| Popis: |
This essay discusses the Russian reception of Andre Chenier's 1794 ode to "The Young Captive," written while the poet was awaiting execution in Saint Lazare prison. The French ode itself describes a scene of reception, as the lyric subject overhears the plaintive song of a female prisoner on the other side of his cell wall and "plies" her lament into "the gentle laws of verse." This scene depicts the foundational tension of the modern political subject, as the naive, vitalist impulse to liberty (or revolution) is contained within a constitutional, juridical order. In his 1825 elegy to Chenier, Pushkin lays bare the violence of this dialectical encounter, undermining the foundational promise of European modernity. Subsequently, Lermontov rereads Chenier (and rewrites Pushkin) to recover the ambivalence of the modern subject's impossible position between liberty and law. |
