Three Preromantic Authors

Abstract

Vasilii Trofimovich Narezhnyi (1780–1825) deserves to be mentioned prominently in the history of early romantic literature in Russia. He was a friend of Andrei Turgenev and Merzliakov in Moscow, and shared their enthusiasm for young Schiller and German preromantic literature. Narezhnyi, born to a provincial family of landed gentry, attended the gymnasium and the university in Moscow. While still a student he began to publish translations and original poems on patriotic themes such as The Shores of Alta and Moscow Liberated in the journal A Pleasant and Useful Way to Spend Time (1798); a dramatic scene Roman Antiquities, a tragedy The Bloody Night, or the Final Downfall of the House of Cadmos and The Day of Crime and Revenge, a prose play, in the journal Hippocrene, or the Delights of Philology (1800). During the late 1790’s and early 1800’s, he was in contact with the young Moscow literary circle and Andrei Turgenev. During this time he wrote a patriotic and romantic tragedy, Dmitrii, the Pretender (cf. Schiller’s incomplete drama Demetrius), a tragedy in five acts The Dead Castle (1801, unpublished), Helen, and Svetoslav, two tragedies which have not been preserved.¹ Altogether he had written six plays when he turned thirty! The Day of Crime and Revenge and The Dead Castle were both directed against despotism. In The Day... the noble avenger Chernomor, supported by peasants and Cossacks, punished a cruel landowner of Polish origin for his misdeeds by burying him alive.