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The Ode as a Performative Genre

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

James von Geldern
James von Geldern*
Affiliation:
Department of German and Russian, Macalester College
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Extract

All literature can be understood as text; it can be interpreted, but not all literature asks to be. Text describes a literary work as it moves within and between cultures; it implies interpretation and the readers’ active participation. To use the term text is to make assumptions that are not universal. While literature can bridge the many cultures that create and read it, it can also be confined to a specific frame within its own culture. It can resist bridging, just as it resists independent interpretation. Literature as performance, as an example, is intended for one time and one place. Performance looks at the literary work inside its intended environment. The meaning of the work is predicated by the occasion and conventions of its reading; the audience is asked not to insinuate its own interpretation but to participate in the one provided. Performance can be a physical realization of text in time and space; and, even when an actual performance does not take place, the term suggests an important way of reading.

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Type
Articles
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Slavic Review , Volume 50 , Issue 4 , Winter 1991 , pp. 927 - 939
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, Inc. 1991

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References

1. Intriguing work has been done on both western and Russian court celebrations: see Strong, Roy, Art and Power: Renaissance Festivals 1450-1650 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984)Google Scholar; Rites of Power: Symbolism, Ritual and Politics since the Middle Ages, ed. Wilentz, Sean (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985)Google Scholar; Rituals of Royalty: Power and Ceremonial in Traditional Societies, ed. Cannadine, David and Price, Simon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987)Google Scholar; Baehr, S. L., “ Fortuna Redux: The Iconography of Happiness in Eighteenth-Century Russian Courtly Spectacles,” Great Britain and Russia in the Eighteenth Century: Contacts and Comparisons, ed. Cross, A. G. (Newtonville, Mass.: Oriental Research Partners, 1979)Google Scholar.

2. Further titles will be given in truncated form. A reference number from the Svodnyi katalog russkoi knigi XVIII veka 1725-1800 (Moscow: Gos. bib. im. V. I. Lenina, 1963) will be given. For this poem, the number is SK3757.

3. The Horatian tradition, in which odes were neither performed nor sung, offered a tradition counter to the Pindaric. “Exegi monumentum,” for instance, laid claim to a time outside the immediate; it breached the odie frame. Poets who wished to take the ode beyond the ceremonial framework, such as Ronsard, turned to the Horatian tradition; and the Horatian model exerted an influence on Russian poets. Gavrila Derzhavin was a master at bridging the two traditions.

4. It seems that preserving odes for posterity—making a performance a text—was not something the poets thought important. Many redactions of Lomonosov’s early ceremonial poetry remain only as fragments used to illustrate his rhetorical handbooks of the 1740s.

5. Novye ody Mikhaila Kheraskova (Moscow: Univ. tipografiia, 1762) (SK7982); Filosoficheskiia ody ili pesni Mikhaila Kheraskova (Moscow: Imp. Mosk. univ., 1769) (SK8031). The second collection appeared both as philosophical odes and songs. That it was republished as “didactic” odes suggested that the notion of genre, with its associations of etiquette and ceremony, was not essential to Kheraskov.

6. For the original, broader notion of frame, see Goffmann, Erving, Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974)Google Scholar. Theater is a guiding metaphor for Goffmann’s conception. The literature on cultural performance is ever expanding. For the original anthropological usage, the work of Victor Turner is the best source: see his Dramas, Fields and Metaphors (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1974) or The Anthropology of Performance (New York: PAJ, 1986). Geertz, Clifford provides a cogent critique of both in “Blurred Genres: The Refiguration of Social Thought,” Local Knowledge (New York: Basic, 1983)Google Scholar. For poststructuralist perspectives, see Performance in Postmodern Culture (Milwaukee: Center for Twentieth Century Studies, 1977).

7. Pindar’s Victory Songs, trans. Nisetich, Frank J. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980), 105 Google Scholar.

8. Lomonosov, M. V., Polnoe sobrante sochinenii. 11 vols. (Moscow: Akademiia nauk, 1959), 8:82–102 Google Scholar; the gates are described in Opisanie oboikh triumfal’nyx vorot, postavelennykh v chesť Elisavete Pervoi. . . po vospriiatii v Moskve korony Shvedov pobedivshei vsiu Finlandiiu derzhav svoei pokorivshei i torzhestvenno v Sanktpeterburg vozvrativsheisia . . . s glubochaishim blagogoveniem ot Senatskoi kantory podnesennoe (St. Petersburg: Akademiia nauk, 1742) (SK3325).

9. Emblem books were a popular publication at the time. Emblem interpretation, as known in the eighteenth century, was a matter of one meaning for one sign. See Baehr, “Iconography of Happiness,” 110-111, on this subject. An example of a program describing and explaining emblems is Opisanie oboikh triumfal’nyx vopot (SK3325). On illuminations, see Maggs, B. W., “Firework Art and Literature: The Eighteenth-Century Pyrotechnical Tradition in Russia and Western Europe,” Slavonic and East European Review 54 (1976)Google Scholar; Vasil’ev, V. I., Starinnye feierverki v Rossii XVH-pervaia chetverť XVIII veka (Leningrad: Ermitazh, 1960)Google Scholar; Röling, Horst, “Illustrated Publications on Fireworks and Illuminations in Eighteenth-Century Russia,” Russia and the West in the Eighteenth Century, ed. Cross, A. G. (Newtonville, Mass.: Oriental Research Partners, 1983)Google Scholar. The standard source for Russian fireworks displays is still Rovinskii, D. A., Obozrenie ikonopisaniia v Rossii do kontsa XVII veka. Opisanie feierverkov i illuminatsii (St. Petersburg: A. S. Suvorin, 1903)Google Scholar.

10. Iz”iasnenie feierverka i illuminatsii kotorye pri torzhestvennom prazdnovanii vysokago dnia rozhedniia . . . gosudaryni Elisavety Petrovny . . 18 dekabria 1741 goda predsiavlenny byli (St. Petersburg: Akademiia nauk, 1741) [SK2471]; Rovmskii, Obozrenie, 226.

11. Iz”iasnenie i izobrazhenie velikago feierverka, kotoroi po okanchanie torzhestv vysokago kniazia Petra Feodorovicha i gosudaryni velikiia kniagini Ekateriny Alekseevny vseia Rossii v Sanktpeterburga na Neve reke pred imperatorskim zimním domom predstavlen byl avgusta 1745 (St. Petersburg: Akademiia nauk, 1745) (SK2467]; Rovinskii, Obozrenie, 238.

12. Likhachev, D. S., Panchenko, A. N., Ponyrko, H. V., Smekh v drevnei Rusi (Leningrad: Nauka, 1984), 25–35 Google Scholar. Zguta, Russell, “Peter I’s Drunken Synod of Fools and Jesters,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, 21, no. 1 (1973): 18–28 Google Scholar. Vsevolodskii-Gerngross, V. N., Istorila russkogo teatra (Leningrad: Teakinopechať, 1929) 1:360–364 Google Scholar. Under Peter, festival culture borrowed much from another great changer, the False Dmitrii, whose short reign in Moscow was marked by tremendous—and riotous—celebrations: Vsevolodskii, istoriia russkogo teatra 1:356-358. See. Vsevolodskii-Gerngross, V. N., Istorila russkogo dramaticheskogo teatra (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1977) 1:76–79 Google Scholar, for other descriptions of Peter’s celebrations; and Burgess, Malcolm, “Fairgrounds and Entertainers in 18th-century Russia,” Slavonic and East European Review 38 (1959-1960): 95–113 Google Scholar for popular festival traditions.

13. See Solov’ev, N. V., Pridvornaia zhizn’, 1613-1913. Koronatsii, feierverki, dvortsy (St. Petersburg, 1913), 18 Google Scholar ff. A tradition of parodie ceremony did survive into the reign of Anna, manifest in the famous marriage of the dwarves, which was dutifully praised in an ode by Trediakovskii.

14. Festivals served a similar function during the French Revolution: see chapter 10 of Ozouf, Mona, Festivals and the French Revolution, trans. Sheridan, Alan (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988)Google Scholar.

15. See Eliade, Mircea, The Sacred and the Profane (New York: Harcourt and Brace, 1959)Google Scholar, chapters 1 and 2.

16. Poety XVIII veka (Leningrad: Biblioteka poeta, 1972) 1:98-99. See also his Oda Elizaveta Petr ovne v den’ koronatsii Aprelia 26 dnia 1756 goda, 1:104.

17. This topic has been discussed in Dorovatskaia, V., “O zaimstvovaniiakh Lomonosova iz Biblii,” M. B. Lomonosov (St. Petersburg: Akademiia nauk, 1911)Google Scholar.

18. Poety XVIII veka 1:174-175.

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20. Feofan Prokopovich had made Russian men of letters aware of the traditional differences between historical and poetic narrative in his Ars Poetica: Feofan Prokopovich, Sochineniia (Leningrad: Sovetskii pisatel’, 1962), 431 Google Scholar.

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22. This relation has been treated in Serman, I. Z., “Poeziia Lomonosova v 1740-e gody,” XVIII vek: sbornik 5 (1962), 40–46.Google Scholar

23. Kheraskov, N. N., Izbrannye proizvedeniia (Leningrad: Sovetskii pisatel’, 1961), 78 Google Scholar. The same point is made by Hart, Pierre R., “Continuity and Change in the Russian Ode,” in Russian Literature in the Age of Catherine the Great: A Collection of Essays, ed. Cross, A. G. (Oxford: Meeuws, 1976)Google Scholar.

24. See Sipovskii, V. V., “Italianskii teatr pri Anne Ioannovne,” Russkaia starina, 6(1900), 593–611 Google Scholar; Perets, V. N., Italianskie komedii intermedii, predstavlennye pri dvore imp. Anny Ioannovny v 1733-1735 gg. (Petrograd: Akademiia nauk, 1917)Google Scholar.

25. In eighteenth century Russia, as in Renaissance Italy, the best scientific minds of the day were put to designing these effects: Lomonosov in Russia, Leonardo da Vinci in Italy.

26. Noted in A. A. Morozov’s introduction to M. V. Lomonosov, Izbrannye proizvedeniia (Leningrad: Sovetskii pisatel’, 1965), 31 Google Scholar.

27. Baehr, “Iconography of Happiness,” 115. A carousel was a spectacle of dance, poetry, and sport, involving the participation of the aristocracy. It was an aesthetic refinement of medieval tournaments. For a description, see Vsevolodskii, , Istorila russkogo teatra, 1:389–391 Google Scholar.

28. Derzhavin, G. R., Stikhotvoreniia (Leningrad: Biblioteka poeta, 1957), 178.Google Scholar

29. Poety XVIII veka 1:226.

30. Baehr, “Iconography of Happiness,” 112.

31. Poety XVIII veka 1:395.

32. Ibid. 1:329.

33. Ibid. 1:338.

34. Sumarokov’s first tragedies, Khorev and Hamlet, were written in 1747; his epistles on Russian language and versification in 1748.

35. Torzhestvuiushchaia Minerva, obshchenarodnoe zrelishche, predstavlennoe bol’shim maskaradom v Moskve 1763 goda (Moscow: Imp. Mosk. univ., 1763) [SK7306]; Tokmakov, I., Istoricheskoe opisanie vsekh koronatsii Rossiiskikh Tsarei, Imperatopov i lmperatrits (Moscow: n.p., 1896), 93–94 Google Scholar; Krasnobaev, V. V., Ocherki po istorii russkoi kul’tury XVIII veka (Moscow: Prosveshchenie, 1972), 189–194 Google Scholar; Baehr, “Iconography of Happiness,” 116-118.

36. “Zapiski Shtelina,” Moskvitianin na 1851 g., part I: 211.

37. See “Kritika na Odu,” Sumarokov, A. P., Stikhotvoreniia (Leningrad: Biblioteka poeta, 1935), 344–354 Google Scholar.