Independent Researcher, Sattahip, Thailand, mike.osokin@gmail.com
Songs about shepherds, recited by Misha Balzaminov in the play by A. N. Ostrovsky When Your Own Dogs Are Fighting, Don’t Let Another’s In (1860), come from books of the eighteenth century. The Evil Shepherd was published in the New and Complete Collection of Russian Songs (1780), but the author has not yet been ascertained. The romance She Is Gone was written in 1795, by Sergey Kargopolsky, the bastard son of Prince P. V. Saltykov. Kargopolsky’s poems were published in the magazine Useful and Pleasant Pastime under the cryptonym S.K. This song became famous for being included as a pastoral in 1818 in a popular, many times reprinted songbook. In the original version, the lyrical subject is not a shepherd boy, but an artillery major sent to Lithuania to suppress The Kościuszko Uprising; he suffers from separation from his beloved and suspects her of infidelity. In the 1860s, the song earned a reputation as a “god knows what”, satisfying only the undemanding tastes such a simpleton as Balzaminov. The sufferings of the “bookish” sentimentalist shepherd were adapted in folklore ritual games and a stupid folk drama. The article deals with peculiarities of the literary fate of this romance leads to the complex relationship between “bookish” and folk.
eighteenth-century literature, Sergey Kargopolsky, romance; source; A. N. Ostrovsky
Download textFor citing: Osokin M. Yu. (2023). “Where Is My Beloved? She is Gone”: on the source of Balzaminov’s song. Human being: Image and essence. Humanitarian aspects. Moscow: INION RAN. Vol. 3(55): “Simpleton” and “scribe” in and around literary fiction, pp. 7-29. DOI: 10.31249/chel/2023.03.01