GRIEF AND HARMONY

This article studies the role of A. S.Pushkin in creating imitations of folk verse within Russian literary verse. Stages in forming meters and the style of folk imitations are described. The article provides a vast bibliography on “Pesni zapadnykh slavyan” (“Songs of Western Slavs”), one of the most intricate in terms of meter among Pushkin’s cycles. The topics and general mood of “Pesni zapadnykh slavyan” have much in common with “Istoriya Pugacheva”, written approximately in the same period. The author shows how the meter of folk imitations is gradually formed: from “Pesnya devyshek” in “Evgeniy Onegin”, a draft poem “Kak zhenitsya zadumal tsarskiy arap…”, and a couplet “Raskhodilis po poganskomu gradu” (accompanied in Pushkin’s manuscript by a rhythmical scheme showing the main features of folk epic poetry) to “Pesni o Stenke Razine” , “Skazka o pope i rabotnike ego Balde”, and finally to “Skazka o rybake i rybke” and “Pesni zapadnykh slavyan”, which comprise Pushkin’s imitation in Russian of the rhythm of the Old Slavonic decasyllabic meter. The mood and topics of the “Songs of the Western Slavs” are derived from the very dramatic historical narration of “History of Pugachev,” which is full of grief and death. Thus, in using Prosper Mérimée’s well known “La Guzla” as the source for his storylines in the “Songs of the Western Slavs” Pushkin chose Mérimée’s darkest plots (176 deaths occur in Pushkin’s 16 songs).