Ivan Barkov - a girl's toy, or the works of Mr. Barkov. Barkovschina - obscene literary style
Ivan Semenovich Barkov
A girl's toy, or the writings of Mr. Barkov
Ivan Barkov - the history of a cultural myth
The transformation of a proper name into a common noun is a fate that falls to the lot of few writers. Of all the great Russian literature, only a few classics had the opportunity to add their names to the vocabulary fund native language. In this short series, history, with its constant irony, placed Ivan Barkov, both chronologically and alphabetically, in second place after Avvakum. Under the name of Barkov, the famous poem “Luka Mudishchev” was published, which, as was always obvious to any qualified reader, and recently indisputably proven by K. F. Taranovsky, was written already in the post-Pushkin era. The poems “Prov Fomich” and “The Joys of the Empress,” also attributed by publishers to Barkov, have even more recent origins, the latter of which was recently reproduced in Russia. The texts that spread under the name of Barkov in various lists of the 18th–19th centuries are truly countless.
Information about Barkov and his “disgraceful” works began to appear in our press quite recently. But even the intensified appeal to his legacy in recent years is powerless to cancel the myth about the poet that has formed in Russian culture, a myth created over decades and centuries in which Barkov’s name lived in culture separately from his fate and his work. Works created centuries after his death were attributed to Barkov, and the most unimaginable biographical legends surrounded his fate.
I don't dare tell you Barkov's poems
Decently translate
And even such a name
I don't dare say it out loud.
The first two lines of this Pushkin impromptu refer, according to the testimony of A.P. Kern, to Dmitry Nikolaevich Barkov, who composed obscene epigrams on French, but the third and fourth clearly referred to his illustrious namesake. The very name of the poet was felt as indecent and unpronounceable. Even in his youthful poem “The Town,” listing the authors of “works that despised the press,” Pushkin refused to “utter loudly” the scandalous word:
But let me call the child,
What's good sometimes
Half of the notebooks
I just filled it in with myself.
This unpronounceability of the cherished name may have been due to the fact that already in Pushkin’s era the myth of Barkov overshadowed his works and the poet began to perform in Russian literary mythology the functions of a kind of god Priapus, a symbol of sexual power and vitality. In the poem “Barkov’s Shadow,” traditionally attributed to Pushkin, the founder of shameful poetry appears to the hero at a moment of male difficulty:
He sees - in an old frock coat
With my pants down
With a thick dick in his hand,
With saggy ass
A shadow appeared<…>
Before us, in fact, is the deity of pagan mythology, demanding sacrifices and glorification and coming to the aid of his priests. “Well, motherfucker, you forgot to pray to me in trouble,” exclaims the shadow and actually turns out to be able to restore the withered strength of its follower, and later save his life. Thus, a real writer of the mid-60s of the 18th century turned into a character of the mythological Olympus, as if symbolizing a huge hidden area of literature, an entire culture of obscene, obscene, widely spread under the narrow film of what was officially permitted.
There were also obscene poems
Unknown imitators of Barkov, -
the modern poet Timur Kibirov will write, listing the graffiti on the walls of a public toilet. Of course, none of the nameless authors of these verses read what Barkov wrote, but this does not prevent them from being in the endless row of his followers, which will stretch, whether we like it or not, as long as the Russian language exists.
However, Barkov’s myth, for all its stability, took shape and was formed gradually. Its first stage was, apparently, the grouping of the texts of the Barkov cycle around the name of one author. As has been repeatedly noted, the works included in the collections of obscene poems of the 18th century actually belonged to different writers. A number of collections of this kind, most often bearing the title “Maiden’s Toy,” contain a preface called “An Offering to Belinda,” which, in particular, says: “But having entrusted this book to you, incomparable Belinda, I entrust not myself to your favor.” one, but many, for I am not the only author of the works contained in it, and I am not the only one who collected it.” First of all, in various copies one comes across texts that have nothing to do with Barkovianism and are united, perhaps, only by their belonging to handwritten literature, created without the expectation of a printing press. Among them are “Hymn to the Beard” by Lomonosov, “Message to the Servants” by Fonvizin, epigrams on Sumarokov, etc. Standing apart in “The Maiden’s Toy” is a cycle associated with the name of a certain Ivan Danilovich Osipov: messages to him by A. V. Olsufiev and answers to them, an ode for the birthday of Ivan Danilovich’s daughter, the poem “Desecrated Vanyusha Yabloshnik (Yablochkin)”, etc. These works reflect the morals and folklore of the semi-bohemian St. Petersburg company of that time, which had both an aristocratic and plebeian composition. For all the square-tavern character of their wit, the texts grouped around the figure of Ivan Danilovich are significantly inferior to the main body of Barkoviana in terms of rudeness and frankness.
But even without the listed works, “A Girl’s Toy” remains the creation of various authors. In some lists there are, in particular, signatures under some poems indicating their authorship. One of the poems bearing the common title “Ode to the Pussy” is attributed here to Chulkov, the other, “Letter to Priapus,” is attributed to F. Mamonov. Epigram “On the actress D.” and the stanzas “The Origin of the Clerk” are signed “Works of A.S.” (in our opinion, there are very serious reasons to attribute these texts to Sumarokov). The signature “Works of G.B.”, which, of course, should be deciphered as “Works of Mr. Barkov”, also appears under two works: “Ode to Priapus”, which is a kind of expanded and supplemented translation of the famous poem of the same name by the French poet A. Piron, and “Poem for the victory of Priapova’s daughter.” (In other lists, this poem is called “The Battle Between Dick and Cunt for Superiority.”) Of course, Barkov’s real contribution to “Girl’s Toy” is much more significant. Such an informed contemporary, who quite possibly knew Barkov personally, as Novikov, claimed that he owned “many whole and small poems in honor of Bacchus and Aphrodite.” About “burlesques, of which he published many,” also writes “News about Some Russian Writers,” which appeared in Leipzig during Barkov’s lifetime, and belongs to I. A. Dmitrievsky or V. I. Lukin. Thus, there is no doubt that the collection bearing Barkov’s name contains a significant number of his own works.
Barkov Ivan Semenovich - poet and translator of the 18th century, author of pornographic poems, founder of the “illegal” literary genre - “barkovshchina”.
Barkovschina - obscene literary style
He is rightfully considered one of the outstanding Russian poets; his works - shameful verses, surprisingly combining rudeness, sarcasm and foul language, are read not in schools and institutes, but most often in secret. At all times, there were people who wanted to get acquainted with the works of the scandalous author.
By the beginning of 1992, Ivan Barkov’s works began to be published in such well-known publications as “Stars”, “Literary Review”, “Library” and others.
Ivan Barkov: biography
He was presumably born in 1732 into the family of a clergyman. Initial training He attended the seminary at the Alexander Nevsky Lavra; in 1748, with the help of M.V. Lomonosov, he became a student at the university at the Academy of Sciences. IN educational institution He showed a special inclination towards the humanities, did a lot of translations and studied the works of ancient writers. However, Barkov's uncontrollable behavior, constant drinking, fights, and insults to the rector became the reason for his expulsion in 1751. The demoted student was assigned as a student at the Academic Printing House and, given his exceptional abilities, was given permission to attend French and German lessons at the gymnasium, as well as to study “Russian style” from S.P. Krasheninnikov.
As a copyist
Later, from the Barkov printing house, Ivan was transferred as a copyist to the Academic Chancellery.
New responsibilities allowed the young man to communicate closely with M.V. Lomonosov, for whom he often made copies of documents and rewrote his works, in particular “Ancient Russian History” and “Russian Grammar”. The monotonous, monotonous work as a copyist became a most exciting activity for Barkov, because it was accompanied by interesting consultations and explanations from Lomonosov. And this actually became a continuation of university studies for the failed student.
Barkov's first literary works
First independent work Ivan Barkov's work was A Brief Russian History, published in 1762. According to G. F. Miller, in historical research from the time of Rurik to Peter the Great, information is reported more accurately and completely than, for example, in Voltaire’s work about the history of Russia under Peter the Great. For the ode he composed in honor of the birthday of Peter III in 1762, Ivan Barkov was appointed to the Academy as a translator, which led to the appearance of high-quality translations full of artistic merit.
Having easily mastered the nuances of odic poetry, the writer did not improve himself in this genre, which in the future could have brought the poet official fame and guaranteed career advancement. Next, Ivan Barkov prepared for printing (corrected incomprehensible places, filled in the gaps with text, changed the old spelling, adapting it for a more understandable reading) Radziwill's Chronicle, which he fully familiarized himself with when rewriting it for Lomonosov. This work, which provided the general public with the opportunity to become acquainted with reliable historical facts, was published in 1767.
Poet who is difficult to quote
Most of all, the poet Ivan Barkov became famous for his obscene poems with pornographic content, which led to the emergence of a new genre “Barkovism”. Obviously, the example for the emergence of such free lines, the first partial publication of which in Russia took place in 1991, was Russian folklore and frivolous French poetry. Opinions about Barkov are varied and diametrically opposed. So, Chekhov believed that it was inconvenient to quote him. Leo Tolstoy called Ivan a fairground jester, and Pushkin believed that the whole point is that all things are called by their proper names. Barkov's poems were present at the students' merry feasts, and Griboedov, Pushkin, and Delvig filled the pauses with his quotes in table conversations. Barkov's poems were quoted by Nikolai Nekrasov.
Unlike the works of the Marquis de Sade, who enjoys various unnatural sensations and ambiguous situations, Ivan Barkov expresses himself in a normal, vicious way, without crossing some forbidden line.
This is just a tavern assessor, unfortunately endowed with poetic talent and intelligence. The pornography he describes is a reflection of Russian life and bad manners, which today remains one of the most striking features of public life. There are no foul-mouthed people in any literature who could swear so elegantly “in Russian” in poetry, as Ivan Barkov did.
And he died funny...
Contemporaries considered Ivan Barkov an extremely dissolute person. There was a legend among the people that Barkov, although he drank excessively, was a wonderful lover, and often brought dissolute girlfriends and drinking companions to his estate.
Barkov Ivan Semenovich, whose biography is of interest to the modern generation, led a miserable life, drank until the end of his days and died at the age of 36. The circumstances of his death and burial place remained unknown. But the versions of its ending short life weight. According to one of them, he was beaten in a brothel, the other claims that he drowned in a latrine while on a drinking binge. They say that some people discovered Barkov’s corpse in his office with his head stuffed into a stove for the purpose of carbon monoxide poisoning, and the lower half of his body sticking out without pants with a note stuck in it: “He lived a sin, but died a funny one.” Although, according to another version, the poet said these words before his death.
Ivan Barkov was the first in Russia to write “about this,” and in verse. He died at thirty-six years of age, and very soon many adventures, including obscene ones, were added to his biography. So they live separately - the reliable Barkov, who is little known, and the myth about Barkov, which is on everyone’s lips.
But stories are different. There are “historical anecdotes,” that is, funny stories told by contemporaries about historical figures. They are quite plausible; some, from frequent repetition in print, gradually become biographical facts. Historical anecdotes about Barkov, scattered throughout the memoirs of various individuals, were published in the 19th century. And if they at least partially reflect Barkov’s personality, then he was a man of “cheerful and carefree disposition.”
They say, for example, that the poet Sumarokov greatly respected Barkov as a scientist and sharp critic and always demanded his opinion regarding his works. “Barkov once came to Sumarokov. "Sumarokov great person! Sumarokov is the first Russian poet!” - he told him. The delighted Sumarokov ordered to immediately serve him vodka, and that’s all Barkov wanted. He got drunk and drunk. On his way out, he told him: “Alexander Petrovich, I lied to you: I am the first Russian poet, Lomonosov is the second, and you are just the third.” Sumarokov almost stabbed him..."
“... Sumarokov often directly translated his tragedies from Racine and others... Barkov once asked Sumarokov for Racine’s works, noted all such places, wrote in the margins: “Stolen from Sumarokov” - and returned the book as it belonged.”
“Barkov once argued with Sumarokov about which of them would be more likely to write an ode... A quarter of an hour later, Sumarokov comes out with the finished ode and does not find Barkov.
Everyday anecdotes about Barkov attribute extreme debauchery to him. If you collect this entire layer of anecdotes, you can create the following legend: Barkov lived on his estate in the village of Barkovka, he was a drunkard and a tireless lover (a sort of Luka Mudishchev, more about him later). He composed shameful poems about Empress Catherine and her orgies with Grigory Orlov. It reached the empress, she became angry and ordered Barkov to be immediately taken to the palace. They retired to the bedroom, from where Barkov crawled out on the third day, without pants, but with the title of count. That's what he became famous for. (The obscene poem “Grigory Orlov,” a later one, also went around, and it, of course, is attributed to the same Barkov.)
More inclined to bad deeds
In 1732, the priest Semyon Barkov had a son, named Ivan. The fates of the priests are similar and are known in advance without a fortune teller: from childhood, learning to read and write from spiritual books, church singing in the choir, then theological seminary, and then their own parish, or Tyatenkin’s, as an inheritance. In 1744 Vanya entered the Alexander Nevsky Theological Seminary.
He was a capable boy, but of a restless and rebellious disposition. In 1748, professors M.V. Lomonosov and I.A. Brown came to the seminary from the Academy of Sciences to “examine” seminarians for admission to the Academic University. The leadership of the seminary did not include Ivan Barkov among the applicants. Ten seminarians took the exam, five passed the test.
But Ivan was not easy, he himself came to Lomonosov and asked to test him, since during the “exam,” he was allegedly absent due to illness. Mikhailo Vasilyevich tested the boy and found his knowledge very thorough, about which he wrote to the office of the academy:
“This April 24 days, student Ivan Barkov came to me from the Alexander Seminary and announced... that he really wanted to be a student at the Academy of Sciences, and for this purpose he asked me to examine him. And at his request, I spoke to him in Latin and asked him to translate from Latin into Russian, from which I saw that he had a keen understanding and knew so much Latin that he could understand professorial lectures... Moreover, he announced that he was studying at the Piitik school, and that he is a priest’s son, 16 years old, and five years from entering the Seminary...” This was followed by Lomonosov’s recommendation: “... I hope that he can set himself apart from others in the sciences.”
For preliminary training, Barkov was first assigned to an academic gymnasium.
He attended lectures on versification by V.K. Trediakovsky, a course in poetics and eloquence by I.E. Fisher, and studied ancient authors. Some teachers had him in good standing, others considered him either unfit or early admitted to the sciences.
Very soon his talent as a literary translator was determined; even in his high school years, he translated the works of the Roman historian Sallust.
Barkov did not have enough money to live, much less buy wine, and, in modern terms, he began to look for a part-time job. In his petition to the academy’s office, Barkov wrote: “And in my current wretched state, with the salary determined for me, the annual salary of which is only thirty-six rubles, it is almost impossible to support myself in any way, because both with food and clothing, and with which to rent an apartment I don’t have...” The matter was decided on the same day: “... until this student Barkov is to be considered at the Chancellery of the Academy of Sciences for correspondence on white cases, rather than he abandon his bad misdeeds and be diligent in the work entrusted to him, then will not be left without a salary increase...”
But not even a month had passed before Ivan played a trick again, so much so that he was taken under arrest, and the threat of being written off as a sailor hung over him again. Yes, apparently, God himself helped, or rather, the Lord’s Passover. “The student Ivan Barkov has been kept under guard at the Chancellery for his insolence, but now he admits his guilt and promises to act decently in the future... and for the upcoming Easter holiday, to release him from guard,” the office decided. And then follows a completely unexpected turn in the matter: “...and add another fourteen rubles to his current salary of 36 rubles...” True, this more than generous decision ended with the usual warning: if Barkov’s “impudence” is repeated , “he will certainly be sent to the matros’ eternal service.”
And at this time, Mikhailo Vasilyevich Lomonosov, not for the first time, asked the Academy to appoint him a secretary or “a capable student to use for paperwork,” since a fair amount of manuscripts had accumulated for publication, and there was no time to prepare them for printing. Look, give him a personal secretary! – the bureaucrats thought and were in no hurry to fulfill the request. And when almost a year later they finally respected the request, they sent him to - who do you think? – poor little head, Barkova.Taking an example from Lomonosov
Since 1755, Ivan Barkov was listed at the chancellery, and worked mainly at the home of M.V. Lomonosov. He rewrote "Russian Grammar", Nestorov's "Tale of Bygone Years", "Ancient Russian History", "An Experience in Describing the Dominion of the First Grand Dukes of Russia" and the second volume of Lomonosov's "Works".
Working together and communicating with Lomonosov taught Ivan a lot. He observed Lomonosov's behavior in everyday life and in the academy, and delved into the essence of his disputes with scientists and poets. Under his leadership, the scribe also became an experienced editor.
But Lomonosov was not an example in everything; he himself did not consider drunkenness a great sin, and he did not choose expressions about drunkenness. It is known how he, “folding his fingers indecently,” stuck a cookie under the nose of Mr. Councilor Schumacher with the words: “Move it, bite it!”
He argued with his rival poets, primarily with Sumarokov (Alexander Petrovich was also a “hot head,” as Catherine II nicknamed him). But if for Lomonosov “anger” was partly a conscious expression of his life position, a kind of self-affirmation of a commoner, then Barkov found in his patron’s behavior an excuse for his own licentiousness.
Lomonosov did not spare himself in his work, but he did not spare others either. And he piled more and more orders on Barkov. Working at the professor's home was a burden for Ivan. Perhaps, knowing Popovich’s addiction to wine, Lomonosov simply did not let him out the door.
Show off Peter and Catherine, That this dearest day was the cause of Russian bliss! – wrote Barkov. Let's not blame him for his pomposity. Trediakovsky, Sumarokov, and Lomonosov composed laudatory odes in approximately the same spirit. But things turned out very badly with Peter III: he “showed off with Catherine” for only six months, then his wife overthrew him, and her lover strangled the emperor with a napkin. Fortunately, Barkov’s ode was quickly forgotten and was not reproached to the author.
After the publication of the ode, Count Razumovsky appointed Barkov as a translator from Latin, for he “provided considerable experience in his knowledge... and, moreover, promised to completely correct himself in his actions.” The flowering of Ivan Barkov’s work as a translator, poet and editor began. As a popularizer of science, he prepared his own summary of the “Brief Russian history"and a compilation of "Natural History" by the French scientist Georges Buffon. Then he edited and prepared for publication “Satires and other poetic works” by the poet and statesman Antioch Cantemir.
In 1763, he translated the satires of the ancient Roman poet Horace, and the Academy published a book entitled “The Quinta of Horace Flaccus Satires, or Conversations with Notes, Translated from the Latin into Russian Poems of the Academy of Sciences by the Translator Ivan Barkov.”
By the way, one of Horace’s satires ridicules the cult of the Greek god of fertility Priapus.
In the second half of the eighteenth century, Russian poetry matured so much that it could already afford to laugh at itself. According to a contemporary, “in 1753, various witty and biting satires appeared in Moscow, written in beautiful verse, on the stupidity of the newest Russian poets...” Soon, handwritten collections of erotic poems appeared under the title “Girl’s Toy”, in some lists with the addition of a comma - “or the Works of Mr. Barkov.”
Barkov’s authorship is confirmed in “News about some Russian writers” (1767), where it is said about him rather mildly: “It’s only a pity that in some places decency is insulted there.” Our outstanding educator N.I. Novikov in his “Experience of a Historical Dictionary on Russian Writers” (1772) reported on this side of Barkov’s work: “He wrote many satirical works, revolutions and many whole and small poems in honor of Bacchus and Venus, why is he so cheerful? disposition and carelessness contributed a lot. All these poems have not been published, but many keep them handwritten..."
Novikov, although briefly, very accurately characterized the themes and poetic form of Barkov’s unprinted works. Novikov called burlesque “revolutions” - a literary genre in which base content is conveyed in a sublime style. Barkov wrote just like that: about drinking, fighting and rough sex - but in the form of a solemn ode. He used the vocabulary of “high calm”, remembered the ancient gods, muses and heroes and at the same time spoke in original Russian words about the intimate. This seething mixture of pseudo-classicism in a rough Russian style was indeed a reflection of Barkov’s “cheerful disposition and carelessness,” and even the riotous lifestyle of Barkov himself.
Perhaps Barkov’s odes are the most shameless part of the collection; they form the idea of his unprinted poems. But the personality of Barkov himself manifested itself more clearly in the “Bacchanalian” theme of the collection: behind these poems one can discern the character of the author and the environment in which he was “one of the people.”
In the ode to “Bacchus” there is not a single obscene, or even simply rude word. Perhaps because Barkov wrote about his true passion, while his hypersexuality was most likely just a licentiousness of the imagination.
Bacchus welcomes everyone into his temple: “The soldier doesn’t bother about serving here,” and next to him is “a fist fighter and a clerk,” and here the lawyer does his business, “serving both the right and the wrong.” The poet gets drunk, and all these faithful servants of the Russian Bacchus get drunk, merge into a common mass “and, tearing the air apart with screams, make friends, fight, drink, sing.” But now everything has been drunk and drunk, the intoxicated enthusiasm has subsided, and a drunken tear of tenderness rolls from the poet’s eyes.
The source of so much goodness,
suddenly making war and peace,
you make great ones out of small ones,
you change your uniform with rubbish.
The duel between the leaders is especially impressive:
I found a scythe on a hard stone,
I found it on the doc here,
Fury and flame sparkle in their eyes,
How both terrible lions roar...
The ode ends with the complete victory of the proletariat.
Barkov’s “satirical works”, about which N.I. Novikov wrote, are, in fact, all his poems, the same odes. After all, he depicted the morals of his age, including himself, a great sinner. Surprisingly, tender motives are sometimes heard in “Girl’s Toy”. Of course, they are also ironic, “indecent.” Listen to the first lines of the ode to “Morning Dawn”:
The crimson path has already dawned
opened up to the dozing morning stars.
Cool marshmallow began to blow
under the skirts of women and girls...
O morning, blessed hour!
Dearest to us of the golden age.
You have a sweet voice in your nature
calls a person to work.
The collection also contains fables, terribly indecent, but very funny, written in lively verses of various sizes.
“The Girl’s Toy” brought Barkov, if not fame, then wide fame. However, in 1766 he was expelled from the academy, and no information about recent years his life is gone. Barkov died in 1768 under unknown circumstances, and it is unknown where he was buried. Even his death turned into a joke. His dying words or note are conveyed: “He lived sinfully and died funny.” I think that this essentially fair phrase was uttered by one of his contemporary writers. Idle tongues added that the deceased was found in an indecent position. This scene was depicted by the poet Andrei Voznesensky (“the video” is called “Barkov”), which saves me from describing obvious stupidity.
Time B.
From our distance it seems that Barkov jumped out like a jack-in-the-box. He outraged some, made others laugh, but surprised everyone. This have not happened before! - people still talk about his poems to this day. What happened?
Our people are chaste, that's true. If you think about it, the word sex in its original sense means “sex” in Russian, that is, half. A purely physical term, it expresses a philosophical idea: only by uniting do a man and a woman become a whole being. Peter I opened a window to Europe, and the western draft brought a lot of things to us. Free-thinking and erotic works appeared: explicit engravings, Voltaire’s “The Virgin of Orleans” and handwritten pornographic collections called “Joujou des demoiselles” - “Girl’s Toy”.
At the same time, the reforms tore hundreds of thousands of peasants away from home: to join the army and navy, to build cities and dig canals, to factories. It was like a separate same-sex people - men without their own home, without their usual way of life and, most importantly, without women. In response to the “challenge of the times”, brothels were opened for the “pure public”, street prostitutes of cheap variety appeared, for soldiers - “regimental girls” and “tavern wives” available to everyone.
What was going on upstairs? Prince M. Shcherbatov in his notes “On the Damage to Morals in Russia” lamented: “Debauchery in women’s morals was the distinctive features and mentality of the court, and from there they already spread to other states of people...” Ivan Barkov lived under three empresses, and all three were more depraved than the other, increasingly: if Anna Ioannovna had only one lover (Biron), then Elizaveta Petrovna already had several of them, and Catherine II had many.
Barkov was brought up in the most closed male community - in a seminary, and although the seminarians studied theology, the “students’” craving for wine and obscenity is also known. The reader now knows in general terms later life, activities and passions of the forgotten piita. So should we be surprised at the rudeness of Barkov’s muse?
Rather, his steady pursuit of knowledge and creativity is worthy of surprise.
As soon as Barkov’s first works spread, he immediately began to have imitators. Even during his lifetime, the lists of “Girl’s Toys” were replenished with erotic poems by other authors. Unlike Popovich Barkov, these were mostly noble gentlemen: F.I. Dmitriev-Mamonov, I.P. Elagin, A.V. Olsufiev: the last two occupied high positions at court. But no one managed to repeat that bizarre combination of rudeness and grace that was characteristic of Barkov’s poems.
Russian poets of the 19th century knew their mischievous predecessor very well, were influenced by him in the field of poetic language, but if they imitated him, it was “in their youth.” A.S. Pushkin highly appreciated the work of Ivan Barkov. Once he shamed a young man he knew: you should know such a wonderful poet!During his lyceum years, Sasha Pushkin followed in the footsteps of his grandfather Barkov - he is credited with the short poem “Barkov’s Shadow.” The plot and vocabulary of this work matches “A Girl’s Toy.” Pushkin completed the mythologization of the real Barkov, turning him into a kind of Russian Priapus, the patron saint of sex. True, researchers also have doubts about Pushkin’s authorship, since the text contains foreign vocabulary. I think the stylistic discrepancy can be explained simply: friends from lyceum students took part in writing the poem.
But for the famous poet Alexander Polezhaev (1805-1838), erotic poems became fatal. Some of them were quite innocent, in the spirit of “light poetry”:
Half naked, half airy,
The young beauty is lying down,
And obedient to dear oppression,
She is both thrilled and trembling. By the way, we will find the last line of this poem in the poem “Luka Mudishchev”; this is hardly a coincidence. But Polezhaev’s satirical poems “Iman the Goat” and “Sashka” were much sharper. They saw disrespect for religion and state principles, and this happened shortly after the defeat of the December uprising. Nicholas I personally sent the student Polezhaev to the army: “I give means to cleanse yourself!
The obscene language of his satirical poems gradually became the language of anger and despair. From an underground prison where shackled soldiers languished, Polezhaev wrote:
And every day I’ll have an evening
Going to bed and in the morning
In prayer to the Lord Christ
The Tsar of Russia in p...u
They refer in a row...
The nineteenth century became the “golden age” of Russian literature because it did not reject anyone or anything; it absorbed the experience of all talented predecessors, including the bold experience of Barkov. However, in general, sex has not become any noticeable topic in Russian literature.
Mudishchev, named Luka...
For almost two hundred years, the anonymous poem “Luka Mudischev” and the name of Barkov were indissoluble, like “Eugene Onegin” and Pushkin. Only research in recent decades has proven that “Luka Mudishchev” was written no earlier than 1830. But of all the “hidden literature” it was “Luka Mudishchev” who received the greatest fame, and through him Barkov.
We, youths with Komsomol badges, exhausted by Russian classics and Soviet literature, became easy prey for Barkov and others like him. “Hidden Literature” was, among other things, freedom, protest and, finally, our common male secret. An intrigued reader, previously unfamiliar with Barkov’s work, may now want to read it, open the book and, like Belinda, “change his appearance.” And he will condemn not only the author of the poems, but also the author of this publication. Well, I must say frankly, Ivan Semenovich Barkov is an original personality, a talented person, but far from a genius. And is it even possible to love Barkov’s poetry? Well, if only "
strange love
" But you can read it with interest, and in some places with pleasure. In essence, this is a literary monument, and it should be treated as such.
“The first books to be published in Russia without censorship will be the complete works of Barkov,” said Pushkin. That’s almost exactly what happened: in the early 1990s, several editions of Barkov and “Barkoviana” were published.
The first includes: “The Life of Prince A.D. Kantemir”, attached to the publication of his “Satyr” (1762), an ode “On the joyful birthday” of Peter III, “Abridgement of the universal history of Golberg” (several editions since 1766). In verse, Barkov translated from Italian the “drama on music” “The World of Heroes” (1762), “Horace Flaccus’ Quintus of Satires or Conversations” (1763) and “Phaedrus, Augustus’s Freedman, Moral Fables,” with the appendix of the couplets of Dionysius Cato “On Good Morals” ( 1764).
I. S. Barkov gained all-Russian fame for his unprinted erotic works, in which the form of ode and other classicist genres, mythological images in the spirit of burlesque are combined with profanity and corresponding themes (brothel, tavern, fist fights); Often they directly play out specific passages from Lomonosov’s odes. Barkov's works were influenced by Western European, primarily French, frivolous poetry (Alexis Piron and many anonymous authors used similar techniques), as well as Russian erotic folklore. The Public Library in St. Petersburg contains a manuscript dating back to the end of the 18th or beginning of the 19th century, entitled “A Girl’s Toy, or Collected Works of Mr. Barkov,” but in it, along with probable poems by Barkov, there are many works by other authors (such as Mikhail Chulkov and Adam Olsufiev, and often unknown ones). Along with poems, Barkov is also credited with the obscene parody tragedies “Ebikhud” and “Durnosov and Farnos”, reproducing the cliches of the dramaturgy of classicism (primarily Lomonosov and Sumarokov).
N.I. Novikov wrote about Barkov that he “wrote many satirical works, revolutions, and many whole and small poems in honor of Bacchus and Aphrodite, to which his cheerful disposition and carelessness contributed a lot. All these poems have not been published, but many keep them handwritten.” By “revolutions” we mean re-imaginings (travesties) of classical genres.
“Shameful (playful) odes” of Barkov and his contemporaries are an important component literary life late XVIII - early XIX century; they, of course, were not published, but, according to N.M. Karamzin in 1802, they were “rarely unknown”; Half-jokingly, Karamzin, Pushkin and others spoke highly of Barkov. In the works of Vasily Maykov, Derzhavin, Batyushkov, Pushkin, modern researchers find similarities with Barkov. Based on a number of significant evidence, the parody ballad “Barkov’s Shadow” (c. 1815) is attributed to Pushkin the lyceum student.
In addition to the so-called Barkoviana (“Maiden’s Toy” and other works of the 18th century created by Barkov himself and his contemporaries), pseudo-Barkoviana stands out (works of the early 19th century and later that cannot possibly belong to Barkov, but are consistently attributed to him in the manuscript tradition) . The latter includes, in particular, the famous poem “Luka Mudishchev”, created in the 1860s [source not specified 278 days]; its unknown author successfully concentrated in this work the then centuries-old “Barkov” tradition. The poems “The Joys of the Empress” (aka “Grigory Orlov”) and “Prov Fomich”, dating back to the 20th century, were also published abroad under the name of Barkov.
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