Why is Karamzin called a reformer of the Russian language? Karamzin's language reform

: journalism, criticism, story, novel, historical story, journalism, study of history. V.G. Belinsky

Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin is an outstanding reformer of the Russian language. He left a noticeable mark on science, art, and journalism, but an important result of Karamzin’s work in the 1790s was the reform of the language, which was based on the desire to bring the written language closer to the living spoken language of the educated layer of society. Thanks to Karamzin, the Russian reader began to think, feel and express himself somewhat differently.

In our speech we use many words introduced into colloquial circulation by Karamzin. But speech is always a reflection of a person’s intellect, culture, and spiritual maturity. After Peter's reforms in Russia, a gap arose between the spiritual needs of an enlightened society and the semantic structure of the Russian language. All educated people were forced to speak French, since in the Russian language there were no words and concepts to express many thoughts and feelings. To express in Russian the diversity of concepts and manifestations human soul, it was necessary to develop the Russian language, create a new speech culture, to bridge the gap between literature and life. By the way, at that time the French language really had a pan-European distribution; not only the Russian, but, for example, the German intelligentsia preferred it to their native language.

In an article of 1802 “On love for the Fatherland and national pride,” Karamzin wrote: “Our trouble is that we all want to speak French and do not think about working on mastering our own language; Is it any wonder that we don’t know how to explain to them some of the subtleties in conversation” - and called for giving the native language all the subtleties of the French language. At the end of the 18th century, Karamzin came to the conclusion that the Russian language was outdated and needed to be reformed. Karamzin was not a tsar, nor was he a minister. Therefore, Karamzin’s reform was expressed not in the fact that he issued some decrees and changed the norms of the language, but in the fact that he himself began to write his works in a new way and place translated works written in a new literary language in his almanacs.

Readers became acquainted with these books and learned new principles of literary speech, which were focused on the norms of the French language (these principles were called the “new syllable”). Karamzin’s initial task was for Russians to begin to write as they speak, and for noble society to begin to speak as they write. It was these two tasks that determined the essence of the writer’s stylistic reform. In order to bring the literary language closer to the spoken language, first of all, it was necessary to free literature from Church Slavonicisms (heavy, outdated Slavic expressions, which in the spoken language had already been replaced by others, softer, more elegant).

Outdated Old Church Slavonicisms such as: abiye, byakhu, koliko, ponezhe, ubo, etc. have become undesirable. Karamzin’s statements are known: “To do, instead of to do, cannot be said in conversation, and especially to a young girl.” But Karamzin could not completely abandon Old Church Slavonicisms: this would cause enormous harm to the Russian literary language. Therefore, it was allowed to use Old Church Slavonicisms, which: a) in the Russian language retained a high, poetic character (“sitting under the shade of trees”, “on the gates of the temple I look at the image of miracles”, “this memory shook her soul”, “his hand kindled only a single sun on firmament"); b) can be used for artistic purposes (“a golden ray of hope, a ray of consolation illuminated the darkness of her sorrow”, “no one will throw a stone at a tree if there is no fruit on it”); c) being abstract nouns, they are capable of changing their meaning in new contexts (“there were great singers in Rus', whose creations were buried for centuries”); d) can act as a means of historical stylization (“I listen to the dull groan of the times,” “Nikon resigned his supreme rank and ... spent his days dedicated to God and soul-saving labors”). The second step in reforming the language was simplification syntactic constructions. Karamzin resolutely abandoned the heavy German-Latin syntactic construction introduced by Lomonosov, which was not in keeping with the spirit of the Russian language. Instead of long and incomprehensible periods, Karamzin began to write in clear and concise phrases, using light, elegant and logically harmonious French prose as a model.

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. In addition, Karamzin replaces the Old Slavonic conjunctions yako, paki, zane, koliko, etc. with Russian conjunctions and allied words that, so that, when, how, which, where, because (“Liza demanded that Erast often visit her mother “,” “Lisa said where she lives, said and went.”) Rows of subordinating conjunctions give way to non-union and coordinating constructions with conjunctions a, and, but, yes, or, etc.: “Liza fixed her gaze on him and thought. .”, “Liza followed him with her eyes, and her mother sat in thought,” “She already wanted to run after Erast, but the thought: “I have a mother!” stopped her."

Karamzin uses a direct word order, which seemed to him more natural and consistent with the train of thought and movement of a person’s feelings: “One day Lisa had to go to Moscow,” “The next day Lisa picked the best lilies of the valley and again went with them to the city,” “Erast jumped out onto the shore and approached Lisa.” The third stage of Karamzin’s language program was the enrichment of the Russian language with a number of neologisms, which were firmly included in the main vocabulary. Among the innovations proposed by the writer are the words known in our time: industry, development, sophistication, concentrate, touching, entertaining, humanity, public, generally useful, influence, future, love, need, etc., some of them have not taken root in Russian language (realness, infantile, etc.) 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 taken in their raw form, and therefore were very heavy and clumsy (“fortecia” instead of “fortress”, “victory” instead of “victory”).

Karamzin, on the contrary, tried to give foreign words a Russian ending, adapting them to the requirements of Russian grammar, for example, “serious”, “moral”, “aesthetic”, “audience”, “harmony”, “enthusiasm”. Karamzin and his supporters preferred words that expressed feelings and experiences, creating “pleasantness”; for this they often used diminutive suffixes (horn, shepherd, brook, mother, villages, path, bank, etc.). Words that create “beauty” were also introduced into the context (flowers, dove, kiss, lilies, esters, curl, etc.). Proper names, naming ancient gods, European artists, heroes of ancient and Western European literature, were also used by Karamzinists in order to give the story a sublime tone.

The beauty of speech was created with the help of syntactic structures close to phraseological combinations (the luminary of the day - the sun; the bards of singing - the poet; the gentle friend of our life - hope; the cypresses of conjugal love - family life, marriage; to move to the heavenly abodes - to die, etc. ). Among Karamzin’s other introductions, one can note the creation of the letter E. The letter E is the youngest letter of the modern Russian alphabet. It was introduced by Karamzin in 1797. One can say even more precisely: the letter E was introduced by Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin in 1797, in the almanac “Aonids”, in the word “tears”. Before that, instead of the letter E in Russia, they wrote the digraph io (introduced around the middle of the 18th century), and even earlier they wrote the usual letter E. In the first decade of the 19th century, the Karamzin reform of the literary language was greeted with enthusiasm and gave rise to keen public interest in the problems of literary norms. Most of the young writers contemporary to Karamzin accepted his transformations and followed him.

But not all his contemporaries agreed with him; many did not want to accept his innovations and rebelled against Karamzin as a dangerous and harmful reformer. The leader of such opponents of Karamzin was Shishkov, a well-known statesman that time. Shishkov was an ardent patriot, but was not a philologist, so his attacks on Karamzin were not philologically justified and were rather of a moral, patriotic, and sometimes even political nature. Shishkov accused Karamzin of corrupting his native language, of being anti-national, of dangerous freethinking, and even of corrupting morals. Shishkov said that only purely Slavic words can express pious feelings, feelings of love for the fatherland. Foreign words, in his opinion, distort rather than enrich the language: “Ancient Slavic language, father of many dialects, is the root and beginning Russian language, which was abundant and rich in itself, does not need to be enriched with French words.”

Shishkov proposed replacing already established foreign expressions with old Slavic ones; for example, replace “actor” with “actor”, “heroism” with “valiant soul”, “audience” with “listening”, “review” with “review of books”. 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 and has led to the fact that the common people's, peasant language has become very different from the language of the cultural classes; but it is also impossible not to admit that it was impossible to stop the naturally occurring evolution of language; it was impossible to forcefully return into use the already outdated expressions that Shishkov proposed (“zane”, “ugo”, “izhe”, “yako” and others). In this language dispute, history has shown a convincing victory for Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin and his followers. And mastering his lessons helped Pushkin complete the formation of the language of new Russian literature.

Literature

1. Vinogradov V.V. Language and style of Russian writers: from Karamzin to Gogol. -M., 2007, 390 p.

2. Voilova K.A., Ledeneva V.V. History of the Russian literary language: a textbook for universities. M.: Bustard, 2009. - 495 p. 3. Lotman Yu.M. The creation of Karamzin. - M., 1998, 382 p. 4. Electronic resource // sbiblio.com: Russian Humanitarian Internet University. - 2002.

Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin was a significant personality in the field of education, especially history and linguistics. He was the head of the sentimentalist movement in literature and created new trends in the Russian language. His work became known as the Karamzin language reform.

The essence of language reform

What did Nikolai Mikhailovich want to achieve with his reform? In those days, the Russian language was similar to Church Slavonic, and some features of the syntax made it “heavy”. The writer's goal was to remove most of the Latin and Slavic words in order to add words from the French language, which was considered the language of enlightened and educated people.

Principles of Karamzin's language reform

The writer saw his main task as ensuring that in noble society they began to write the way they speak. To create a “new syllable,” Karamzin relied on the linguistic features of Lomonosov. His odes often used difficult, outdated words, which put some writers in a difficult position. One of the principles of Nikolai Mikhailovich’s work was the desire to bring the writers’ language closer to colloquial.

To do this, it was necessary to remove all Old Church Slavonicisms from the language. But it was also impossible to completely abandon them - this would mean depriving the Russian language of its roots, wealth and special charm. Therefore, the following types of Old Church Slavonicisms were retained:

having a poetic connotation;
used for artistic purposes;
used to recreate a specific historical era.

Another principle of the “new” syllable was the simplification of sentences, that is, the replacement of ponderous, long, “Lomonosov” constructions with more simplified sentences. It was decided to replace all unions of Old Church Slavic origin. Karamzin sought to use as many Russian conjunctions as possible, mainly of a coordinating nature. He also changed the order of words on a straight line, which seemed to him more natural for a person.

And the third principle language reform Karamzin became neologisms. Nikolai Mikhailovich tried not only to introduce a foreign word into Russian speech, but also to adapt it to the peculiarities of Russian grammar. Sometimes, his neologisms remained untranslated because he believed that they sounded more complete that way. But later, the writer reconsidered his views on borrowing and began to use more words of Russian origin.

Reaction to Shishkov's reform

Of course, such important changes could not but cause mixed reactions from society. There were also those who did not approve of Karamzin’s language reform. So, among his opponents was Shishkov, a prominent statesman of that time. He was not a philologist, so his arguments were mainly patriotic in nature.

He considered Karamazin a freethinker, a lover of everything foreign. Shishkin believed that they were only spoiling the Russian language and distorting its essence. Only the use of Slavic words contributes to patriotic education. Therefore, he proposed replacing already established foreign expressions with Slavic ones. So, for example, replace the word “actor” with “actor”.

The principles of language reform of Karamzin and Shishkov have a different basis: Nikolai Mikhailovich understood that it was necessary to change the linguistic system from a philological point of view, and Shishkov was guided by patriotism.

Pros and cons of Karamzin's language reform

The introduced innovations, as we said, caused mixed assessments in society. On the one hand, all the changes that have occurred are a natural result historical events that Russia was experiencing. The Age of Enlightenment had arrived, so it was necessary to simplify the language system and get rid of outdated words. This is natural because it cannot develop unless new words, phrases and expressions appear.

But on the other hand, the French language has become too much. Its active introduction contributed to the fact that the differences between the communication of the common people and the upper classes became simply enormous. And this reform can be called to some extent antisocial and not conducive to the formation of patriotism. But this was an absolutely natural phenomenon in the era

Therefore, despite conflicting assessments, it should be noted that Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamazin had a great influence on the development of the literary language and general culture in Russia.

Essay

Literature on the topic:

N. M. Karamzin’s contribution to the development of the Russian language and literature.

Completed:

Checked:

I.Introduction.

II. Main part

2.1

Biography of Karamzin

2.2

Karamzin - writer

1) Karamzin’s worldview

2) Karamzin and classicists

3) Karamzin – reformer

4) Brief description of Karamzin’s main prose works

2.3

Karamzin is a poet1) Features of Karamzin’s poetry2) Features of Karamzin’s works

3) Karamzin - the founder of sensitive poetry

2.4.

Karamzin–reformer of the Russian literary language

1) Inconsistency of the theory of “three calms” with Lomonosovanov’s requirements

2) Karamzin’s reform3) Contradictions between Karamzin and Shishkov

III. Conclusion.

IV.Bibliography.

I.Introduction.

Whatever you turn to in our literature, everything began with Karamzin: journalism, criticism, stories, novels, historical stories, journalism, the study of history.

V.G. Belinsky.

In the last decades of the 18th century in Russia a new literary direction– sentimentalism. Defining its features, P.A. Vyazemsky pointed to the “elegant depiction of the basic and everyday.” In contrast to classicism, sentimentalists declared the cult of feelings, not reason, and sang of the common man, the liberation and improvement of his natural principles. The hero of the works of sentimentalism is not a heroic personality, but simply a man, with his rich inner world, various experiences, and self-esteem. The main goal of noble sentimentalists is to restore the trampled human dignity of the serf peasant in the eyes of society, to reveal his spiritual wealth, to portray family and civic virtues.

The favorite genres of sentimentalism were elegy, message, epistolary novel (novel in letters), diary, travel, story. The dominance of drama was replaced by epic narration. The syllable becomes sensitive, melodious, and emphatically emotional. The first and largest representative of sentimentalism was Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin.

II. Main part.

2.1.Biography of Karamzin.

Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin (1766–1826) was born on December 1 in the village of Mikhailovka, Simbirsk province, into the family of a landowner. Received a good education at home. At the age of 14 he began studying at the Moscow private boarding school of Professor Schaden. After graduating in 1873, he came to the Preobrazhensky Regiment in St. Petersburg, where he met the young poet and future employee of his “Moscow Magazine” I. Dmitriev. At the same time he published his first translation of S. Gesner’s “Wooden Leg”. Having retired with the rank of second lieutenant in 1784, he moved to Moscow, where he 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. Engaged in translations of religious and moral works. Since 1787, he regularly publishes his translations of Thomson’s “The Seasons”, Genlis’s “Village Evenings”, 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 goes on a trip to Europe: he visits 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 returns to Moscow and soon begins publishing the monthly “Moscow Magazine”, in which most of the “Letters of a Russian Traveler”, the stories “Liodor”, “Poor Liza”, “Natalia, the Boyar’s Daughter”, “Flor Silin”, essays, stories, critical articles of the poem. Karamzin attracted I. Dmitriev, A. Petrov, M. Kheraskov, G. Derzhavin, Lvov, Neledinsky-Meletsky and others to collaborate in the magazine. Karamzin’s articles approved a new literary direction - sentimentalism. In the 1970s, Karamzin published the first Russian almanacs - “Aglaya” and “Aonids”. 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 doubts in him about the possibility for humanity to achieve prosperity. He condemned the revolution. The philosophy of despair and fatalism permeates his new works: the stories “Bornholm Island” (1793), “Sierra Morena” (1795), poems: “Melancholy”, “Message to A.A... Pleshcheev” and others.

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

In 1802-03, 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 establishment 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 “Martha the 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 the Ancient and New Russia"(1811), causing him irritation. In 1819, he submitted a new note - “Opinion of a Russian Citizen,” which caused even more dissatisfaction with the Tsar. However, Karamzin did not abandon his belief in the salvation of the enlightened autocracy and 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 creating the “History of the Russian State,” which he worked on until the end, but did not complete. In 1818, the first 8 volumes of History, the greatest scientific and cultural feat Karamzin. In 1821, the 9th volume was published, dedicated to the reign of Ivan the Terrible, and in 18245 - the 10th and 11th, about Fyodor Ioannovich and Boris Godunov. Death interrupted work on the 12th volume. This happened on May 22 (June 3, new style) 1826 in St. Petersburg.

2.2. Karamzin is a writer.

1) Karamzin’s worldview.

Since the beginning of the century, Karamzin has been firmly established as a literary figure in anthologies. It was published occasionally, but not for reading purposes, but for educational purposes. The reader has a firm conviction that there is no need to take Karamzin into his hands, especially since in the briefest information the matter cannot be avoided without the word “conservative”. Karamzin sacredly believed in man and his improvement, in reason and enlightenment: “My mental and sensitive power will be destroyed forever, before I believe that this world is a cave of robbers and villains, virtue is an alien plant on globe"Enlightenment is a sharp dagger in the hands of a killer."

Karamzin discovered Shakespeare for the Russian reader by translating “Julius Caesar” at the time of youthful tyrant-fighting sentiments, releasing it with an enthusiastic introduction in 1787 - this is precisely the date that should be considered the starting date in the procession of the works of the English tragedian in Russia.

Karamzin’s world is a world of a walking spirit, in continuous movement, which has absorbed everything that constituted the content of the pre-Pushkin era. No one did as much to saturate the air of the era with literary and spiritual content as Karamzin, who walked many pre-Pushkin roads.

In addition, one must see the silhouette of Karamzin, expressing the spiritual content of the era, on the vast historical horizon, when one century gave way to another, and the great writer was destined to play the role of the last and the first. As the finalizer - the “head of the school” of Russian sentimentalism - he was the last writer of the 18th century; as a pioneering literary field - historical prose, as a transformer of the Russian literary language - he undoubtedly became the first - in a temporary sense - writer of the 19th century, providing Russian literature with access to the world stage. The name Karamzin was the first to appear in German, French and English literature.

2) Karamzin and the classicists.

The classicists saw the world in a “halo of splendor.” Karamzin took a step towards seeing a person in a dressing gown, alone with himself, giving preference to “middle age” over youth and old age. The grandeur of the Russian classicists was not discarded by Karamzin - it came in handy when showing history in faces.

Karamzin came to literature when classicism suffered its first defeat: Derzhavin in the 90s of the 18th century was already recognized as the greatest Russian poet, despite his complete disregard for traditions and rules. Karamzin dealt the next blow to classicism. A theorist and reformer of Russian noble literary culture, Karamzin took up arms against the foundations of the aesthetics of classicism. The pathos of his activity was a call for the depiction of “natural, unadorned nature”; to the depiction of “true feelings”, not bound by the conventions of classicism about characters and passions; a call to depict small things and everyday details, in which there was no heroism, no sublimity, no exclusivity, but in which “unexplored beauties characteristic of dreamy and modest pleasure” were revealed to a fresh, unprejudiced look. However, one should not think that “natural nature”, “true feelings” and attentiveness to “inconspicuous details” turned Karamzin into a realist who sought to depict the world in all its truthful diversity. The worldview associated with the noble sentimentalism of Karamzin, like the worldview associated with classicism, favored only limited and largely distorted ideas about the world and man.

3) Karamzin is a reformer.

Karamzin, if we consider his activities as a whole, was a representative of broad layers of the Russian nobility. All of Karamzin’s reform activities met the interests of the nobility and, first of all, the Europeanization of Russian culture.

Karamzin, following the philosophy and theory of sentimentalism, realizes the specific weight of the author’s personality in the work and the significance of his individual view of the world. In his works he offers a new connection between the depicted reality and the author: personal perception, personal feeling. Karamzin structured the period so that there was a sense of the presence of the author. It was the presence of the author that transformed Karamzin’s prose into something completely new compared to the novel and story of classicism. Let us consider the artistic techniques most often used by Karamzin using the example of his story “Natalya, the Boyar’s Daughter.”

The stylistic features of the story “Natalia, the Boyar’s Daughter” are inextricably linked with the content, ideological orientation of this work, with its system of images and genre originality. The story reflects the characteristic features of the style characteristic of Karamzin’s fictional prose as a whole. The subjectivism of Karamzin’s creative method and the writer’s increased interest in the emotional impact of his works on the reader determine the abundance of paraphrases, comparisons, likenings, etc.

From various artistic techniques- first of all, tropes that give the author great opportunities to express his personal attitude towards an object, phenomenon (i.e., show what impression the author experiences, or what the impression made on him by some object, phenomenon can be compared with). Periphrases that are generally characteristic of sentimentalist poetics are also used in “Natalia, the Boyar’s Daughter.” So, instead of saying that boyar Matvey was old and close to death, Karamzin writes: “already the quiet fluttering of the heart announced the onset of life’s evening and the approach of night.” Boyar Matvey’s wife did not die, but “fell asleep in an eternal sleep.” Winter is the “queen of cold,” etc.

There are substantive adjectives in the story that are not adjectives in ordinary speech: “What are you doing, you reckless one!”

In using epithets, Karamzin takes mainly two routes. One row of epithets should highlight the internal, “psychological” side of the subject, taking into account the impression that the subject makes directly on the “heart” of the author (and, therefore, on the “heart” of the reader). The epithets of this series seem to be devoid of real content. Such epithets are a characteristic phenomenon in the system of visual means of sentimentalist writers. And the stories contain “tops of gentle mountains”, “dear ghost”, “sweet dreams”, from the boyar Matvey “ clean hand and sincerely,” Natalya becomes “cloudier.” It is curious that Karamzin applies the same epithets to various objects and concepts: “Cruel! (she thought). Cruel! - this epithet refers to Alexei, and a few lines later Karamzin calls the frost “cruel.”

Karamzin uses another series of epithets in order to enliven the objects and paintings he creates, to influence the reader’s visual perception, “to make the objects he describes sparkle, light up, shine. This is how he creates decorative painting.

In addition to the epithets of these types, Karamzin can note another type of epithets, which is much less common. Through this “series” of epithets, Karamzin conveys impressions perceived as if from the auditory side, when any quality, by the expression it produces, can be equated to concepts perceived by ear. “The moon descended..., and the boyar gate rattled with a silver ring.”; Here the ringing of silver can be clearly heard - this is the main function of the epithet “silver”, and not to indicate what material the ring was made of.

Appeals that are characteristic of many of Karamzin’s works appear many times in “Natalya, the Boyar’s Daughter.” Their function is to give the story a more emotional character and introduce into the story an element of closer communication between the author and the readers, which obliges the reader to treat the events depicted in the work with greater confidence.

The story “Natalya, the Boyar’s Daughter,” like the rest of Karamzin’s prose, is distinguished by its great melodiousness, reminiscent of the style of poetic speech. The melodiousness of Karamzin's prose is achieved mainly by the rhythmic organization and musicality of the speech material (the presence of repetitions, inversions, exclamations, dactylic endings, etc.).

The proximity of Karamzin's prosaic works led to the widespread use of poetic phraseology in them. The movement of phraseological means of poetic styles into prose creates an artistic and poetic flavor of Karamzin’s prose works.

4) Brief description of Karamzin’s main prose works.

Karamzin’s main prose works are “Liodor”, “Eugene and Julia”, “Julia”, “A Knight of Our Time”, in which Karamzin depicted Russian noble life. The main goal of the noble sentimentalists is to restore the trampled human dignity of the serf peasant in the eyes of society, to reveal his spiritual wealth, and to portray family and civic virtues. The same features can be found in Karamzin’s stories from peasant life- “Poor Liza” (1792) and “Frol Silin, a virtuous man” (1791). The most significant artistic expression of the writer’s interests was his story “Natalya, the Boyar’s Daughter,” the characteristics of which are given above. Sometimes Karamzin goes into completely fabulous, fabulous times in his imagination and creates tales, for example, “Dense Forest” (1794) and “Bornholm Island”. The latter, containing a description of a rocky island and a medieval castle with some mysterious family tragedy in it, expresses not only sensitive, but also sublimely mysterious experiences of the author and therefore should be called a sentimental-romantic story.

In order to correctly restore the true role of Karamzin in the history of Russian literature, it is necessary to first dispel the existing legend about the radical transformation of all Russian literary stylistics under the pen of Karamzin; it is necessary to explore in full, breadth and in all internal contradictions the development of Russian literature, its trends and its styles, in connection with the intense social struggle in Russian society of the last quarter of the 18th century and the first quarter of the 19th century.

It is impossible to consider Karamzin’s style, his literary production, the forms and types of his literary, artistic and journalistic activity statically, as a single system that was immediately determined and did not know any contradictions and any movement. Karamzin's work covers more than forty years of development of Russian literature - from Radishchev to the collapse of Decembrism, from Herascovado to the full flowering of Pushkin's genius.

Karamzin's stories belong to the best artistic achievements of Russian sentimentalism. They played a significant role in the development of Russian literature of their time. They really retained the historical interest for a long time.

2.2. Karamzin is a poet.

1) Features of Karamzin’s poetry.

Karamzin is known to the general reading public as a prose writer and historian, the author of “Poor Liza” and “History of the Russian State.” Meanwhile, Karamzin was also a poet who managed to say his new word in this area. In his poetic works he remains a sentimentalist, but they also reflected other aspects of Russian pre-romanticism. At the very beginning of his poetic career, Karamzin wrote the programmatic poem “Poetry” (1787). However, unlike classic writers, Karamzin affirms not the state, but the purely personal purpose of poetry, which, in his words, “... has always been the joy of innocent, pure souls.” Looking back at the history of world literature, Karamzin re-evaluates its centuries-old legacy .

Karamzin strives to expand the genre composition of Russian poetry. He owned the first Russian ballads, which would later become the leading genre in the work of the romantic Zhukovsky. The ballad “Count Guarinos” is a translation of an ancient Spanish romance about the escape of a brave knight from Moorish captivity. It was translated from German with trochaic tetrameter. This meter would later be chosen by Zhukovsky in the “romances” of Side and by Pushkin in the ballads “Once Upon a Time There Lived a Poor Knight” and “Rodrigue.” Karamzin’s second ballad, “Raisa,” is similar in content to the story “Poor Liza.” Her heroine, a girl deceived by her loved one, ends her life in the depths of the sea. In the descriptions of nature, the influence of the gloomy poetry of Ossean, popular at that time, is felt: “In the darkness of the night a storm raged; // A menacing ray sparkled in the sky.” The tragic denouement of the ballad and the affectation of love feelings anticipate the manner of “cruel romances of the 19th century.”

Karamzin's poetry is distinguished from the poetry of the classicists by the cult of nature. Addressing her is deeply intimate and in some cases marked with biographical features. In the poem “Volga” Karamzin was the first of the Russian poets to glorify the great Russian river. This work was created based on the direct impressions of childhood. The range of works dedicated to nature includes “Prayer for Rain,” created during one of the terrible dry years, as well as the poems “To the Nightingale” and “Autumn.”

The poetry of moods is affirmed by Karamzin in the poem “Melancholy”. The poet refers in it not to a clearly expressed state of the human spirit - joy, sadness, but to its shades, “overflows”, to transitions from one feeling to another.

Karamzin's reputation as a melancholic person was firmly established. Meanwhile, sad motives are only one facet of his poetry. In his lyrics there was also a place for cheerful epicurean motifs, as a result of which Karamzin can already be considered one of the founders of “light poetry”. The basis of these sentiments was enlightenment, which proclaimed man’s right to pleasure given to him by nature itself. The poet’s anacreontic poems glorifying feasts include such works as “The Merry Hour,” “Resignation,” “To Lila,” and “Impermanence.”

Karamzin is a master of small forms. His only poem, “Ilya Muromets,” which he called “a heroic tale” in the subtitle, remained unfinished. Karamzin's experience cannot be considered successful. The peasant son Ilya Muromets is turned into a gallant, sophisticated knight. And yet the poet’s very appeal to folk art, the intention to create a national fairy-tale epic based on it are very indicative. The style of narration also comes from Karamzin, replete with lyrical digressions of a literary and personal nature.

2) Features of Karamzin’s works.

Karamzin’s repulsion from classicist poetry was also reflected in artistic originality his works. He sought to free them from shy classic forms and bring them closer to relaxed colloquial speech. Karamzin did not write either odes or satires. His favorite genres were message, ballad, song, and lyrical meditation. The overwhelming majority of his poems do not have stanzas or are written in quatrains. The rhyme, as a rule, is not ordered, which gives the author’s speech a relaxed character. This is especially true for friendly messages from I.I. Dmitriev, A.A. Pleshcheev. In many cases, Karamzin turns to rhymeless verse, which Radishchev also advocated in “The Journey...”. This is how both of his ballads, the poems “Autumn”, “Cemetery”, “Song” in the story “Bornholm Island”, and many anacreontic poems were written. Without rejecting the use of iambic tetrameter, Karamzin, along with it, often uses trochee tetrameter, which the poet considered a more national form than iambic.

3) Karamzin is the founder of sensitive poetry.

In poetry, Karamzin’s reform was taken up by Dmitriev, and after the latter - by Arzamas poets. This is how they imagined it in historical perspective this process is Pushkin's contemporaries. Karamzin is the founder of “sensitive poetry”, poetry of “heartfelt imagination”, poetry of spiritualization of nature - natural philosophy. In contrast to Derzhavin’s realistic poetry in its tendencies, Karamzin’s poetry gravitates towards noble romance, despite the motifs borrowed from ancient literatures and the tendencies of classicism partially preserved in the field of verse . Karamzin was the first to instill in the Russian language the form of ballads and romances and introduce complex meters. In poems, trochees were almost unknown in Russian poetry before Karamzin. The combination of dactylic stanzas with schoreic stanzas was also not used. Before Karamzin, blank verse was also rarely used, which Karamzin turned to, probably under the influence of German literature. Karamzin’s search for new dimensions and a new rhythm speaks of the same desire to embody new content.

The main character of Karamzin’s poetry, its main task is to create subjective and psychological lyrics, to capture the subtlest moods of the soul in short poetic formulas. Karamzin himself formulated the poet’s task this way: “He correctly translates everything dark in our hearts into a language that is clear to us, // Finds words for subtle feelings.” The poet’s job is to express “shades of different feelings, not to agree with thoughts” (“Prometheus”).

In Karamzin’s lyrics, considerable attention is paid to the feeling of nature, understood in psychological terms; nature in it is inspired by the feelings of the person living with it, and the person himself is fused with it.

Karamzin's lyrical style predicts Zhukovsky's future romanticism. On the other hand, Karamzin used the experience of German and English in his poetry literature XVIII century. Later, Karamzin returned to French poetry, which at that time was saturated with sentimental pre-romantic elements.

Karamzin’s interest in poetic “trifles,” witty and elegant poetic trinkets, such as “Inscriptions on the statue of Cupid,” poems for portraits, madrigals, is connected with the experience of the French. In them he tries to express the sophistication, the subtlety of relationships between people, sometimes to fit into four verses, two verses an instant, fleeting mood, a flashing thought, an image. On the contrary, Karamzin’s work on updating and expanding the metrical expressiveness of Russian verse is connected with the experience of German poetry. Like Radishchev, he is dissatisfied with the “dominance” of the iambic. He himself cultivates trochee, writes in trisyllabic meters, and especially inculcates blank verse, which has become widespread in Germany. The variety of sizes, freedom from the usual consonance should have contributed to the individualization of the very sound of the poem in accordance with the individual lyrical task of each poem. Karamzin’s poetic creativity also played a significant role in the development of new genres.

P.A. Vyazemsky wrote in his article about Karamzin’s poems (1867): “With him, poetry was born in us, a feeling of love for nature, gentle ebbs of thought and impressions, in a word, inner, soulful poetry... If in Karamzin one can notice some shortcoming in the brilliant properties of a happy poet, then he had a sense and awareness of new poetic forms."

Karamzin's innovation - in the expansion of poetic themes, in its boundless and tireless complication - then resonated for almost a hundred years. He was the first to introduce blank verse into use, boldly resorted to imprecise rhymes, and his poems were constantly characterized by “artistic play.”

At the center of Karamzin’s poetics is harmony, which constitutes the soul of poetry. The idea of it was somewhat speculative.

2.4. Karamzin – reformer of the Russian literary language

1) Inconsistency of the theory of Lomonosov’s “three calms” with new requirements.

Karamzin's work played a big role in the further development of the Russian literary language. Creating a “new syllable”, Karamzin starts from Lomonosov’s “three calms”, from his odes and laudatory speeches. The reform of the literary language carried out by Lomonosov met the tasks of the transition period from ancient to new literature, when it was still premature to completely abandon the use of Church Slavonicisms. The theory of the “three calms” often put writers in a difficult position, since they had to use heavy, outdated Slavic expressions where in the spoken language they had already been replaced by other, softer, more elegant ones. Indeed, the evolution of the language, which began under Catherine, continued. Many foreign words came into use that did not exist in an exact translation in the Slavic language. This can be explained by the new requirements of cultural, intelligent life.

2) Karamzin’s reform.

The “Three Calms” proposed by Lomonosov were based not on lively spoken language, but on the witty thought of a theoretical writer. Karamzin decided to bring the literary language closer to the spoken language. 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 “Aonids,” he wrote: “The thunder of words alone only deafens us and never reaches our hearts.”

The second feature of the “new syllable” was the simplification of syntactic structures. Karamzin 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.

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. “Karamzin,” wrote Belinsky, “introduced Russian literature into the sphere of new ideas, and the transformation of language was already a necessary consequence of this.” The innovations proposed by Karamzin include such well-known words in our time as “industry”, “development”, “refinement”, “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 taken in an unprocessed form, and therefore were very heavy and awkward (“fortress” 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, for example, “serious”, “moral”, “aesthetic”, “audience”, “harmony”, “enthusiasm”.

3) Contradictions between Karamzin and Shishkov.

Most of the young writers contemporary to Karamzin accepted his transformations and followed him. But not all his contemporaries agreed with him; many did not want to accept his innovations and did not rebel against Karamzin as a dangerous and harmful reformer. Such opponents of Karamzin were led by Shishkov, a famous statesman of that time.

Shishkov was an ardent patriot, but was not a philologist, so his attacks on Karamzin were not philologically justified and were rather of a moral, patriotic, and sometimes even political nature. Shishkov accused Karamzin of corrupting his native language, of being anti-national, of dangerous free-thinking, and even of corrupting morals. In his essay “Discourse on the Old New Syllable of the Russian Language,” directed against Karamzin, Shishkov says: “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 heart, there is no piety in the language. Where there is no love for the fatherland, there the language does not express domestic feelings.”

Shishkov wanted to say that only purely Slavic words can express pious feelings, feelings of love for the fatherland. Foreign words, in his opinion, distort rather than enrich the language: - “The ancient Slavic language, the father of many dialects, is the root and beginning of the Russian language, which itself was abundant and rich,” he did not need to be enriched with French words. Shishkov proposes to replace the already established ones foreign expressions in old Slavic; for example, replace “actor” with “actor”, “heroism” with “valiant soul”, “audience” with “listening”, “review” with “review of books”, etc.

One cannot help but 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 and has led to the fact that the language of the common people, the peasants, has become very different from the language of the cultural classes; but it is also impossible not to admit that it was impossible to stop the naturally occurring evolution of language; It was impossible to forcibly return into use the already outdated expressions that Shishkov proposed, such as: “zane”, “ugly”, “izhe”, “yako” and others.

Karamzin did not even respond to Shishkov’s accusations, knowing firmly that he was always guided by exclusively pious and patriotic feelings (just like Shishkov!), but that they cannot understand each other! His followers were responsible for Karamzin.

In 1811, Shishkov founded the society “Conversation of Russian Word Lovers,” whose members were Derzhavin, Krylov, Khvostov, Prince. Shakhovskoy and others. The goal of the society was to maintain old traditions and fight new literary movements. In one of the comedies, Shakhovskoy ridiculed Karamzin. His friends were offended by Karamzin. They also created a literary society, and at their humorous meetings they ridiculed and parodied the meetings of the “Conversations of Lovers of the Russian Word.” This is how the famous “Arzamas” arose, whose struggle with “Conversation…” is partly reminiscent of the struggle in France in the 18th century. Arzamas included such famous people, like Zhukovsky, Vyazemsky, Batyushkov, Pushkin. Arzamas ceased to exist in 1818.

III. Conclusion.

Contemporaries compared him to Peter the Great. This, of course, is a metaphor, one of those magnificent poetic similes for which the age of Lomonosov and Derzhavin was so generous. However, Karamzin’s entire life, his brilliant undertakings and achievements, which had a huge impact on the development of national culture, were indeed so extraordinary that they fully allowed for the most daring historical analogies.

IV. Bibliography.

1. K. Bestuzhev-Ryumin. Biographies and characteristics (chroniclers of Russia). – St. Petersburg, 1882.

2. Blagoy D.D. From Cantemir to the present day. – M., 1979

3. Vengerov S.A. Sources of the Dictionary of Russian Writers, vol. 2, St. Petersburg, 1910.

4. Verkhovskaya N.P. Karamzin in Moscow and the Moscow region. – M., 1968.

5. Vinogradov V.V. History of the Russian literary language. – M., 1978.

6. Vinogradov V.V. Essays on the history of the Russian literary language of the 17th-18th centuries. – M., 1982

7. Vinogradov V.V. Language and style of Russian writers: from Karamzin to Gogol. – M., 1990.

8. Zhdanovsky N.P. Russian writers of the 18th century. – M... 1954.

9. Zapadov A.V. Russian literature of the 18th century. – M., 1979.

10. Zapadov A.V. Russian prose of the 18th century. – M., 1979.

11. Ikonnikov V.S. Karamzin is a historian. – St. Petersburg, 1912.

12. Karamzin N.M. Selected articles and letters. – M., 1982.

13. Karamzin N.M. Selected / preface L. Emelyanov. – M., 1985

14. Karamzin N. and Dmitriev I. Selected poems. – L., 1953

15. Karamzin and the poets of his time. – L., 1936.

16. Karamzin N.M. Letters of a Russian traveler / preface by G.P. Makogonenko. – M., 1988.

17. N.M. Karamzin: decree. works lit., about life and creativity. – M., 1999.

18. Klyuchevsky V.O. Historical portraits. – M., 1991.

19. Kovalenko V.I. Political thought in Russia. Creative portraits // Bulletin of Moscow University, series 12, No. 2, 1999, p. 57.

20. Kochetkova N.D. Literature of Russian sentimentalism. – St. Petersburg, 1994.

How much Russian poetry owes to Karamzin! He left his mark as the main figure of the whole literary period. What marked this period? The fact that, thanks to Karamzin, the Russian reader began to think, feel and express himself somewhat differently. And this makes it better to understand both yourself and others. The significance of Karamzin’s personality and creativity is not only historical. In our speech we use many words introduced into colloquial circulation by Karamzin. But speech is always a reflection of a person’s intellect, culture, and spiritual maturity. Moral, touching, sophisticated, entertaining, love, communication, influence, thoughtfulness, development, civilization... and many other words and concepts were brought by Karamzin into literature and into our everyday life.

Originally the words listed were only tracings ( French word calque means copy). Tracing paper is formed by more or less accurately reproducing a foreign word or expression in the native language. This is a borrowing adapted to the norms of its language. For example, moral - Karamzin tracing paper from French moral. Sophisticated is his new word, derived from the French raffin(refined, that is, refined). Karamzin began the reform of the Russian literary language, which fell to Pushkin to complete.

When, already at the beginning of the 19th century, Karamzin abruptly moved away from literature, probably not without regret, and perhaps even mental pain, he abandoned poetry. This one will now turn all his forces amazing person for the most difficult and noble task: recreating the history of the Fatherland. In 1836, shortly before his own death, Pushkin would say: “The pure, high glory of Karamzin belongs to Russia, and not a single writer with true talent, not a single truly learned person, even those who were his opponents, refused him a tribute of deep respect and gratitude.” .

Literature

Karamzin N.M. Selected works: In 2 vols. M.; L., 1964.
Karamzin N.M. Complete collection of poems / Intro. Art. Yu.M. Lotman. M.; L., 1966.
Karamzin N.M. Works: In 2 vols. M.; L., 1986.
Gukovsky G.A. Russian poetry of the 18th century. L., 1927.
Kochetkova N.D. Poetry of Russian sentimentalism. N.M. Karamzin. I.I. Dmitriev // History of Russian poetry: In 2 vols. L., 1968. T. 1.
Orlov P.A. Russian sentimentalism. M., 1977.
Lotman Yu.M. The creation of Karamzin. M., 1987.
Russian literature. Century XVIII. Lyrics. M., 1990.
Dictionary literary terms. M., 1974.
Literary encyclopedia of terms and concepts. M., 2001.

Read also other topics in Chapter VII.

One of Karamzin’s greatest services to Russian culture is the reform of the Russian literary language he carried out. On the way to preparing the Russian speech for Pushkin, Karamzin was one of the most important figures. Contemporaries even saw in him the creator of those forms of language that were inherited by Zhukovsky, Batyushkov, and then Pushkin, somewhat exaggerating the significance of the revolution he carried out.

Karamzin's language reform was prepared through the efforts of his predecessors. But Karamzin’s extraordinary linguistic talent distinguishes him in this respect from among the writers of his time, and it was he who most clearly embodied the tendencies of updating the Russian style, the need for which was felt by all advanced literature of the late 18th century. Karamzin himself, having come to literature, was dissatisfied with the language in which books were written then. The task of language reform confronted him quite consciously and urgently. In 1798, Karamzin wrote to Dmitriev: “While I don’t give away my own trinkets, I want to serve the public with a collection of other people’s plays, written in a not quite ordinary Russian, that is, not quite a dirty style” (18. VIII. 1798). Karamzin felt that the new tasks he set for himself as a writer could not be embodied in the forms of the old language, which was not flexible, light and elegant enough. He opposed the Church Slavonic orientation of the “high calm” literature of the 18th century, seeing in it, on the one hand, a reactionary church-feudal tendency and provincial isolation from Western linguistic culture, on the other, a pathetic civic spirit that was too radical for him (the type of use of Slavicisms among Radishchev). In articles in the Moscow Journal he condemns the “Slavic wisdom” of some writers. He also condemns Slavisms in Dmitriev, to whom he writes in a friendly manner on August 17, 1793: "Fingers And I'll crush produce some bad effect."

Having decided to create a new literary style, Karamzin did not want to turn to the source of folk, lively, realistic speech. Her organic democracy, her deep connection with genuine, unvarnished reality frightened him. Belinsky said: “Probably Karamzin tried to write, as they say. He disdained errors in the idioms of the Russian language, did not listen to the language of common people and did not study his native sources at all.”

Karamzin’s aestheticization of the world was a way to throw a cloak of art over reality, a cloak of beauty, fictitious and not derived from reality itself. Karamzin’s gracefully cutesy language, replete with rounded and aesthetic periphrases, replacing the simple and “rough” for him naming of things with emotional patterns of words, is extremely expressive in this sense. “Happy doormen! - he exclaims in “Letters of a Russian Traveler,” “do you thank heaven every day, every hour for your happiness, living in the arms of a charming nature, under the beneficial laws of a fraternal union, in the simplicity of morals and serving one God? Your whole life is, of course, a pleasant dream, and the most fatal arrow should meekly fly into your chest, not outraged by tyrant passions.” Karamzin prefers to speak not directly about the freedom of the Swiss, but descriptively, softly, about the fact that they serve one god, not directly about death, a terrible death, but elegantly, abstractly and aesthetically about the fatal arrow meekly flying into the chest.

In a letter to Dmitriev dated June 22, 1793, Karamzin wrote about one of his friend’s poems:

"Little birds don’t change it, for God’s sake don’t change it! Your advisors may be good in another case, but in this case they are wrong. Name birdie It’s extremely pleasant for me because I heard it in an open field from good villagers. It arouses in our soul two kind ideas: about freedom And rural simplicity. The tone of your fable cannot be adjusted better word. Birdie, almost always resembles a cage, hence captivity. Feathered there is something very vague; When you hear this word, you still don’t know what is being said: an ostrich or a hummingbird.

That which does not convey a bad idea to us is not low. One guy says: birdie And boy: The first is pleasant, the second is disgusting. At the first word, I imagine a red summer day, a green tree in a flowering meadow, a bird’s nest, a fluttering robin or warbler, and a deceased villager who looks at nature with quiet pleasure and says: here is the nest, here is the little bird! At the second word, a stout man appears in my thoughts, scratching himself in an indecent manner or wiping his wet mustache with his sleeve, saying: hey guy! what kind of kvass! We must admit that there is nothing interesting for our soul here! So, my dear And, is it possible instead guy use another word?

It is difficult to formulate fear more clearly and expressively simple word, behind which stands a class-hostile reality, and a predilection for the word aestheticized, pleasant, elegant in the presentation of a noble salon.

The reactionary Shishkov, who loved to cut from the shoulder, openly and bluntly insisted on his straightforward convictions, was indignant at the evasiveness of the way of expression of Karamzin and his students and their aesthetic affectation. He stated that instead of the expression: “When travel became a need of my soul,” one should say directly: “When I loved to travel”; instead of the elegant formula: “Motley crowds of rural Oreads meet with dark bands of reptile pharaohs,” he proposed the following phrase: “Gypsies are coming to meet the village girls.” Shishkov was right in this regard. But he did not see anything else, valuable in Karamzin’s language. Karamzin, even in his reform of style, was a European, a Westernizer, who sought to saturate Russian speech with the achievements of Western culture, moreover, an advanced culture. A student and apologist of Karamzin, Makarov wrote about his language, citing Western parallels; “Fauquet and Mirabeau spoke on behalf of and in front of the people or in front of their proxies in a language that anyone, if they know how, can speak in society, but we cannot and should not speak the language of Lomonosov, even if we knew how.” The choice of names for comparison with Karamzin is characteristic here - these are the names of a parliamentary speaker and a revolutionary tribune.

While building his style, Karamzin made abundant use of French phrase constructions and French semantics. At first, he consciously imitated foreigners, not considering it a sin to get close to them. In Karamzin’s language, researchers have established a considerable number of elements of French origin. His works of the early 1790s contain a lot of barbarism. But the very presence of them is not necessary for him, it is not fundamental. Of course, it seems more elegant to him to say “nature” rather than “nature”, or “phenomenon” rather than “phenomenon”. But subsequently, he easily gets rid of numerous barbarisms, replacing them with Russian words in subsequent editions of his early works. So, in “Letters of a Russian Traveler” he changes in the latest editions: recommended to introduce himself, gestures - action, moral - moral, nation - people, ceremony - solemnity, etc. Barbarisms almost completely disappear in the "History of the Russian State", where Karamzin returned and to elements of Slavicization of speech, and to some conscious archaization of it.

It was not so much a matter of individual barbarisms, but rather a desire to adapt the Russian language to the expression of many concepts and nuances already expressed French, or similar; adapt it to the expression of a new, more refined culture, and above all in the psychological sphere. Karamzin wrote in 1818: “We do not want to imitate foreigners, but we write as they write, because we live as they live, we read what they read, we have the same patterns of mind and taste.”

On this basis, Karamzin managed to achieve significant results. He achieved lightness, freedom of expression, and flexibility from the language. He sought to bring the literary language closer to the living colloquial speech of noble society. He strove for the pronunciation of the language, its easy and pleasant sound. He made the style he created widely accessible to both readers and writers. He radically reworked Russian syntax, revised the lexical composition of literary speech, and developed examples of new phraseology. He successfully struggled with cumbersome structures, working to create a natural connection between the elements of a phrase. He "develops complex and patterned, but easily observable forms of various syntactic figures within the period." He discarded the outdated vocabulary ballast, and in its place introduced many new words and phrases.

Karamzin’s word creation was extremely successful, because he did not always take the words he needed to express new concepts from Western languages. He constructed Russian words again, sometimes according to the principle of so-called tracing, translating, for example, a French word with a semantically similar construction, sometimes creating words without a Western model. So, for example, Karamzin introduced new words: public, universal, improve, humane, generally useful, industry, love, etc. These and other words organically entered the Russian language. Karamzin gave a whole series of old words new meanings, new shades of meaning, thereby expanding the semantic, expressive capabilities of the language: for example, he expanded the meanings of words: image (as applied to poetic creativity), need, development, subtleties, relationships, positions and many other .

And yet, Karamzin was unable to accomplish the great deed that befell Pushkin. He did not create that realistic, living, full-fledged folk language that formed the basis for the development of Russian speech in the future, he was not the creator of the Russian literary language; only Pushkin was. Karamzin was destined to become only one of the predecessors of Pushkin's linguistic creation. He was too divorced from popular speech. He brought written speech closer to spoken language, and this is his great merit, but his ideal of spoken language was too narrow; it was the speech of the noble intelligentsia, nothing more. He was too alien to the desire for genuine linguistic realism.

Pushkin did not invent the language; he took it from the people and crystallized it, normalizing the skills and tendencies of popular speech. Karamzin, on the contrary, set as his task the creation of a language based on the preconceived ideal of secular, intelligentsia speech; he wanted to come up with new forms of language and impose them oral speech. He did it subtly, talentedly, he had a good sense of language; but his principle of speech creation was subjective and, in principle, incorrect, since it ignored folk traditions.

In the article “Why there is little talent for authorship in Russia,” Karamzin wrote: “A Russian candidate for authorship, dissatisfied with books, should close them and listen to conversations around him in order to learn the language better. Here is a new problem: in our best houses they speak more French! What can the author do? Invent, make up expressions, guess the best choice of words; to give the old a new meaning, to offer them in a new connection, but so skillfully as to deceive the readers and hide from them the unusual expression!” Precisely because for Karamzin there is no other social element of speech other than the speech of “the best houses,” he must “invent” and “deceive.” That is why his ideal is the “pleasantness” of the language, elegance, its grace, “noble” taste. On the other hand: the subjectivity of Karamzin’s entire worldview was expressed in his approach to language, in his shortcomings, and in his achievements.

Karamzin practically abolished the division into three styles introduced by Lomonosov. He developed a single, smooth, elegant and light syllable for all written speech. He writes in exactly the same way, in terms of style, a romantic story about love, and “Letters from a Russian Traveler” about conversations at a table in a restaurant, and a discussion about higher morality, and a private letter to Dmitriev, and an advertisement in a magazine, and a political article. This is his personal language, the language of his subjective individuality, the language of a cultured person in his understanding. After all, for Karamzin it is not so much interesting what is being said, how interesting is the speaker, his psychological world, his moods, his inner being divorced from reality. This inner essence of the author-hero of his works is always the same, no matter what he writes.

Karamzin's prose strives to be poetic. Melody and rhythm play a significant role in its organization, accompanying the disclosure of a psychological theme. Karamzin’s very word creation, his very innovation in all elements of language, has primarily a psychological orientation. He is looking for new words and phrases not for a more accurate depiction of the objective world, but for a more subtle depiction of experiences and their shades, for depicting relationships and feelings. Again, here we see, on the one hand, a narrowing of the task of art and language, on the other, a deepening and expansion of their capabilities in this area, moreover, in an extremely important area. A significant number of new words and new meanings of words introduced by Karamzin relate specifically to this psychological sphere; “interesting” - not in the sense of monetary interest, but in the sense of a psychological relationship (from French interessant), “touch”, “touching” again in the same sense (calc. from French touchant), “influence” on someone (Shishkov believed that influence, i.e., you can only pour liquid into something), “moral” (from the French moral), “falling in love,” “refined” (from the French raffine), “development” (from French developpement Shishkov believed that rather than saying “concepts developed”, it is better to say: “concepts vegetated”), “need of the soul”, “entertaining”, “deliberation”, “shade”, “passive role”, “harmonious whole” etc. - all such expressions, new and specific to the new style, enriched precisely the sphere of speech expressing psychology, emotions, and the world of the soul.

Karamzin’s enormous influence on Russian literature and the literary language was recognized by all his contemporaries; this influence should be considered beneficial. But Karamzin’s language reform did not exhaust the problems facing literature and the Russian language at the beginning of the 19th century. Next to Karamzin, Krylov opened new paths for the language; the element of the people entered poetry through his fables. Even earlier, Fonvizin, Derzhavin, satirists (the same Krylov and others) turned to the springs of popular speech. Next to Karamzin, besides him, partly against him, they also prepared the Pushkin language, and they left Pushkin a precious legacy, which he used admirably in his linguistic creativity.