''Svetlana'' is a Russian ballad that was published in 1813.

Creation and publication history

First published in the journal ''

Vestnik Evropy ''Vestnik Evropy'' (russian: Вестник Европы) (''Herald of Europe'' or ''Messenger of Europe'') was the major liberal magazine of late-nineteenth-century Russia. It was published from 1866 to 1918. The magazine (named for an earlier ...

'', 1813, No. 1 and 2, with the subtitle: "To Al. An. Pr...va. " Dedicated to Zhukovsky's niece and student

Aleksandra Andreevna Voeikova Alexandra Andreevna Voeikova (née Protasova; August 20, 1795 - February 16, 1829) was the niece and goddaughter of Vasily Zhukovsky, addressee of his ballad " Svetlana", and muse of the poet Nikolay Yazykov. Early life Alexandra Andreevna Prot ...

(who was the sister of the poet's muse M.A.Protasova-Moyer ), as a wedding gift to her. The beginning of work on "Svetlana" dates back to 1808, the text was completed in 1812. In the well-known two-volume edition, as well as in the collection of selected works (all edited by A. D. Alferov), the edition of the Association of I. D. Sytin (Moscow, 1902), the ballad is attributed to the works of 1811. The plot is based on Gottfried Bürger's ballad " Lenora". Zhukovsky addressed this plot three times: before Svetlana, he transcribed Lenora in the ballad Lyudmila, and later, in 1831, translated it more accurately under the author's title - but here the abduction of the bride by the dead is presented as a bad dream of a girl, and ballad has a happy ending.

Artistic originality

It is written in

trochee In English poetic metre and modern linguistics, a trochee () is a metrical foot consisting of a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed one. But in Latin and Ancient Greek poetic metre, a trochee is a heavy syllable followed by a light one ( ...

with alternating feet 4-3, and in long lines to compensate for the endings for men, and in short lines - for women. The stanza has 14 lines with the rhyming scheme abaBcFcFddEihE (thus, it closely resembles a sonnet, albeit much longer). Svetlana is one of the most popular works of Russian romanticism, became one of the sources of the spread of the name Svetlana (before Zhukovsky it was found in Vostokov). "Svetlana" is mentioned and quoted several times by

Alexander Pushkin Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin (; rus, links=no, Александр Сергеевич ПушкинIn pre-Revolutionary script, his name was written ., r=Aleksandr Sergeyevich Pushkin, p=ɐlʲɪkˈsandr sʲɪrˈɡʲe(j)ɪvʲɪtɕ ˈpuʂkʲɪn, ...

Eugene Onegin ''Eugene Onegin, A Novel in Verse'' (Reforms of Russian orthography, pre-reform Russian: ; post-reform rus, Евгений Оне́гин, ромáн в стихáх, p=jɪvˈɡʲenʲɪj ɐˈnʲeɡʲɪn, r=Yevgeniy Onegin, roman v stikhakh) is ...

", chapter 3, stanza V; chapter 5, stanza X, epigraph to chapter 5; epigraph to the story " Snowstorm "). In his commentary on Eugene Onegin (Ch. III, V, 2-4),

Vladimir Nabokov Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (russian: link=no, Владимир Владимирович Набоков ; 2 July 1977), also known by the pen name Vladimir Sirin (), was a Russian-American novelist, poet, translator, and entomologist. Bo ...

assesses the ballad as a "masterpiece" and suggests that Pushkin's "Onegin stanza" arose under the influence of this unusual sonnet stanza in Zhukovsky.

References

{{reflist Russian poems 1813 poems