Synopsis
Images of the Volga River in Russian Poetry from the Reign of Catherine II to the End of the Napoleonic Wars
The Volga is often referred to as the ‘Mother-river’ and is widely known as a national symbol of Russia. This ‘Russianness’ has been at the core of representations of the Volga river in Russian culture from the nineteenth century until the present day. However, the Volga region was originally marked by its cultural diversity, rather than by such uniformity. In Russian poetry, the image of the Volga as a symbol of ‘Russianness’ did not become common until the late eighteenth century.
At the beginning of the eighteenth century, Peter the Great undertook many projects closely associated with water, such as the creation of a navy, increasing overseas trade and the increased construction of a water transport infrastructure. Consequently, by the mid eighteenth century, water, the sea and rivers became popular literary motifs in the solemn odes that praised Russian monarchs or the empire established by Peter. The motif of rivers and the association with the spaces through which they flowed was used to laud the vastness of the Russian Empire (K.V. Ratnikov). The Volga was also referred to directly in literary works. This theme is reflected in two fragments from Lomonosov’s odes on the anniversary of the empress Elizabeth’s accession to the throne in 1747 and 1748:
Сия Тебе единой слава,
Монархиня, принадлежит,
Пространная Твоя держава
О как Тебе благодарит!
Воззри на горы превысоки,
Воззри в поля Свои широки,
Где Волга, Днепр, где Обь течет:
В полях, исполненных плодами,
Где Волга, Днепр, Нева и Дон,
Своими чистыми струями
Шумя, стадам наводят сон,
Седит и ноги простирает
На степь, где Хину отделяет
Пространная стена от нас;
In these fragments, the Volga is just one component in the catalogue of rivers across the Russian Empire. As such, the name of each river – whether the Volga, the Dnepr or the Neva – does not have any particular significance.
By contrast, Sumarokov’s untitled ode from 1760 is an exceptional case that has the Volga as its main theme:
Долины, Волга, потопляя,
Себя в стремлении влечешь,
Брега различны окропляя,
Поспешно к устию течешь.
Противности и блага цепь;
Проходишь ты луга зелены,
Проходишь и песчану степь. Век видит наш тому подобно
Различные в пути следы:
То время к радости способно,
Другое нам дает беды. В Каспийские валы впадаешь,
Преславна мати многих рек,
И тамо в море пропадаешь, —
Во вечности и наш так век.
This ode presents the current of time using the river’s flowing water as a metaphor. Although it contains references to the Volga, the Caspian Sea and the ‘sandy steppe’ to establish an image of a concrete place, overall this ode is characterized by its abstractness. The most significant phrase in this piece is ‘the mother of many rivers’. It deserves attention as an early case of adopting the word ‘mother’ as a metaphor for the Volga river.
One of the most signifcant events in this development was Catherine II’s voyage along the Volga in 1767. Several poems were written to commemorate this event. G. Derzhavin’s early piece On the Passage of the Empress to Kazan’ (1767) recalls three historical events in which the Volga played an important role: military expeditions by Ivan IV and Peter the Great, and Catherine’s tour:
Пристойно, Волга, ты свирепо протекала,
Как для побед Татар тобой царь Грозный шел;
Ты шумом вод своих весь полдень устрашала,
Как гром тобою Петр на гордых Персов вел;
Но днесь тебе тещи пристойно с тишиною:
Екатерина мир приносит всем собою.
Here the Volga is presented as a special river in the history of Russia as a multi-ethnic state. According to the poet, during these events, the Volga behaved appropriately: on Ivan’s expedition, it flowed furiously and, on Catherine’s voyage, it flowed ‘quietly’. It implies not only that the Volga is instrinscially linked to the destiny of the state but also that the river is subject to the state’s power.
Vasilii Maikov describes the Volga in two odes: to commemorates the visit of the empress to Iaroslavl’ in 1763 and for her return from Kazan’ to Moscow in 1767:
Свой Волга бег остановляет
И хочет обратиться вверх,
Но по естественному чину
Бежит в Каспийскую пучину
И, негодуя, вопиет:
"Почто мне не дано судьбою
Свой бег сдержать и быть с тобою,
Монархиня, российский свет?"
Я зрю перед собой прекрасные луга;
Там вижу грады я, как кедры возвышенны,
Обременяющи крутые берега,
В которых Волга льясь, в восторге удивилась,
Увидя по себе Екатеринин ход,
Стремление свое сдержав, остановилась
И тем умножила быстротекущих вод,
Которыми покрыв каменья все и мели,
Творя владычице своей свободный путь.
The representation of the Volga in these two odes is contradictory. In the former, the Volga flows down to the Caspian Sea according to the laws of nature, despite wanting to remain with the empress. In the latter, the Volga, having glanced at the empress, stopped mid-stream and remained with her. These descriptions show that the power relationships of the empress and the law of nature have changed. Now the Volga is subject not to nature, but to the imperial power symbolized by the image of the empress (cf. K.V. Ratnikov). The ode of 1767 contains an allusion to the possible expansion of Russian military power; the images of India, China and Manchuria are used to show the mightiness of the Russian empire. Here the mention of the Volga and the Asian lands serves the same purpose; they are objects that should be subject to imperial power.
In the 1790s, two important poems about the Volga were written; Nikolai Karamzin’s The Volga (1793) and Ivan Dmitr'ev’s To the Volga (1794). Both poets describe the Volga not as subject to the Russian state but as its equivalent, an object of praise.
At the beginning of Karamzin’s poem, the Volga is applauded as ‘the river, the holiest in the world’ and is referred to as ‘tsarina’ and ‘mother’:
Река священнейшая в мире,
Кристальных вод царица, мать!
Дерзну ли я на слабой лире
Тебя, о Волга! величать,
Богиней песни вдохновенный,
Твоею славой удивленный?
Later, the present and the past of the Volga region are contrasted: the time of ‘Tatar yoke’ is described as an extremely dark period whereas the region now enjoys peace and the various peoples there admire ‘the unique goddess’. Thus Karamzin demonstrates the ethnic diversity of this area. The second half of the poem is devoted to the memory of an incident from the poet’s childhood. Karamzin describes how he almost drowned in a torrent while he cruised along the Volga by boat and how he was finally saved on the border of life and death. In this section, the author describes his feelings of exultation through which we are able to see the influence of the idea of the sublime. Certain expressions mean that this piece resembles Lomonosov’s solemn odes (cf. A.V. Petrov). It is symptomatic that here the Volga is called ‘tsarina’ and ‘mother’: the image of the Volga explicitly overlaps with that of the empress. In addition, the term ‘mother’ was used to refer to female monarchs in solemn odes and was frequently applied to Catherine II. For example, in the opening address of the Legislative Commission (1767), she was given the title ‘Catherine the Great, Most Wise Mother of the Fatherland’. Karamzin gave to the Volga the aura and sublimity that had generally been applied to Russian monarchs.
Dmitr'ev’s To the Volga is based on his experience of cruising along the Volga. This poem shares many traits with Karamzin’s piece. In it, the Volga is praised as ‘tsarina’, while the poet reminisces about his childhood on the banks of the Volga, just as Karamzin did:
Конец благополучну бегу!
Спускайте, други, паруса!
А ты, принесшая ко брегу,
О Волга! рек, озер краса,
Глава, царица, честь и слава,
О Волга пышна, величава!
The poet describes the scenery around the Volga and the site where Stenka Razin’s camp once stood, before recalling the military expeditions of Ivan IV and Peter the Great. In the poet’s fantasy, the personified Caspian Sea predicts Peter’s expedition to Persia and its outcome. According to the poet, upon hearing this news, the Volga rejoiced, the water overflowed and swallowed up the Caspian Sea:
Я слышал Каспия седого
Пророческий, громовый глас:
«Страшитесь, персы, рока злого!
Идет, идет царь сил на вас! <...>
Прорек, и хлынули реками
У бога воды из очес;
Вдруг море вздулося буграми,
И влажный Каспий в них исчез.
О, как ты, Волга, ликовала!
С каким восторгом поднимала
Победоносного царя!
В сию минуту пред тобою
Казались малою рекою
И Бельт и Каспий, все моря!
The juxtaposition of a prophecy about the victory of Russia over Persia and the description of the Volga absorbing the Caspian Sea shows the Volga as a metonym of the Russian state. Moreover, in the last three lines of the same stanza, the Baltic Sea and the Caspian Sea are said to look like small rivers compared to the Volga. This phrase is an allusion to Russia’s victory over Sweden and Persia, wherein the Volga is identified with the Russian empire. Unlike Karamzin, Dmitr'ev directly overlapped the image of the Volga with the image of the Russian state itself.
The beginning of the nineteenth century was a turning point in terms of the literary portrayal of the Volga. In this period, the image of the Volga came to exclude its ‘Asian’ components and began to be characterized by ‘Russianness’. Fedor Glinka’s report of the expedition to the upper Volga region, first published in his brother’s magazine Russkii vestnik in 1812, describes his first encounter with the Volga by qualifying it with an inaccurate citation from Karamzin: ‘holy river in the world’. The author perceives the superiority of the Volga by comparing the river water’s taste favourably with that of the Danube, the Dniester, the Dnepr and others. Furthermore, he calls this area ‘holy Rus’’ and marks it by ‘pure Russian language’ and ‘pure Russian costume’. While travelling along the Volga, the author thinks of the region’s history and quotes the lines of Karamzin amongst his annotations. He only mentions the cultural diversity of this area as being part of the distant past by referencing the ruin of the trenches and by saying that the people had been dispersed like dust. These comments use the image of the Volga as a symbol of a uniform Russia.
During the Napoleonic Wars, many residents of Moscow were evacuated to the cities along the Volga, such as Iaroslavl' and Nizhnii Novgorod. Vasilii Pushkin’s poem To the Dwellers of Nizhnii Novgorod (1812) derives from this context. The poet appeals here to the 'foster children of the Volga’s shores':
Примите нас под свой покров,
Питомцы волжских берегов!
Примите нас, мы все родные!
Мы дети матушки Москвы!
Веселья, счастья дни златые,
Как быстрый вихрь, промчались вы!
Примите нас под свой покров,
Питомцы волжских берегов!
Чад, братий наших кровь дымится,
И стонет с ужасом земля!
А враг коварный веселится
На башнях древнего Кремля!
Примите нас под свой покров,
Питомцы волжских берегов!
Святые храмы осквернились,
Сокровища расхищены!
Жилища в пепел обратились!
Скитаться мы принуждены!
In stating that ‘We all are relatives’, the poet emphasizes the distinctiveness of the relationship between Muscovites and the local inhabitants of Nizhnii Novgorod. He associates the Muscovites with the ‘ancient Kremlin’ and ‘holy temples’, while describing their alliance against a common enemy, Napoleon. There is no room for association with the Asian aspect of the Volga.
Generally, national symbols in wartime are closely associated with images of the enemy. During the Napoleonic Wars, the Asian images that were excluded from the representation of the Volga were sometimes associated with Napoleon himself. For example, Zhukovskii’s epistolary poem To Voeikov (1814) shows the analogy of the Napoleonic Wars and the period of the ‘Tatar yoke’. In this poem, the poet calls Napoleon ‘a Batu of new days’ and contrasts him with ‘the ancient Batu’.
Aleksandr Vostokov’s poem Russian rivers (1813) shows the Asian image of Napoleon in more complex way. This poem personifies many Russian rivers, such as the Oka, Moskva, Dnepr, Viaz'ma, Vop’ and Berezina. These are rivers that flow through the territory once occupied by the Napoleonic army. After the liberation from Napoleon, they rise against the enemy for ‘the Volga-mother’:
Беспечально теки, Волга матушка,
Через всю святую Русь до синя моря;
Что не пил, не мутил тебя лютый враг,
Не багрил своею кровью поганою,
Ни ногой он не топтал берегов твоих,
И в глаза не видал твоих чистых струй!
Он хотел тебя шлемами вычерпать,
Расплескать он хотел тебя веслами;
Но мы за тебя оттерпелися!
И дорого мы взяли за постой с него:
Не по камням, не по бревнам мы течем теперь,
Все по ядрам его и по орудиям;
Он богатствами дно наше вымостил,
Он оставил нам все животы свои!
This piece represents the united Russian people’s fight against the alien invader using the image of personified rivers in the style of Russian folk song (K.V. Ratnikov). We can see the expression ‘the Volga-mother’ in the first line. The second line includes the phrase ‘Through the whole holy Rus’ till the blue sea’. The entire Volga region up to this ‘blue sea’ (the Caspian Sea) should be regarded as a multicultural and multiethnic space. But Vostokov instead generalizes this space as ‘the whole Rus’’ and ‘holy’. As a result, he deliberately erases the cultural diversity of the area.
Vostokov was best known as a philologist and Slavist. Significantly, he borrows some expressions from The Tale of Igor’s Campaign in his poem (V.N. Orlov). This epic concludes with the blessing for members of the nobility who fight against non-Christians, qualifying non-Christian nomads with the adjective pogannyia (pagan), whereas Vostokov uses this word to characterize Napoleon: ‘Не багрил своею кровью поганою' (However the enemy dyes the Volga blood-red). Using such a non-standard expression, Vostokov emphasizes the connection between the two poetic works and presents an analogy between Napoleon and the non-Christian nomads. Vostokov not only erases the image of non-Christians from the presentation of Russia, but also adapted it to the new enemy, Napoleon. As a result, the image of the Volga is associated not with Russia as an empire, but to a uniform and non-Asian Russia, which is opposed to Napoleon, as represented in the figure of an Asian enemy.
In conclusion, the literary image of the Volga had not been linked to ‘Russianness’ until the beginning of the nineteenth century. In the late eighteenth century, Karamzin and Dmitr'ev identified the Volga with the Russian state or its monarch in their poems. By the time of the Napoleonic Wars, the Volga had lost its association with the cultural diversity that was originally a distinctive feature of its region, and was instead presented with a new uniformity as both ‘Russian’ and ‘Christian’. We can conclude that the image of the Volga as a symbol of ‘Russianness’ has its origin in this critical period in Russia’s history.
- Yusuke Toriyama, Chiba University, Chiba (Japan)
toriyamayusuke@gmail.com
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