, then at least create it again...

In 1803, through the tsar’s educator M.N. Muravyov - poet, historian, teacher, one of the most educated people of that time - N.M. Karamzin received the official title of court historiographer with a pension of 2,000 rubles. (A pension of 2,000 rubles a year was then assigned to officials who, according to the Table of Ranks, had ranks no lower than general). Later, I.V. Kireevsky, referring to Karamzin himself, wrote about Muravyov: “Who knows, maybe without his thoughtful and warm assistance Karamzin would not have had the means to accomplish his great deed.”

In 1804, Karamzin practically retired from literary and publishing activities and began to create the “History of the Russian State,” on which he worked until the end of his days. With his influence M.N. Muravyov made many previously unknown and even “secret” materials available to the historian, and opened libraries and archives for him. Modern historians can only dream of such favorable working conditions. Therefore, in our opinion, talking about “The History of the Russian State” as a “scientific feat” by N.M. Karamzin, not entirely fair. The court historiographer was on duty, conscientiously doing the work for which he was paid. Accordingly, he had to write the kind of history that was currently needed by the customer, namely, Emperor Alexander I, who at the first stage of his reign showed sympathy for European liberalism.

However, under the influence of studies in Russian history, by 1810 Karamzin had become a consistent conservative. During this period, the system of his political views was finally formed. Karamzin’s statements that he is a “republican at heart” can only be adequately interpreted if we consider that we are talking about “Plato’s Republic of the Wise Men,” an ideal social order based on state virtue, strict regulation and the renunciation of personal freedom . At the beginning of 1810, Karamzin, through his relative Count F.V. Rostopchin, met in Moscow the leader of the “conservative party” at court - Grand Duchess Ekaterina Pavlovna (sister of Alexander I) and began to constantly visit her residence in Tver. The Grand Duchess's salon represented the center of conservative opposition to the liberal-Western course, personified by the figure of M. M. Speransky. In this salon, Karamzin read excerpts from his “History...”, and then he met the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna, who became one of his patrons.

In 1811, at the request of Grand Duchess Ekaterina Pavlovna, Karamzin wrote a note “On ancient and new Russia in its political and civil relations,” in which he outlined his ideas about the ideal structure of the Russian state and sharply criticized the policies of Alexander I and his immediate predecessors: Paul I , Catherine II and Peter I. In the 19th century, the note was never published in full and was circulated only in handwritten copies. In Soviet times, the thoughts expressed by Karamzin in his message were perceived as a reaction of the extremely conservative nobility to the reforms of M. M. Speransky. The author himself was branded a “reactionary”, an opponent of the liberation of the peasantry and other liberal steps of the government of Alexander I.

However, during the first full publication of the note in 1988, Yu. M. Lotman revealed its deeper content. In this document, Karamzin made a justified criticism of unprepared bureaucratic reforms carried out from above. Praising Alexander I, the author of the note at the same time attacks his advisers, meaning, of course, Speransky, who stood for constitutional reforms. Karamzin takes it upon himself to prove in detail, with references to historical examples, to the Tsar that Russia is not ready, either historically or politically, for the abolition of serfdom and the limitation of the autocratic monarchy by the constitution (following the example of the European powers). Some of his arguments (for example, about the futility of liberating peasants without land, the impossibility of constitutional democracy in Russia) even today look quite convincing and historically correct.

Along with a review of Russian history and criticism of the political course of Emperor Alexander I, the note contained a complete, original and very complex in its theoretical content concept of autocracy as a special, uniquely Russian type of power, closely associated with Orthodoxy.

At the same time, Karamzin refused to identify “true autocracy” with despotism, tyranny or arbitrariness. He believed that such deviations from the norms were due to chance (Ivan IV the Terrible, Paul I) and were quickly eliminated by the inertia of the tradition of “wise” and “virtuous” monarchical rule. In cases of a sharp weakening and even complete absence of the supreme state and church power (for example, during the Time of Troubles), this powerful tradition led, within a short historical period, to the restoration of autocracy. Autocracy was the “palladium of Russia”, the main reason for its power and prosperity. Therefore, the basic principles of monarchical rule in Russia, according to Karamzin, should have been preserved in the future. They should have been supplemented only by proper policies in the field of legislation and education, which would not lead to the undermining of the autocracy, but to its maximum strengthening. With such an understanding of autocracy, any attempt to limit it would be a crime against Russian history and the Russian people.

Initially, Karamzin’s note only irritated the young emperor, who did not like criticism of his actions. In this note, the historiographer showed himself plus royaliste que le roi (a greater royalist than the king himself). However, subsequently the brilliant “hymn to the Russian autocracy” as presented by Karamzin undoubtedly had its effect. After the War of 1812, Napoleon's winner Alexander I curtailed many of his liberal projects: Speransky's reforms were not completed, the constitution and the very idea of ​​​​limiting autocracy remained only in the minds of future Decembrists. And already in the 1830s, Karamzin’s concept actually formed the basis of the ideology of the Russian Empire, designated by the “theory of official nationality” of Count S. Uvarov (Orthodoxy-Autocracy-Nationalism).

Before the publication of the first 8 volumes of “History...” Karamzin lived in Moscow, from where he traveled only to Tver to visit Grand Duchess Ekaterina Pavlovna and to Nizhny Novgorod, during the occupation of Moscow by the French. He usually spent the summer in Ostafyevo, the estate of Prince Andrei Ivanovich Vyazemsky, whose illegitimate daughter, Ekaterina Andreevna, Karamzin married in 1804. (Karamzin’s first wife, Elizaveta Ivanovna Protasova, died in 1802).

In the last 10 years of his life, which Karamzin spent in St. Petersburg, he became very close to the royal family. Although Emperor Alexander I had a reserved attitude towards Karamzin since the submission of the Note, Karamzin often spent the summer in Tsarskoe Selo. At the request of the empresses (Maria Feodorovna and Elizaveta Alekseevna), he more than once had frank political conversations with Emperor Alexander, in which he acted as a spokesman for the opinions of opponents of drastic liberal reforms. In 1819-1825, Karamzin passionately rebelled against the sovereign’s intentions regarding Poland (submitted a note “Opinion of a Russian Citizen”), condemned the increase in state taxes in peacetime, spoke about the absurd provincial system of finance, criticized the system of military settlements, the activities of the Ministry of Education, pointed out the sovereign’s strange choice of some of the most important dignitaries (for example, Arakcheev), spoke of the need to reduce internal troops, about the imaginary correction of roads, which was so painful for the people, and constantly pointed out the need to have firm laws, civil and state.

Of course, having behind such intercessors as both empresses and Grand Duchess Ekaterina Pavlovna, it was possible to criticize, and argue, and show civil courage, and try to guide the monarch “on the true path.” It is not for nothing that Emperor Alexander I was called the “mysterious sphinx” by both his contemporaries and subsequent historians of his reign. In words, the sovereign agreed with Karamzin’s critical remarks regarding military settlements, recognized the need to “give fundamental laws to Russia,” and also to revise some aspects of domestic policy, but it so happened in our country that in reality, all the wise advice of government officials remains “fruitless for dear Fatherland"...

Karamzin as a historian

Karamzin is our first historian and last chronicler.
With his criticism he belongs to history,
simplicity and apothegms - the chronicle.

A.S. Pushkin

Even from the point of view of Karamzin’s contemporary historical science, no one dared to call the 12 volumes of his “History of the Russian State” a scientific work. Even then it was clear to everyone that the honorary title of court historiographer could not make a writer a historian, give him the appropriate knowledge and proper training.

But, on the other hand, Karamzin initially did not set himself the task of taking on the role of a researcher. The newly minted historiographer did not intend to write a scientific treatise and appropriate the laurels of his illustrious predecessors - Schlözer, Miller, Tatishchev, Shcherbatov, Boltin, etc.

Preliminary critical work on sources for Karamzin is only “a heavy tribute to reliability.” He was, first of all, a writer, and therefore wanted to apply his literary talent to ready-made material: “to select, animate, color” and thus make from Russian history “something attractive, strong, worthy of the attention of not only Russians, but also foreigners." And he accomplished this task brilliantly.

Today it is impossible not to agree that at the beginning of the 19th century, source studies, paleography and other auxiliary historical disciplines were in their infancy. Therefore, to demand from the writer Karamzin professional criticism, as well as strict adherence to one or another methodology for working with historical sources, is simply ridiculous.

You can often hear the opinion that Karamzin simply beautifully rewrote the “Russian History from Ancient Times” written in a long-outdated, difficult-to-read style by Prince M.M. Shcherbatov, introduced some of his own thoughts from it, and thereby created a book for lovers of fascinating reading in family circle. This is wrong.

Naturally, when writing his “History...” Karamzin actively used the experience and works of his predecessors - Schlozer and Shcherbatov. Shcherbatov helped Karamzin navigate the sources of Russian history, significantly influencing both the choice of material and its arrangement in the text. Whether by chance or not, Karamzin brought the “History of the Russian State” to exactly the same place as Shcherbatov’s “History”. However, in addition to following the scheme already worked out by his predecessors, Karamzin provides in his work a lot of references to extensive foreign historiography, almost unfamiliar to the Russian reader. While working on his “History...”, he for the first time introduced into scientific circulation a mass of unknown and previously unstudied sources. These are Byzantine and Livonian chronicles, information from foreigners about the population of ancient Rus', as well as a large number of Russian chronicles that have not yet been touched by the hand of a historian. For comparison: M.M. Shcherbatov used only 21 Russian chronicles when writing his work; Karamzin actively quoted more than 40. In addition to the chronicles, Karamzin involved in the study monuments of ancient Russian law and ancient Russian fiction. A special chapter of “History...” is dedicated to “Russian Truth,” and a number of pages are devoted to the just discovered “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign.”

Thanks to the diligent help of the directors of the Moscow Archive of the Ministry (Collegium) of Foreign Affairs N. N. Bantysh-Kamensky and A. F. Malinovsky, Karamzin was able to use those documents and materials that were not available to his predecessors. Many valuable manuscripts were provided by the Synodal Repository, libraries of monasteries (Trinity Lavra, Volokolamsk Monastery and others), as well as private collections of manuscripts by Musin-Pushkin and N.P. Rumyantseva. Karamzin received especially many documents from Chancellor Rumyantsev, who collected historical materials in Russia and abroad through his numerous agents, as well as from A.I. Turgenev, who compiled a collection of documents from the papal archive.

Many of the sources used by Karamzin were lost during the Moscow fire of 1812 and were preserved only in his “History...” and extensive “Notes” to its text. Thus, Karamzin’s work, to some extent, itself acquired the status of a historical source, to which professional historians have every right to refer.

Among the main shortcomings of the “History of the Russian State,” the author’s peculiar view of the tasks of the historian is traditionally noted. According to Karamzin, “knowledge” and “learning” in a historian “do not replace the talent to depict actions.” Before the artistic task of history, even the moral one, which Karamzin’s patron, M.N., set for himself, recedes into the background. Muravyov. The characteristics of historical characters are given by Karamzin exclusively in a literary and romantic vein, characteristic of the direction of Russian sentimentalism he created. Karamzin’s first Russian princes are distinguished by their “ardent romantic passion” for conquest, their squad is distinguished by their nobility and loyal spirit, the “rabble” sometimes shows dissatisfaction, raising rebellions, but ultimately agrees with the wisdom of the noble rulers, etc., etc. P.

Meanwhile, the previous generation of historians, under the influence of Schlözer, had long ago developed the idea of ​​critical history, and among Karamzin’s contemporaries, the demands for criticism of historical sources, despite the lack of a clear methodology, were generally accepted. And the next generation has already come forward with a demand for philosophical history - with the identification of the laws of development of the state and society, the recognition of the main driving forces and laws of the historical process. Therefore, Karamzin’s overly “literary” creation was immediately subjected to well-founded criticism.

According to the idea, firmly rooted in Russian and foreign historiography of the 17th - 18th centuries, the development of the historical process depends on the development of monarchical power. Karamzin does not deviate one iota from this idea: monarchical power exalted Russia during the Kiev period; the division of power between the princes was a political mistake, which was corrected by the statesmanship of the Moscow princes - the collectors of Rus'. At the same time, it was the princes who corrected its consequences - the fragmentation of Rus' and the Tatar yoke.

But before reproaching Karamzin for not bringing anything new into the development of Russian historiography, it should be remembered that the author of “History of the Russian State” did not at all set himself the task of philosophical understanding of the historical process or blind imitation of the ideas of Western European romantics (F. Guizot , F. Mignet, J. Meschlet), who even then started talking about the “class struggle” and the “spirit of the people” as the main driving force of history. Karamzin was not at all interested in historical criticism, and he deliberately rejected the “philosophical” direction in history. The researcher’s conclusions from historical material, as well as his subjective fabrications, seem to Karamzin to be “metaphysics”, which is not suitable “for depicting action and character.”

Thus, with his unique views on the tasks of a historian, Karamzin, by and large, remained outside the dominant trends of Russian and European historiography of the 19th and 20th centuries. Of course, he participated in its consistent development, but only as an object for constant criticism and a clear example of how history should not be written.

Reaction of contemporaries

Karamzin's contemporaries - readers and fans - enthusiastically accepted his new “historical” work. The first eight volumes of “History of the Russian State” were printed in 1816-1817 and went on sale in February 1818. A huge circulation of three thousand for that time was sold out in 25 days. (And this despite the hefty price of 50 rubles). A second edition was immediately required, which was carried out in 1818-1819 by I.V. Slenin. In 1821 a new, ninth volume was published, and in 1824 the next two. The author did not have time to finish the twelfth volume of his work, which was published in 1829, almost three years after his death.

“History...” was admired by Karamzin’s literary friends and the vast public of non-specialist readers who suddenly discovered, like Count Tolstoy the American, that their Fatherland has a history. According to A.S. Pushkin, “everyone, even secular women, rushed to read the history of their fatherland, hitherto unknown to them. She was a new discovery for them. Ancient Russia seemed to be found by Karamzin, like America by Columbus.”

Liberal intellectual circles of the 1820s found Karamzin’s “History...” backward in general views and overly tendentious:

Research specialists, as already mentioned, treated Karamzin’s work precisely as a work, sometimes even belittling its historical significance. To many, Karamzin’s enterprise itself seemed too risky - to undertake to write such an extensive work given the then state of Russian historical science.

Already during Karamzin’s lifetime, critical analyzes of his “History...” appeared, and soon after the author’s death, attempts were made to determine the general significance of this work in historiography. Lelevel pointed out an involuntary distortion of the truth due to Karamzin’s patriotic, religious and political hobbies. Artsybashev showed to what extent the literary techniques of a lay historian harm the writing of “history.” Pogodin summed up all the shortcomings of the History, and N.A. Polevoy saw the general reason for these shortcomings in the fact that “Karamzin is a writer not of our time.” All his points of view, both in literature and in philosophy, politics and history, became outdated with the advent of new influences of European romanticism in Russia. In contrast to Karamzin, Polevoy soon wrote his six-volume “History of the Russian People,” where he completely surrendered to the ideas of Guizot and other Western European romantics. Contemporaries assessed this work as an “undignified parody” of Karamzin, subjecting the author to rather vicious, and not always deserved, attacks.

In the 1830s, Karamzin’s “History...” became the banner of the officially “Russian” movement. With the assistance of the same Pogodin, its scientific rehabilitation is being carried out, which is fully consistent with the spirit of Uvarov’s “theory of official nationality”.

In the second half of the 19th century, based on the “History...”, a lot of popular science articles and other texts were written, which served as the basis for well-known educational and teaching aids. Based on the historical stories of Karamzin, many works were created for children and youth, the purpose of which for many years was to educate patriotism, loyalty to civic duty, and the responsibility of the younger generation for the fate of their Motherland. This book, in our opinion, played a decisive role in shaping the views of more than one generation of Russian people, having a significant impact on the foundations of patriotic education of youth in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

December 14. Karamzin's finale.

The death of Emperor Alexander I and the December events of 1925 deeply shocked N.M. Karamzin and had a negative impact on his health.

On December 14, 1825, having received news of the uprising, the historian goes out into the street: “I saw terrible faces, heard terrible words, five or six stones fell at my feet.”

Karamzin, of course, regarded the action of the nobility against their sovereign as a rebellion and a serious crime. But among the rebels there were so many acquaintances: the Muravyov brothers, Nikolai Turgenev, Bestuzhev, Ryleev, Kuchelbecker (he translated Karamzin’s “History” into German).

A few days later Karamzin will say about the Decembrists: “The delusions and crimes of these young people are the delusions and crimes of our century.”

On December 14, during his movements around St. Petersburg, Karamzin caught a severe cold and contracted pneumonia. In the eyes of his contemporaries, he was another victim of this day: his idea of ​​the world collapsed, his faith in the future was lost, and a new king ascended to the throne, very far from the ideal image of an enlightened monarch. Half-ill, Karamzin visited the palace every day, where he talked with Empress Maria Feodorovna, moving from memories of the late Emperor Alexander to discussions about the tasks of the future reign.

Karamzin could no longer write. The XII volume of “History...” froze during the interregnum of 1611 - 1612. The last words of the last volume are about a small Russian fortress: “Nut did not give up.” The last thing that Karamzin actually managed to do in the spring of 1826 was that, together with Zhukovsky, he persuaded Nicholas I to return Pushkin from exile. A few years later, the emperor tried to pass the baton of the first historiographer of Russia to the poet, but the “sun of Russian poetry” somehow did not fit into the role of state ideologist and theorist...

In the spring of 1826 N.M. Karamzin, on the advice of doctors, decided to go to Southern France or Italy for treatment. Nicholas I agreed to sponsor his trip and kindly placed a frigate of the Imperial Navy at the disposal of the historiographer. But Karamzin was already too weak to travel. He died on May 22 (June 3), 1826 in St. Petersburg. He was buried at the Tikhvin Cemetery of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra.