The Imperial Sublime: A Russian Poetics of EmpireThe Imperial Sublime examines the rise of the Russian empire as a literary theme simultaneous with the evolution of Russian poetry between the 1730s and 1840—the century during which poets defined the main questions facing Russian literature and society. Harsha Ram shows how imperial ideology became implicated in an unexpectedly wide range of issues, from formal problems of genre, style, and lyric voice to the vexed relationship between the poet and the ruling monarch. |
Contents
Sublime Beginnings | 28 |
The Ode and the Empress | 63 |
Sublime Dissent | 121 |
Pushkin Lermontov and the Elegiac Sublime | 160 |
Conclusion | 212 |
Notes | 237 |
| 267 | |
| 291 | |
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Common terms and phrases
aesthetic already appears authority became become beginning Boileau called Catherine Caucasian Caucasus celebrated century chapter closely conquest corresponds critical culture death Decembrist defining Derzhavin despotism discourse early east effectively elegiac elegy empire empress essentially established Europe European experience fact fate figure finally force freedom function genre Griboedov hero ideological imperial sublime inspiration Küchelbecker land language Lermontov less letter limits lines linked literary literature lofty Lomonosov lyric marked military monarch mountain nature notes odic oriental original past peace Peter poem poet poet's poetic poetry political Polnoe sobranie present prophetic Psalms Pushkin question rapture recent relationship remains rhetorical romantic rule Russian sense served shift sobranie sochinenii southern sovereign specific style suggests symbolic theme tion Tiutchev tradition translation Trediakovskii tsar turn University verse victory views vision writing written
Popular passages
Page 14 - Perhaps there is no more sublime passage in the Jewish Law than the commandment: "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven or on earth, or under the earth, etc.
Page 13 - On the other hand, consider bold, overhanging and, as it were, threatening rocks, thunderclouds piling up in the sky and moving about accompanied by lightning and thunderclaps, volcanoes with all their destructive power, hurricanes with all the devastation they leave behind, the boundless ocean heaved up, the high waterfall of a mighty river, and so on.
Page 12 - The sublime, then, suggests a cluster of affective reactions through which the subject registers the pathos of transport or uplift, an experience that is both empowering and radically privative: "with its stunning power...
Page 13 - ... our imagination strives to progress toward infinity, while our reason demands absolute totality as a real idea, and so [the imagination] our power of estimating the magnitude of things in the world of sense, is inadequate to that idea. Yet this inadequacy itself is the arousal in us of the feeling that we have within us a supersensible power...
Page 13 - Sublime is what even to be able to think proves that the mind has a power surpassing any standard of sense.