What is an elegy in literature definition. Genre poetics of lyrics (elegy) poetic self-reflection in the lyrics of V.F. Khodasevich. elegy in the crossword dictionary

Elegy

Elegy

(Greek elegeia, from elegos - a mournful song), a meditative type of lyrics in which the description of an ideal landscape or the reasoning of a lyrical hero (in the form of the first person) expresses a sentimental look at the essence of human relations or the nature of poetic creativity, at the fate of a person in general, the world order or organization of society.
The elegy originated in ancient Greece and was a genre of didactic poetry dedicated to social topics and political issues. In the poetry of ancient Rome, it became a genre of predominantly love lyrics (separate poems by Catullus, an early cycle of poems Ovid). Ancient poets, when composing works of elegy, used the form of elegiac distich. In this form, it was copied by Latin-speaking poets of the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The classicist poets also turned to the genre; in Russia in the 18th century. - VK. Trediakovsky, A.P. Sumarokov, A. A. Rzhevsky, M. M. Kheraskov. The heyday of the elegy falls on the era romanticism: in England - T. Gray, in Germany - I.V. Goethe, in France - A. Chenier. In Russia, the founder of elegies was V.A. Zhukovsky, his elegies “Rural Cemetery”, “Evening”, “Slavyanka” consist of two parts: the first describes nature, and the second is a reasoning inspired by landscapes. This structure is initially reproduced by the elegies of A.S. Pushkin(“Village”), but he quickly overcomes it (“The daylight went out ...”, “The flying ridge is thinning clouds ...”, “To the sea”). In the elegies of the mid-19th century. the “natural” part is usually reduced (“Elegy” by N. A. Nekrasov). Since that time, the term "elegy" has lost its genre definition.

Literature and language. Modern illustrated encyclopedia. - M.: Rosman. Under the editorship of prof. Gorkina A.P. 2006 .

Elegy

ELEGY - a poem with the character of thoughtful sadness. In this sense, it can be said that a large part of Russian poetry is tuned to an elegiac mood - at least, excluding the poetry of modern times. This, of course, does not deny that in our poetry there are excellent poems of a different, non-elegiac kind. Initially, in ancient Greek poetry, e. denoted a certain form of a poem, namely a couplet: hexameter-pentameter. Having the general character of lyrical reflection, the elegy among the ancient Greeks was very diverse in content, for example, sad and accusatory in Archilochus and Simonides, philosophical in Solon or Theognis, militant in Callinus and Tyrtheus, political in Mimnermus. One of the best Greek authors E. - Callimachus. Among the Romans, E. became more definite in character, but also freer in form. Significance of love E. has greatly increased. The famous Roman authors E. - Propertius, Tibull, Ovid, Catullus (they were translated by Fet, Batiushkov, and others). Subsequently, there was, perhaps, only one period in the development of European literature, when the word E. began to mean poems with a more or less stable form. This is precisely under the influence of the famous elegy of the English poet Thomas Gray, written in 1750 and caused numerous imitations and translations, almost in all European languages. The revolution brought about by this E. is defined as the offensive in literature of sentimentalism, which replaced false classicism. In essence, this was the return of poetry from rational mastery in once established forms to the true sources of inner artistic experiences. In our poetry, Zhukovsky's translation of Gray's elegy (The Rural Cemetery, 1802) definitely marked the beginning of a new Russian poetry that finally went beyond the limits of rhetoric and turned to sincerity, intimacy and depth. This inner change was also reflected in the new methods of versification introduced by Zhukovsky, who is thus the founder of the new Russian poetry - and, of course, one of its great representatives. In the general spirit and form of Gray's elegy, i.e. in the form of large poems filled with mournful reflection, Zhukovsky’s poems were written, which he himself called elegies: “Evening”, “Slavyanka”, “On the death of Kor. Wirtembergskaya". The elegies include "Theon and Aeschylus", his own (it is, rather, an elegy-ballad). Zhukovsky called his poem "The Sea" an elegy. In general, in the first half of the XIX century. poets liked to give their poems the name of elegy, especially Batyushkov, Boratynsky, Yazykov, and others. ; it subsequently fell out of fashion. But many poems of our poets are imbued with an elegiac character. And in world poetry there is hardly a poet who would not have elegiac poems. Goethe's Roman Elegies are famous in German poetry. Elegies are Schiller's poems: "Ideals" (translated by Zhukovsky's "Dreams"), "Resignation", "Walk". Much belongs to the elegies of Mathisson (Batyushkov translated it "On the ruins of castles in Sweden"), Heine, Lenau, Herweg, Platen, Freiligrath, Schlegel and many others. others. The French wrote elegies: Milvois, Debord-Valmor, Kaz. Delavigne, A. Chenier (M. Chenier, the brother of the previous one, translated Gray's elegy), Lamartine, A. Musset, Hugo, and others. In English poetry, besides Gray, there are also Spencer, Jung, Sydney, later Shelley and Byron. In Italy E. wrote: Alamanni, Castaldi, Filican, Guarini, Pindemonte. In Spain: Boscan Almogaver, Gars de les Vega. In Portugal - Camões, Ferreira, Rodrigue Lobo, de Miranda.

Even before Zhukovsky, we made attempts to write elegies: Pavel Fonvizin, the author of "Darling" Bogdanovich, Ablesimov, Naryshkin, Nartov.

Joseph Eiges. Literary encyclopedia: Dictionary of literary terms: In 2 volumes / Edited by N. Brodsky, A. Lavretsky, E. Lunin, V. Lvov-Rogachevsky, M. Rozanov, V. Cheshikhin-Vetrinsky. - M.; L.: Publishing house L. D. Frenkel, 1925

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See what "elegy" is in other dictionaries:

- (Greek elegeia, from elegos deplorable, plaintive). A lyrical poem expressing the sad mood of the soul; usually consisted of alternating hexameter and pentameter. Dictionary of foreign words included in the Russian language. Chudinov A.N ... Dictionary of foreign words of the Russian language

Elegy- (St. Petersburg, Russia) Hotel category: 3 star hotel Address: Rubinshteina Street 18, Price … Hotel catalog

Cm … Synonym dictionary

Elegy- ELEGY a poem with the character of thoughtful sadness. In this sense, it can be said that a large part of Russian poetry is tuned to an elegiac mood, at least excluding the poetry of modern times. This, of course, does not deny that in our ... ... Dictionary of literary terms

elegy- and, well. elegie f. gr. elegeia. 1. A lyrical poem imbued with sadness, sadness. BAS 1. Elegy. A kind of poetic composition that describes sad or amorous affairs. Cantemir. For what lovers who know that more ... ... Historical Dictionary of Gallicisms of the Russian Language

Takes means. place in the lyrics of L. In antique. E.'s poetry was called verse., Written in a special size elegich. distich; in the new literature, E. recognize any verse., containing the thoughts of the poet and the expression of his feelings, predominately. sad. V. G.… … Lermontov Encyclopedia

- (Greek elegeia) ..1) genre of lyric poetry; in early ancient poetry, a poem written in elegiac distich, regardless of content; later (Callimachus, Ovid) a poem of sad content. In modern European poetry, it retains ... ... Big Encyclopedic Dictionary

ELEGY, elegy, female. (Greek elegeia). In ancient poetry, a poem written in couplets of a certain form, originally. varied content, and later, in Roman poetry, preim. love content and sad tone (lit.). || AT… … Explanatory Dictionary of Ushakov

ELEGY, and, w. Explanatory dictionary of Ozhegov. S.I. Ozhegov, N.Yu. Shvedova. 1949 1992 ... Explanatory dictionary of Ozhegov

The word έ̓λεγος meant among the Greeks a sad song to the accompaniment of a flute. The elegy was formed from the epic about the beginning of the Olympiads among the Ionian tribe in Asia Minor, in which the epic also arose and flourished.

Having the general character of lyrical reflection, the elegy among the ancient Greeks was very diverse in content, for example, sad and accusatory in Archilochus and Simonides, philosophical in Solon or Theognis, militant in Callinus and Tyrtheus, political in Mimnerm. One of the best Greek authors of the elegy is Callimachus.

Elegy in Western European Literature

Subsequently, there was only one period in the development of European literature, when the word "elegy" began to denote poems with a more or less stable form. This period began under the influence of the famous elegy of the English poet Thomas Gray, written in 1750 and caused numerous imitations and translations in almost all European languages. The revolution produced by this elegy is defined as the offensive in the literature of the period of sentimentalism, which replaced false classicism.

In German poetry, Goethe's Roman Elegies are famous. Schiller's poems are elegies: "Ideals" (translated by Zhukovsky "Dreams"), "Resignation", "Walk". Much belongs to the elegies of Mathisson (Batyushkov translated it “On the ruins of castles in Sweden”), Heine, Lenau, Herweg, Platen, Freiligrath, Schlegel and many others. others. The French wrote elegies: Milvois, Debord-Valmore, Delavigne, A. Chenier (M. Chenier, his brother, translated Gray's elegy), Lamartine, A. Musset, Hugo and others. In English poetry, except for Gray, - Spencer , Young, Sydney, later Shelley and Byron. In Italy, the main exponents of elegiac poetry are Alamanni, Castaldi, Filican, Guarini, Pindemonte. In Spain: Juan Boscan, Garcilaso de la Vega. In Portugal - Camões, Ferreira, Rodrigue Lobo, de Miranda. In Poland - Balinsky.

Elegy in Russian literature

Before Zhukovsky, attempts to write elegies in Russia were made by such authors as Pavel Fonvizin, Bogdanovich, Ablesimov, Naryshkin, Nartov, Davydov and others.

Zhukovsky’s translation of Gray’s elegy (“Rural Cemetery”, 1802) marked the beginning of a new era in Russian poetry, which finally went beyond rhetoric and turned to sincerity, intimacy and depth. This inner change was also reflected in the new methods of versification introduced by Zhukovsky, who is thus the founder of the new Russian sentimental poetry and one of its great representatives. In the general spirit and form of Gray's elegy, that is, in the form of large poems filled with mournful reflection, such poems by Zhukovsky were written, which he himself called elegies, such as “Evening”, “Slavyanka”, “On the death of Kor. Wirtembergskaya". His "Theon and Aeschines" (elegy-ballad) are also considered elegies. Zhukovsky also called his poem "The Sea" an elegy.

In the first half of the 19th century, it was common to call their poems elegies; Batyushkov, Baratynsky, Yazykov, and others referred to their works as elegies; subsequently, however, it fell out of fashion. Nevertheless, many poems of Russian poets are imbued with an elegiac tone.

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• Gornfeld A.G.,.// Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron: in 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - St. Petersburg. , 1890-1907.

Excerpt characterizing the elegy

In addition to the robbers, the most diverse people, attracted - some by curiosity, some by duty, some by calculation - homeowners, clergy, high and low officials, merchants, artisans, peasants - from different sides, like blood to the heart - rushed to Moscow.
A week later, the peasants, who came with empty carts in order to take away things, were stopped by the authorities and forced to take the dead bodies out of the city. Other peasants, having heard about the failure of their comrades, came to the city with bread, oats, hay, knocking down the price of each other to a price lower than the previous one. Artels of carpenters, hoping for expensive earnings, entered Moscow every day, and new ones were cut down from all sides, burnt houses were repaired. Merchants in booths opened trade. Taverns and inns were set up in burnt houses. The clergy resumed service in many unburned churches. Donors brought looted church items. Officials arranged their cloth tables and filing cabinets in small rooms. The higher authorities and the police ordered the distribution of the good left after the French. The owners of those houses in which a lot of things brought from other houses were left complained about the injustice of bringing all things to the Faceted Chamber; others insisted that the French from different houses brought things to one place, and therefore it is unfair to give the owner of the house those things that were found from him. They scolded the police; bribed her; they wrote ten times the estimates for burnt state things; required assistance. Count Rostopchin wrote his proclamations.

At the end of January, Pierre arrived in Moscow and settled in the surviving wing. He went to Count Rostopchin, to some of his acquaintances who had returned to Moscow, and was going to go to Petersburg on the third day. Everyone celebrated the victory; everything was seething with life in the devastated and reviving capital. Everyone was glad to Pierre; everyone wanted to see him, and everyone asked him about what he had seen. Pierre felt especially friendly towards all the people he met; but involuntarily now he kept himself on guard with all people, so as not to bind himself in any way. He answered all the questions that were put to him, whether important or the most insignificant, with the same vagueness; Did they ask him where he would live? will it be built? when he is going to Petersburg and will he undertake to bring a box? - he answered: yes, maybe, I think, etc.
He heard about the Rostovs that they were in Kostroma, and the thought of Natasha rarely came to him. If she came, it was only as a pleasant memory of the past. He felt himself not only free from the conditions of life, but also from this feeling, which, as it seemed to him, he had deliberately put on himself.
On the third day of his arrival in Moscow, he learned from the Drubetskys that Princess Marya was in Moscow. Death, suffering, the last days of Prince Andrei often occupied Pierre and now came to his mind with new vivacity. Having learned at dinner that Princess Marya was in Moscow and living in her unburned house on Vzdvizhenka, he went to her that same evening.
On his way to Princess Marya, Pierre kept thinking about Prince Andrei, about his friendship with him, about various meetings with him, and especially about the last one in Borodino.
“Did he really die in that evil mood in which he was then? Was not the explanation of life revealed to him before death? thought Pierre. He remembered Karataev, his death, and involuntarily began to compare these two people, so different and at the same time so similar in love, which he had for both, and because both lived and both died.
In the most serious mood, Pierre drove up to the house of the old prince. This house survived. Traces of destruction were visible in it, but the character of the house was the same. The old waiter who met Pierre with a stern face, as if wanting to make the guest feel that the absence of the prince did not disturb the order of the house, said that the princess was deigned to go to her rooms and was received on Sundays.
- Report; maybe they will," said Pierre.
- I'm listening, - answered the waiter, - please go to the portrait room.
A few minutes later, a waiter and Dessalles came out to Pierre. Dessalles, on behalf of the princess, told Pierre that she was very glad to see him and asked, if he would excuse her for her impudence, to go upstairs to her rooms.
In a low room, lit by a single candle, sat the princess and someone else with her, in a black dress. Pierre remembered that the princess always had companions. Who and what they are, these companions, Pierre did not know and did not remember. “This is one of the companions,” he thought, glancing at the lady in the black dress.
The princess quickly stood up to meet him and held out her hand.
“Yes,” she said, peering into his changed face after he kissed her hand, “this is how we meet. He often talked about you lately, too,” she said, turning her eyes from Pierre to her companion with a shyness that struck Pierre for a moment.

Elegy(other Greek ἐλεγεία) - a genre of lyric poetry; in early ancient poetry, a poem written in elegiac distich, regardless of content; later (Callimach, Ovid) - a poem with the character of thoughtful sadness. In the new European poetry, the elegy retains stable features: intimacy, motives of disappointment, unhappy love, loneliness, the frailty of earthly existence, determines the rhetoric in the depiction of emotions; the classical genre of sentimentalism and romanticism (“Recognition” by Evgeny Baratynsky).

Originated in ancient poetry; originally it was called crying over the dead. Elegy was based on the life ideal of the ancient Greeks, which was based on the harmony of the world, the proportionality and balance of being, incomplete without sadness and contemplation, these categories have passed into the modern elegy. Elegy can embody both life-affirming ideas and disappointment. The poetry of the 19th century still continued to develop the elegy in its "pure" form; in the lyric poetry of the 20th century, elegy is found rather as a genre tradition, as a special mood. In modern poetry, an elegy is a plotless poem of a contemplative, philosophical and landscape nature.

In Russian poetry, Zhukovsky's translation of Gray's elegy ("Rural Cemetery"; 1802) definitely marked the beginning of a new era that finally went beyond rhetoric and turned to sincerity, intimacy and depth. This inner change was also reflected in the new methods of versification introduced by Zhukovsky, who is thus the founder of the new Russian sentimental poetry and one of its great representatives. In the general spirit and form of Gray's elegy, that is, in the form of large poems filled with mournful reflection, Zhukovsky wrote such poems, which he himself called elegies, such as “Evening”, “Slavyanka”, “On the death of Kor. Württemberg". His “Theon and Aeschylus” are also considered elegies (more precisely, this is an elegy-ballad). Zhukovsky called his poem "The Sea" an elegy.

In the first half of the 19th century, it was common to give your poems the names of elegies, especially often their works were called elegies by Batyushkov, Baratynsky, Yazykov, and others; subsequently, however, it fell out of fashion. Nevertheless, many poems of Russian poets are imbued with an elegiac tone.

Before Zhukovsky, attempts to write elegies in Russia were made by such authors as Pavel Fonvizin, Bogdanovich, Ablesimov, Naryshkin, Nartov, Davydov and others.

13. Genre model: ballad. (examples)

Ballad- a lyrical epic work, that is, a story presented in poetic form, of a historical, mythical or heroic nature. The plot of the ballad is usually borrowed from folklore. Ballads are often set to music.

The ballad appeared in Russian literature at the beginning of the 19th century, when the obsolete traditions of the old pseudo-classicism began to fall rapidly under the influence of German romantic poetry. The first Russian ballad, and, moreover, original both in content and in form, was G. P. Kamenev’s “thunderer” (1772-1803). But the most important representative of this kind of poetry in Russian literature was V. A. Zhukovsky (1783-1852), whom his contemporaries gave the nickname "balladnik" (Batyushkov), and who himself jokingly called himself "the parent in Russia of German romanticism and the poetic uncle of devils and German and English witches. His first ballad "Lyudmila" (1808) was remade from Burger ("Lenore"). She made a strong impression on her contemporaries. “There was a time,” says Belinsky, “when this ballad gave us some kind of sweet-terrible pleasure, and the more it horrified us, the more passionately we read it. It seemed short to us during it, despite its 252 verses. Zhukovsky translated the best ballads of Schiller, Goethe, Uhland, Seidlitz, Southey, Moore, W. Scott. His original ballad "Svetlana" (1813) was recognized as his best work, so critics and philologists of that time called him "Svetlana's singer".

The ballad as a plot poetic work is represented by such examples as Pushkin's "Song of the Prophetic Oleg". He also owns the ballads "Demons" and "The Drowned Man", Lermontov - "Airship" (from Seidlitz); Polonsky - “The Sun and the Moon”, “Forest”, etc. We find entire sections of ballads in the poems of Count A. K. Tolstoy (mainly on ancient Russian topics) and A. A. Fet.

Zhukovsky has three types of ballads - “Russian” (he gives some ballads such a subtitle; among them - “Lyudmila”, “Svetlana”, “Twelve Sleeping Virgins”; following Zhukovsky, other domestic authors supplied their ballads with the same subtitles), "ancient" ("Achilles", "Cassandra", "Ivikov Cranes", "Complaints of Ceres", "Eleusinian Feast", "Triumph of the Victors"; ancient, mythological plot - the acquisition of a literary ballad, since the folk ballad is based on medieval legend) and "medieval" ("Castle Smalholm, or Ivanov's Evening", "The Ballad of an Old Woman ...", "Polycrates' Ring", "Knight Rollo", etc.).

All the names of the ballads are conditional and are related to the plot that develops in the ballad. The subtitle "Russian ballad" also emphasized the reworking of the medieval ballad in the national spirit. In "Russian ballads" Zhukovsky resurrects an old motif of folk historical and lyrical songs: a girl is waiting for a dear friend from the war. The plot of the separation of lovers is extraordinarily important, because folk morality lives in it, often taking on a naive-religious form. All ballads are united by a humane outlook common to the genre as a whole.

In a literary ballad, any historical or legendary legend can become a plot, including a modern one (for example, Zhukovsky's "Night review" and Lermontov's "Airship"). Historical time and historical place of action in the ballad are conditional. Such events that took place, for example, in the Middle Ages, could be dated in a literary ballad and attributed to antiquity, to Greece or Rome, to modern Russia and, in general, to a fictional, unprecedented country. In fact, all action takes place outside of history and outside of a specific space. The time and space of the ballad is an eternity living according to a constant schedule: morning, afternoon, evening, night. Everything temporary, historically transient recedes into the background. In the same way, the space of the ballad is the whole world, the whole universe, which also has its own permanent places - mountains, hills, rivers, plains, sky, forests. Again, they are not tied to any one country. The action of the ballad unfolds in full view of the entire universe, both in time and space. The man in the ballad is placed face to face with eternity, with all destiny. In such a comparison, the main role is played not by his social or material position, whether he is noble or not, rich or poor, but by the fundamental properties and universal feelings. These include experiences of love, death, fear, hope, death, salvation. All people are dissatisfied, and from time to time a murmur is heard from their lips, everyone hopes for something, fears something, experiences fear from time to time, and everyone knows that sooner or later they will die. In most of Zhukovsky's ballads, the hero, the heroine, or both characters are dissatisfied with fate and enter into an argument with her. The man in the ballad rejects his fate, and fate, becoming even more ferocious, overtakes him and appears in an even more terrible image.

Zhukovsky began with Russian ballads. They were dominated by a tone of melancholy love, enjoyment of sadness, which then spread to ancient and medieval ballads. Gradually, the theme of love gave way to moral, civil, moral motives, sustained, however, in a lyrical key. Then, in the second half of the 1830s, Zhukovsky's ballad creativity dries up, and the poet moves on to large epic forms - poems, stories, fairy tales.

14. Genre model: romantic poem. (Examples)

Poem- (other Greek ποίημα), a large poetic work with a narrative or lyrical plot. A poem is also called an ancient and medieval epic (see also Epos), nameless and authorial, which was composed either through the cyclization of lyrical-epic songs and legends (the point of view of A. N. Veselovsky), or by "swelling" (A. Heusler) of one or several folk legends, or with the help of complex modifications of the most ancient plots in the process of the historical existence of folklore (A. Lord, M. Parry). The poem developed from an epic depicting an event of national historical significance (the Iliad, the Mahabharata, the Song of Roland, the Elder Edda, etc.).

There are many genre varieties of the poem: heroic, didactic, satirical, burlesque, including heroic-comic, a poem with a romantic plot, lyrical-dramatic. For a long time, a poem on a national historical or world historical (religious) theme was considered the leading branch of the genre.

The romantic poem destroyed the stereotype of an ideal landscape, replacing it with many specific types of landscapes. Moreover, she combined them with the ethnographic appearance of the given people into a common type of worldview, an environment introduced into the poem as one of the participants in the situation. In 1823, shortly after the publication of The Prisoner of the Caucasus, O. M. Somov wrote: “How many different looks, manners and customs appear to the inquisitive eye in one volume of Russia as a whole! Not to mention the Russians proper, the Little Russians are here, with their sweet songs and glorious memories: there are the militant sons of the Quiet Don and the brave settlers of the Zaporozhian Sich: they all ... wear features of difference in morals and appearance. What if we take a look at the regions of Russia, inhabited by ardent Poles and Lithuanians, peoples of Finnish and Scandinavian origin, inhabitants of ancient Colchis, descendants of immigrants who saw the expulsion of Ovid, the remnants of the once formidable Tatars of Russia, the diverse tribes of Siberia and islands, nomadic generations of Mongols, violent inhabitants of the Caucasus, northern Laplanders and Samoyeds...” 26 Almost all of these “tips” were realized by a romantic poem (as well as other genres, primarily a story).

However, the most important change that the romantic poem brought with it took place in the sphere of correlation of the described world of feelings, reflections and actions with the artistic subject. In an elegy and a friendly message, the author's "I" was such a subject. In the poem, the third person is "He". Tynyanov wrote about a character like Pushkin's prisoner that he "in the poem was the mouthpiece of a modern elegy, therefore, a concretization of stylistic phenomena in person" 27 . Let's add: not only style, but also event-plot, that is, a general conflict, the center of which was a third person, "He".

From the point of view of today's (of course, schematizing, although this is not the point) literary consciousness in a romantic poem like "The Prisoner of the Caucasus", the author is "added" to the central character, and lyrical elements are added to the epic beginning. Meanwhile, for Pushkin's contemporaries, everything was the opposite: a character was "added" to the lyrical and authorial basis. This perception of the poem reflected its originality as a romantic genre.

In general, Baratynsky's article is especially good for answering this question, from where I took some information. It’s just that it’s very difficult to pull something out of him, for reading on this issue it’s quite a useful thing: http://baratynskiy.lit-info.ru/baratynskiy/articles/mann-dinamika-romantizma/romanticheskaya-poema-kak-zhanr.htm

Similar information.

elegy is lyrical genre, a poem of medium length, meditative or emotional content (usually sad), most often in the first person, without a distinct composition. The elegy originated in Greece in the 7th century BC. (Callinus, Tyrtaeus, Theognidus), originally had a predominantly moral and political content; then, in Hellenistic and Roman poetry (Tibull, Propertius, Ovid), love themes become predominant. The form of the ancient elegy is the elegiac distich. In imitation of ancient models, elegies are written in Latin poetry of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance; in the 16th and 17th centuries. Elegy. goes into new-language poetry (P. de Ronsard in France, E. Spencer in England, M. Opitz in Germany, J. Kochanowski in Poland), but for a long time it has been considered a secondary genre. The heyday comes in the era of pre-romanticism and romanticism (“dull elegies” by T. Gray, E. Jung, C. Milvois, A. Chenier, A. de Lamartine, “love elegies” by E. Parny, restoration of ancient elegies in the “Roman Elegies”, 1790, J.W. Goethe); then the elegies gradually lose their genre distinctness and the term goes out of use, remaining only as a sign of tradition (“Duino Elegies”, 1923, R.M. Rilke; “Bukovsky Elegies”, 1949, B. Brecht).

Elegy in Russian poetry

In Russian poetry, the elegy appears in the 18th century with V.K. Trediakovsky and A.P. Sumarokov, flourishes in the work of V.A. Zhukovsky, K.N. Batyushkov, A.S. Pushkin (“The daylight went out ...”, 1820; “The clouds are thinning…”, 1820; “The extinct fun of crazy years…”, 1830), E.A. Baratynsky, N.M. Yazykov; from the second half of the 19th and into the 20th centuries, the word "elegy" was used only as the title of cycles (A.A. Fet) and individual poems by some poets (A.A. Akhmatova, D.S. Samoilov). See also Meditative lyrics.

The word elegy comes from Greek elegeia and from elegos, which means a mournful song.

Greek elegeia) - 1) the genre of lyric poetry, a poem of sad content; 2) a vocal or instrumental piece of music of a thoughtful, sad nature.

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Elegy

(Greek elegos - mournful song; elegeion, elegeia - a poem in distichs). E., apparently, arose in Ionian M. Asia from mourning for the dead; Initially, E. sang, accompanied by playing the flute or recited, later they recited. Their metric the form is distich (hexameter followed by pentameter). Most other Greek. E. (7-6/5 centuries BC) were performed at feasts, they are characterized by thematic. diversity: calls to fight and a reminder of the aristocratic. class consciousness (Kallin, Theognid), reflections on the world and states, order (Solon), as well as on the human. life, myths, love (Mimnerm), worldly wisdom (Phokilid), philosophical doctrine (Xenophanes). In the 5th c. BC e. E. were used less frequently (Simonides, E. - dedications, Ion from Chios, poetry of feasts), but in Hellenism they again gained great importance among small litas. forms. Art, the model was considered to be "Lida" by Antimachus (a combination of various myths about unhappy love). Hellenistic E. were created for selected circles of lit. connoisseurs; they are characterized by the search for something new in language and content; the theme is legends, fairy tales, love; references to politics and societies, life are missing; in the form, the desire for arts, perfection is noticeable (Callimachus, Philetus, Hermesianakt). A characteristic feature of Rome. E. are subjective love experiences as a central motive; sentimental images of the sorrows and joys of love are not uncommon; pseudonyms are often given to lovers. E. were collected in collections. After the first experiments under neoteriki (Catullus), the creator of Rome. E. was considered K. Gall. The themes of his E. were happiness, torment and the omnipotence of love. After him, Tibull sang morals. the value of ideal love and independent, dedicated love only. a life. In Propertius, along with the love theme, the nat also appears. material, legends about the founding of Rome (4 books), its development Propertius continues Hellenistic. traditions. This type of elegich. poetry develops in Ovid's Fasts. He covers the love theme in "Songs of Love", the language and form make them a masterpiece of world literature. The last works of antiquity in this genre were E. Maximian (c. 550); in the Middle Ages they were popular school reading. Later, E. began to understand sad poems. Of modern E., Goethe's Roman Elegies should be mentioned. It is often difficult to distinguish an epigram from a short E..

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