Female metatext in A.P. Sumarokov's journal 'Trudolyubivaya Pchela' ('The Industrious Bee')

T.E. Abramzon*, A.V. Petrov**

G.I. Nosov Magnitogorsk State Technical University, Magnitogorsk, 455000 Russia

E-mail: *ate71@mail.ru, **alexpetrov72@mail.ru

Received September 4, 2017

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Abstract

The paper is devoted to the interpretation of a composite text entity in A.P. Sumarokov's journal “Trudolyubivaya Pchela” (“The Industrious Bee”), which is symbolically designated on the basis of its themes (love, marriage, fashion) as the female metatext. Its emergence was conditioned by personal reasons: his adultery, parting with wife, strong emotional shock, as well as the need to comprehend a new hard life experience and to get rid of it through sublimation – literary works. The basis of this metatext is the peculiar love meta-plot consisting of 76 works relating to 12 genres (elegy, epigram, eclogue, idyll, song, satire, ode, mythological story, parable, lamentation, heroide, rondeau). The dynamics of their emergence in journal issues, arising intertextual relations, and (meta)plot peripeteias refer us to the romance novel slighted by A.P. Sumarokov as a critic. A.P. Sumarokov and his virtual “self” of the love meta-plot, having got over all love vicissitudes, overcome grievances, cope with pangs of love, and try to understand the “other” – the woman and her experience of love, and this is the final meaning of the metatext. The genre forms and subjects developed by the world literature, as well as the simple common sense, helped A.P. Sumarokov to get over his inner problem without consolidating bitter frustrations and a feeling of deadening emptiness as a spiritual and literary experience. Two main genre-thematic “modi” of the famle metatext in “Trudolyubivaya Pchela” – an elegiac and epigrammatic, are defined in the further analyses. The first is to create the image of love as pleasure-suffering, the second finds internal fears and A.P. Sumarokov's complexes, and both turn out to be the sublimation of the passions overwhelmed him, the forms of solution to the problem of «physicality» and its verbal expression. In conclusion, the problem of A.P. Sumarokov's sexism along with the methodological question of the relationship between literary texts and the modus vivendi of the writer is introduced.

Keywords: A.P. Sumarokov, “Trudolyubivaya Pchela”, metatext, love meta-plot, female theme, problem of physicality, sublimation

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For citation: Abramzon T.E., Petrov A.V. Female metatext in A.P. Sumarokov's journal “Trudolyubivaya Pchela” (“The Industrious Bee”). Uchenye Zapiski Kazanskogo Universiteta. Seriya Gumanitarnye Nauki, 2018, vol. 160, no. 1, pp. 29–41. (In Russian)


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