Osokin Mikhail Yurievich – Candidate in Philology, independent scholar, Sattahip (Thailand)
The article offers a solution to the problem of the authorship of the anonymous Epistle to the Author of the Satire on Fops and comments on the highly enigmatic fragment of the Satire on Fop and Coquettes by Ivan Elagin. The satire was handwritten and not intended for publication. The polemical reactions to it, including Lomonosov’s objections initiated by Ivan Shuvalov, circulated in manuscripts. Epistle to the Author of the Satire on Fops, the only printed text during the elaginomachia, is a treatise in verse analyzing the satire, with insightful notes and a thorough critique from the perspective of Boileauism. It shows elements of the unique style of F.I. Dmitriev-Mamonov, who entered literature in 1753 with a handwritten translation of La Fontaine’s Psyché. The Epistle, which follows Lomonosov’s canon of versification rather than Sumarokov’s, is full of violent stresses imposed according to the principle of metrization and lengthy prose digressions. Mamonov’s insistence on dissecting others’ mistakes, his habit of citing by folio (rather than page number), his rejection of ‘mixing materials’, and his anankastic fixation on order – all inherent in his classicist program – are already evident here. Elagin’s plagiarism of Boileau is described in the ‘Epistle’ as “highly indecent and disgraceful”: “If you want to be considered a creator, don’t touch the thoughts of other writers”. This formulation most closely resembles Mamonov’s Epigram to a Parrot about those who “display someone else’s intellect”: “But taking other people’s thoughts [as your own] is the most shameful thing there is”. The anonymous text is confined to books and fenced off from polemics, although de facto it undoubtedly considers other’s arguments, especially those of Lomonosov. The satire drew Mamonov’s heightened attention because he was the one portrayed in it as ‘handsome M.’, the idol of ‘crazy coquettes’. In response to Elagin’s attack, Mamonov takes up Boileau’s opposition between vrai and vraisemblance and criticizes the satire for pamphletism and lack of vraisemblance, which he sees as a way of conveying “only importance” without choosing “lightness”.
Fedor Dmitriev-Mamonov; destructive literary polemics; satire; Ivan Elagin; Lomonosov