Vladimir Odoevsky: works by genre, their poetics

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Russian literature of the century before last has preserved for posterity many names of talented poets and writers. The works of Odoevsky - one of them - are of interest even today. About his fairy tales, the utopian novel "Year 4338: Petersburg Letters", the collection "Russian Nights" will be discussed in the article.

Periodization of creativity

The writer's work is conditionally divided into three periods - depending on the place where Odoevsky created his works. The first "Moscow" stage was marked by his participation in the circle "Society of Philosophy" and the samples of the pen. After Odoevsky moved to St. Petersburg in 1826, a new period of his work began, which was very fruitful. The writer published several collections of fairy tales, which are read with pleasure even now, after almost 200 years. The second "Moscow" stage is marked by the creation of Odoevsky's "Russian Nights" - his best work, as well as works on music.

Colorful Tales

Odoevsky often arranged his works in cycles. So, creating "Colorful Tales", the writerin parallel, he worked on the collection "House of Madmen", dedicated to the theme of ingenious madness. The inclination towards cyclization can be explained by some general processes characteristic of Russian literature of those times. Then, in the early 1930s, Belkin's Tales and Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka were published, which were nothing more than cycles. Orientation to Pushkin also determines the complex system of narration in Motley Tales. An annotation to Odoevsky's work (or a preface) introduces the figure of a narrator - Irinei Modestovich Gomozeiko. Unlike the all-encompassing Ivan Petrovich Belkin, the narrator in Motley Tales has pronounced autobiographical features. Subsequently, he will try on the role of a "literary double", on behalf of which the writer will conduct a dialogue with the receiving side - the reader.

The mystery of the "Town in a snuffbox"

Actually, the writer was a pioneer in the genre of literary fairy tale, intended to be read primarily by a child. In 1834, perhaps Odoevsky's most famous work, "A Town in a Snuffbox", appeared. Its plot is simple: dad shows the boy Misha a music box-snuffbox. The son wants to know how it works, to get into it (which, by the way, he succeeds when the little man from the snuffbox beckons the boy with his finger). Misha gets acquainted with the inhabitants of the town - hammers and bells - and, waking up, understands the principle of operation of the acquired little thing. For all its own artistic merits, the fairy tale is interesting as a successful combination of educational pathos and fiction. main ideaworks - to convince the reader that the child needs to learn to think, analyze, it is necessary to educate his craving for knowledge from childhood.

Russian Nights

The genre of Russian Nights released in 1844 is rather difficult to define. Often this work of Odoevsky is defined as a collection of articles of a philosophical nature. They fully reflected his ideas about the transformation of the world, the path that Russia must take. Note that the publication of "Russian Nights" was preceded by Odoevsky's deepening into the secrets of the exact sciences - mathematics, physiology and psychology, as well as philosophy.

At the same time, the writer remains true to the mastery of the word. Like Voltaire, he puts ideas into capacious images, hides philosophicality behind an interesting plot. This is how Odoevsky builds works throughout his entire work. The plot of the collection revolves around several young people who are going to a common friend, called Faust. There they discuss stories, trying to understand the laws of the existence of society and penetrate the secrets of the world around them. The work is distinguished by intellectualism, which reaches its maximum in the descriptions of the creative process. In this case, the images created by Odoevsky perform the function of a meta-language: art tells about art. Thus, the Russian writer of the first half of the century before last turns out to be surprisingly close to the later experiences of the authors of the 20th century (I mean, first of all, the intellectual novels of Thomas Mann).

Dialogism of "Russian Nights" - that's what Odoevsky adhered to. The works included in the collection seem to be afraid to give a final answer, to dot the i's. Instead of a ready-made conclusion, the reader is invited to speculate, speculate. This "Russian Nights" are close to the works of other writers - Herzen and Belinsky - quite unexpectedly, I must say, given the difference in their aesthetic orientation.

"4338" as a utopian novel

In the century before last, Biela's comet made a lot of noise. It was believed that after some time it would even collide with the surface of the Earth. Some of Odoevsky's works reflected this "comet theme", among them the utopian novel Year 4338: Petersburg Letters, which, unfortunately, remained unfinished. The author depicts the world in 2500 years, when the development of mankind will save the globe from a threatening comet.

The work contains features of predictive fiction and utopian novel; the author predicts the emergence of many inventions of the future, including the Internet. However, the depicted society is not as prosperous as it seems: the ever-increasing information wave does not spare human brain reserves. Utopia develops into dystopia in order to present this genre in further works (especially in "The City Without a Name").