1. See, alia, inter, Fomenko, I. V., Liricheskii tsikl: Stanovlenie zhanra, poetika (Tver', 1992), 13–20 Google Scholar; Sapogov, V. A., “Siuzhet v liricheskom tsikle,” in Tsilevich, L. M., Dubashinskii, I. V. et al., eds., Siuzhetoslozhenie v russkoi literature (Daugavpils, 1980), 90–97 Google Scholar; Liapina, L. E., Liricheskii tsikl v russkoi poezii 1840-1860-kh godov: Avtoreferat dissertatsii (Leningrad, 1977)Google Scholar; Sproge, L. V., “Problema zhanrovykh novoobrazovanii v literaturovedcheskikh issledovaniiakh,” in Korol, T. V.', Likhterova, B. L. et al., eds., Semantika na raznykh iazykovykh urovniakh (Riga, 1979), 98–109 Google Scholar. A substantial body of critical literature is devoted to the definition of the lyric sequence (for an assessment of some representative approaches, see Vroon, Ronald, “Prosody and Poetic Sequences,” in Scherr, Barry P. and Worth, Dean S., eds., Russian Verse Theory: Proceedings of the 1987 Conference at UCLA, UCLA Slavic Studies 18 (Columbus, 1990), 473-90Google Scholar. For the purposes of the present discussion we may define a poetic cycle or sequence as a number of independent poems brought together and perceived as a new composite text that possesses its own integrity and semantic structure without compromising the aesthetic integrity and independence of its constituents.

2. See, in particular, Darvin, M. N., Russkii liricheskii tsikl: Problemy istorii i teorii (Krasnoiarsk, 1988), 31–49 Google Scholar; and Sloane, David, Aleksandr Blok and the Dynamics of the Lyric Cycle (Columbus, 1988), 65–76.Google Scholar

3. See, for example, A. Levitsky, “M. V. Lomonosov's Psalms of 1751 as an Encoded Syllogistic Medium,” Byzantine Studies/Etudes Byzantines, 8, 11, and 12 (1981, 1984, and 1985): 215-29. The study relates the ordering of the Psalms to a particular rhetorical formula, the chreia, described in Lomonosov's own Ritorika, but Levitsky wisely argues only for the “implicit presence of khreia design behind the … successive stages of syllogistic argument“ unfolding in the sequence (218, my emphasis). In the absence of any clear extratextual proof that the Psalms were consciously chosen and ordered to instantiate the formula, the possibility that we are dealing with a phenomenon that belongs more properly to reception aesthetics than historical poetics remains disquieting.

4. David Sloane's historical survey of the Russian lyric cycle (Aleksandr Blok, 61-117) provides an instructive example of the danger underlying an analysis of eighteenth-century sequences based principally on their immanent characteristics. In discussing Vasilii Trediakovskii's “Ody bozhestvennye,” a group of twenty-two poems from his Sochineniia iperevody consisting of ten paraphrases from the Psalms, eleven from other books of the Bible, and an original composition, Sloane notes that the poet deviates from the biblical order in the second half of the sequence (the non-psalmic passages); he concludes that “these apparent … misorderings are a function of the poet's deliberate design,” and that Trediakovskii “creates a lyric persona and a dramatic situation that develops along the lines of an episodic plot” (Aleksandr Blok, 70). In fact, there are no “misorderings” here: ten of the eleven non-psalmic texts were selected because they are the prototypes on which the odes (ikoi) of the Orthodox canon are based, and they are presented in the same order as in the canon (the ninth ode is built on the two passages from Luke that Trediakovskii presents as separate poems). The eleventh paraphrase, a rendering of Deborah's song in the Book of Judges, together with Trediakovskii's original composition and a verse translation of Bernard Fontenelle's “Discourse on Patience and Impatience” (which Sloane does not mention), lie outside the matrix of the canon. The poems are thus arranged in a hierarchical cluster: first the Psalms, as texts most central to the Orthodox liturgy, then the paraphrases of the Old Testament odes in the order of the canon's odes, then the extraliturgical Song of Deborah, and finally Trediakovskii's own original composition and translation of Fontenelle. If, as Sloane suggests, a dramatic situation emerges from this grouping of poems (and such may indeed be the case), it is first and foremost a product of the liturgical tradition rather than authorial intention.

5. See, for example, the occasional chronological transpositioning of odes in Petrov, V., Sochineniia (St. Petersburg, 1782), 1:1–191.Google Scholar

6. Sumarokov, A. P., “Ody dukhovnye,” Ezhemesiachnye sochineniia, no. 9 (September 1755): 251-61Google Scholar. The numbering of the Psalms follows the Septuagint text.

7. For some interesting hypotheses on this score, see Sloane, Aleksandr Blok, 70-72, and Levitsky, “M. V. Lomonosov's Psalms of 1751,” 226-27.

8. See L. I. Sazonova, “'Vertograd mnogotsvetnyi’ po avtografu,” hvestiia OLIa AN SSSR4 (1980): 301-10; Sazonova, , “'Vertograd mnogotsvetnyi’ Simeona Polotskogo (Evoliutsiia khudozhestvennogo zamysla),” in Russkaia staropechatnaia literatura (XVI-pervaia chetvert’ XVIII v.), vol. 3, Simeon Polotskii i ego knigoizdatel'skaia deiatel'nost', ed. Robinson, A. N. (Moscow, 1982), 203-58Google Scholar; Sazonova, , Poeziia russkogo barokko (vtoraia polovina XVII-nachalo XVIIIv.) (Moscow, 1991), 187–221 Google Scholar; Sazonova, “'Vertograd mnogotsvetnyi’ Simeona Polotskogo: Istoriia sozdaniia, poetika, zhanr,” in Simeon Polockij, Vertograd mnogocvetnyj, ed. Anthony Hippisley and Lydia 1. Sazonova, Bausteine zur slavischen Philologie und Kulturgeschichte, Reihe B: Editionen, Neue Folge, vol. 10 (Cologne, 1996), l:xi-li.

9. Anthony Hippisley, “A Jesuit Source of Simeon Polotsky's Vertograd mnogotsvetnyi,“ Oxford Slavonic Papers 27 (1994): 23-40. See also his “Notes on Sources,” in Polockij, Vertograd mnogocvetnyj, liii-lvi.

10. Ronald Vroon, “Aleksandr Sumarokov's Odytorzhestvennye (Toward a History of the Russian Lyric Sequence in the Eighteenth Century),” Zeitschrift fur slavische Philologie 50, no. 2 (1995/96): 223-63.

11. A. P. Sumarokov, Elegii liubovnye (St. Petersburg, 1774). Orthography in all citations has been modernized, but idiosyncracies in punctuation and spelling have been retained. The elegies have been reproduced posthumously four times: in Novikov's two editions of Sumarokov's Polnoe sobranie vsekh sochinenii (Moscow, 1781), 8:368-80 (2d ed. 1787); in a reprint of the first edition, published in the 1790s (see Par. 7059 in Svodnyi katalog russkoi knigt grazhdanskoi pechati 1725-1800 [Moscow, 1966], 3:196); and in L. G. Frizman, ed., Russkaia elegiia XVIII-nachala XX veka, Biblioteka poeta, Bol'shaia seriia (Leningrad, 1991), 68-76. Frizman's edition is not entirely trustworthy: some lines are inadvertently dropped and certain corrections made by Sumarokov in the final edition are ignored. The hypothesis that the 1774 collection constitutes a lyric sequence was initially posed in Vroon, “Aleksandr Sumarokov's Ody torzhestvennye,” 63. Certain cyclic properties of the elegies are discussed in Reinhard Ibler's useful overview of elegiac cycles in the Russian tradition, “Zur Entwicklung des Elegienzyklus in der russischen Literatur des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts,” Zeitschrift fur slavische Philologie 57', no. 2 (1998): 340-41. Ibler restricts his attention to the elegies, excluding from consideration the two “Stansy” that bring the collection to a close.

12. Sumarokov, A. P., Raznye stikhotvoreniia (St. Petersburg, 1769), 183–224.Google Scholar

13. Trediakovskii, V. K., Novyi i kratkii sposob k slozheniiu rossiiskikh stikhov... (St. Petersburg, 1735)Google Scholar; reprinted in Trediakovskii, Izbrannye proizvedeniia, ed. L. I. Timofeev, Biblioteka poeta, Bol'shaia seriia (Moscow-Leningrad, 1963), 397-402.

14. Frizman, L., Zhizri liricheskogo zhanra: Russkaia elegiia ot Sumarokova do Nekrasova (Moscow, 1973), 2–24 Google Scholar; Frizman, “Dva veka russkoi elegii,” in Frizman, ed., Russkaia elegiia XVIII-nachala XX veka, 10-11; Gukovskii, G., “Elegiia v XVIII veke,” Russkaia poeziia XVIII veka, Voprosy poetiki 10 (Leningrad, 1927), 51-54.Google Scholar

15. Trediakovskii, Izbrannye proizvedeniia, 396.

16. Gukovskii, “Elegiia v XVIII veke,” 53-54.

17. An appropriately cautionary note on this score is sounded by Bemhard Kroneberg in his study of the Russian elegy. While acknowledging that Trediakovskii's introductory remarks encourage one to discern a plot here, he insists that the second elegy “contains … no element connecting the situations described in the poems” (Kroneberg, Studien zur Geschichte der russischen klassizistischen Elegie, Osteuropastudien der Hochschulen des Landes Hessen, series 3, Frankfurter Abhandlungen zur Slavistik 20 [Wiesbaden, 1972], 44). There is, however, one very powerful such element, namely, Ilidara's name, which is repeated in both elegies. Trediakovskii's note makes it absolutely clear that she, as well as the speaking subject, are to be viewed as the same personae across both texts, and thus unite the poems within a single semantic field. The narrative space between the two situations described will, of course, be filled in differently by each reader.

18. See, in this connection, Singleton, C. S., An Essay on the Vita Nuova (Cambridge, Mass., 1949).Google Scholar

19. Tallemant, P., Ezda v ostrov liubvi, trans. Trediakovskii, V. (St. Petersburg, 1730)Google Scholar; cited from the 3d ed. (St. Petersburg, 1834), 173-235; reprinted in Trediakovskii, Izbrannyeproizvedeniia, 55-100.

20. The poems are 1) “Stikhi o sile liubvi,” 2) Ob“iavlenie liubvi odnoi devitse,“ 3) “Zhelanie, uchinennoe odnoi devitse,” 4) “Pesnia k liubovniku i liubovnitse obruchivshimsia,“ 5) “Pesnia odnoi devitse, vyshedshei zamuzh,” 6) “Pokhvala vsiakoi miloi,“ 7) “Proshchanie pri razluchenii so vsiakoi miloi,” 8) “Toska liubovnitsyna v razluchenii s liubovnikom,“9) “Toska liubovnikova v razluchenii s liubovnitseiu,” and 10) “Plach odnogo liubovnika.” Though graphically unmarked, the cluster of poems has very clear thematic boundaries: the poems that frame it (respectively “Epigrama Gospodinu K.,” in Latin, and “Pravila … kak stavit’ zapiatuiu,” in French) have nothing to do with the erotic and elegiac themes of the cluster. An interesting formal marker of the group's unity is the fact that the opening and closing poems are in Russian, whereas those in between are in French.

21. For a discussion of other non-narrative aspects of cyclization in the collection, see M. N. Darvin, “'Stikhi na raznye sluchai’ V. K. Trediakovskogo: ‘Svoe’ i ‘chuzhoe,'” in Darvin, M. N. and Kaunova, F. Z., eds., Tsiklizatsiia literaturnykh proizvedenii: Sistemnost’ i tselostnost'. Mezhvuzovskii sbornik nauchnykh trudov (Kemerovo, 1994), 23–30.Google Scholar

22. Gukovskii, “Elegiia v XVIII veke,” 55-56.

23. Trudoliubivaia pchela, no. 2 (February 1759): 111-27. All issues of the journal appeared in 1759 and are consecutively numbered. The first poem in the series, signed “A. N.,” is attributed to Aleksei Naryshkin by V. P. Stepanov in Kochetkova, N. D., Moisseeva, G. N. et al., eds., Slovar’ russkikhpisatelei XVIII veka (St. Petersburg, 1999), 2:329 Google Scholar. Ibler notes that in journals such as Trudoliubivaia pchela “elegies are often brought together in small independent groups. The frequent publication of these groups under the general title ‘Elegies’ and the numbering of the individual poems indicate that they have more in common than mere generic affinity” (“Zur Entwicklung des Elegienzyklus,” 336). The existence of multiauthorial clusters of poems such as this one, which are also presented under the general heading “Elegies” and consecutively numbered, as well as the consecutive numbering of poems in polygeneric clusters, suggests that such graphic indices may, in and of themselves, be inadequate grounds for presuming that cyclical tendencies are at work.

24. That they might have been published together as a literary competition, however, is by no means excluded. The practice of presenting several works in the same genre for the judgment of the reader originated with the joint publication of Psalm 143 in three versions by Sumarokov, Trediakovskii, and Lomonosov in 1748. Thereafter such competitions became commonplace: see Gukovskii, G., “Kvoprosu o russkom klassitsizme. (Sostiazaniia i perevody),” in Poetika: Sbornik slatei, Vremennik Otdela slovesnykh iskusstv Instituta istorii iskusstva, no. 4 (Leningrad, 1928), 126-48.Google Scholar

25. Kroneberg, Studien, 77.

26. Trudoliubivaia pchela, no. 7 (July 1759): 447-48. The poem is the second in a pair of elegies, the first of which belongs to Vasilii Naryshkin. There is no narrative interplay between the two.

27. Trudoliubivaia pchela, no. 9 (September 1759): 531-42.

28. See Gukovskii, “Elegiia v XVIII veke,” 69-83, and Frizman, Zhizn’ liricheskogo zhanra, 30-31.

29. Svobodnye chasy, no. 4 (April 1763): 252.

30. Nevinnoe uprazhnenie, no. 6 (June 1763): 298-99.

31. Reinhard Lauer takes passing note of the tendency toward cyclization among many of the “lesser” genres of the eighteenth century in his monumental study, Gedichtform zwischen Schema und Verfall: Sonett, Rondeau, Madrigal, Ballade, Stanze und Triolett in der russischen Literaturdes 18.Jahrhunderts (Munich, 1975), 100, 149-50, 184, and elsewhere. For an analysis of these and other sequences and their significance in the history of the lyric sequence in the eighteenth century, see my forthcoming monograph, The Russian Lyric Sequence: An Historical Poetic.

32. A. P. Sumarokov, “Vyveska ['V sem dome’] i Pesenka ['Savushka greshen, / Sava poveshen’],” Prazdnoe vremia vpol'zu upotreblennoe, 28 October 1760, 275-76.

33. A. P. Sumarokov, “Elegiia, i Stikhi sukhoputnago kadetskago korpusa, khirurgu Vol'fu,” Prazdnoe vremia vpol'zu upotreblennoe, 19 August 1760, 126-27.

34. These three poems are titled “Geroida: Osnel'da k Zavlokhu,” “Geroida: Zavlokh kOsnel'de,” and “Stans.” They are numerically integrated into the section (nos. 17,18, and 19, respectively).

35. In revising the poem for publication in Raznye stikhotvoreniia Sumarokov rewrote the opening line.

36. The Raznye stikhotvoreniia version eliminates the first couplet—hence the new opening line, a revision of verse 3 of the original poem.

37. Sloane, Aleksandr Blok, 75.

38. Kroneberg, Studien, 146.

39. Following the sequence of elegies as numbered in Raznye stikhotvoreniia, these include Elegy I, w. 33-36, 41-44, 47-50, 53-56; Elegy II, w. 43-46; Elegy IV, w. 23-26, 4 5 - 48; Elegy V, w. 37-40, 63-82; and Elegy VIII, w. 13-20, 29-32. No deletion can affect less than four lines because the poem consists of “modules” comprising two couplets, one with masculine and the other with feminine rhymes. The only exception to this rule is at the beginning or end of a poem, where a single couplet can be removed without affecting the regular alteration of masculine and feminine rhymes (see, for example, die removal of the opening couplet in Elegy VII of Raznye stikhotvoreniia).

40. Trudoliubivaia pchela, no. 9 (September 1759): 534.

41. Sumarokov, Raznye stikhotvoreniia, 185.

42. Gukovskii, “Elegiia v XVIII veke,” 57.

43. Here and below, revisions in the variant text from Elegii liubovnye are italicized. As indicated by the brackets, the word mne in the latter is missing—probably a printer's error.

44. Trudoliubivaia pchela, no. 2 (February 1759): 117-18, and Sumarokov, Raznye stikhotvoreniia, 192.

45. For example, in the ninth elegy Sumarokov removes the following quatrain from an already very short (24 lines) poem: “Veseloi mysli net, vse radosti sokrylis', / Vse zlyia sluchai na mia vooruzhilis', / Velikodushie kolebletsia vo mne. / K kotoroi ni vozriu toskuia storone …” (Trudoliubivaiapchela, no. 8 [August 1759]: 509). One could reasonably conclude that the quatrain was removed because of the fourth line, with its uncharacteristically disruptive syntactic inversion.

46. See also Ibler, “Zur Entwicklung des Elegienzyklus,” 339. Ibler suggests, however, that the entire group of elegies, both threnetic and erotic, constitutes a unity based on “eine gedankliche und typologische Bewegung” (a conceptual and typological movement) in the sequence (340). Although he does not comment on the role of the heroides and “Stans” in assessing the cyclic properties of the whole, they could presumably be seen as conforming to this same movement.

47. FedorKozel'skii, Elegii ipis'mo (St. Petersburg, 1769). The elegies were revised and reprinted in his Sochineniia (St. Petersburg, 1778), 2:7-63.

48. These pairs are analyzed in some depth by Gukovskii, “Elegiia v XVIII veke,” 77- 80; see also Kroneberg, Studien, 178-82.

49. Kozel'skii, Elegii i pis'mo, 52.

50. See Frizman, “Dva veka russkoi elegii,” 9-10. Sumarokov is drawing from the following passage in Boileau's “l'Art Poétique“: “D'un ton un peu plut haut, mais pourtant sans audace, / La plaintive Elegie en longs habits de deüil, / Sçait les cheveux épars gemir sur un cercueil. / Elle peint des Amans la joye, et la tristesse, / Flatte, menace, irrite, appaise une Maistresse: / Mais pour bien exprimer ces caprices heureux, / C'est peu d'estre Poëte, il faut estre amoureux. / Je hais ces vain Auteurs, dont la Muse forcée / M'entretient de ses feux toujours froide et glacée, / Qui s'affligent par l'art, et fous de sense rassis / S'érigent, pour rimer, en Amoureux transis” (Nicolas Boileau, Oeuvres complete, ed. Francoise Escal [Paris, 1966], 164).

51. Kroneberg, Studien, 147-49.

52. Lutsevich, L. F., Poeziia A. P. Sumarokova, Avtoreferat diss., Leningradskii gos. ped. institutim. Gertsena (Leningrad, 1980), 21.Google Scholar

53. For a different, though not incompatible, reading of these abridgements, see Ibler, “Zur Entwicklung des Elegienzyklus,” 340-41.

54. Although I employ the term protasis figuratively here, there can be little doubt that Sumarokov, Russia's most accomplished eighteenth-century dramatist, was heavily influenced by the structure of classical drama in fashioning the sequence. In this connection, Gukovskii and others have noted the similarity between the elegies and the dramatic monologues in Sumarokov's own plays.

55. Sumarokov, Raznye stikhotvoreniia, 185,184. Certain revisions also underscore that the parting will be temporary, e.g., the couplet, “Uzhe ne budetvvek minuty mne takoi, / V kotoruiu b ia mog pochuvstvovat’ pokoi” (Sumarokov, Raznye stikhotvoreniia, 184), becomes “Khotia ne budet uzh minuty mne takoi / V kotoruiu b ia mog pochuvstvovat' pokoi” (Sumarokov, Elegii liubovnye, 4).

56. Sumarokov, Raznye stikhotvoreniia, 187, and Sumarokov, Elegii liubovnye, 6.

57. Sumarokov, Raznye stikhotvoreniia, 188.

58. Sumarokov, Raznye stikhotvoreniia, 189, and Trudoliubivaia pchela, no. 8 (August 1759): 506.

59. Sumarokov, Elegii liubovnye, 11.

60. Ibid.

61. Ibid., 12.

62. Sumarokov, Raznye stikhotvoreniia, 201, and Sumarokov, Elegii liubovnye, 12.

63. Sumarokov, Elegii liubovnye, 13.

64. Ibid., 14.

65. Ibid., 15.

66. Sumarokov, Raznye stikhotvoreniia, 194.

67. Sumarokov, Raznye stikhotvoreniia, 196, and Sumarokov, Elegii liubovnye, 17.

68. Not every potential inconsistency has been removed. One that remains even after Sumarokov's extensive editing concerns the setting of the events described. The opening poem of the sequence implies that the speaker is departing for foreign lands, whereas the third poem, “Sud'ba za chto ty mne daesh’ takuiu chast'!” implies that she is absent, while he is reminded of her presence by the sites where they used to meet. This apparent contradiction, however, is wholly attenuated by the emotional and psychological consistency of the story in its unfolding.

69. Sumarokov, Elegii liubovnye, 19.

70. Sumarokov, Elegii liubovnye, 22.

71. Gukovskii writes: “In his elegies Sumarokov avoids narrative. In these elegies there are no events, nothing happens, nothing changes, and therefore nothing is narrated“ (“Elegiia v XVIII veke,” 60).