The Royal and Nobiliary “Paradise” in Russian Poetry of the XVIII and First Third of XIX Centuries: Evolution of the Subject and Meaning

Abstract

In Russian poetry of the era of enlightened absolutism of the second half of the XVIII century. The royal and noble suburban "paradise" acted as the locus of the "new" nature, transformed by the god-like monarch or nobleman into the earthly "paradise" of eternal spring. But at the boundary of XVIII and XIX centuries its main components were cardinally reinterpreted. Now the Nature, returned in its original and indivisible condition, drives the irreversible history. The poet sees in destroyed suburban palace the point for the rethinking of his existence as the part of the irreversible life’s movement. Meanwhile the godly world, initially embodied in the suburban “paradise”, appears for the poets of the new century at first as the antipode of the frail Nature and then as its spiritually synthesis.