Features of V.A. Zhukovsky''s imperial text: ideology and cultural enlightenment
V.A. Zhukovsky is an exemplary representative of the imperial text of Russian culture. All his poetic, pedagogical and social activities, almost a 25-year life at the royal court and dialogue with the authorities marked the semiosphere of this concept. The poetic trilogy of young Zhukovsky ("The Song of the Bard over the Coffin of the Slavic Winners" (1806), "The Singer in the Camp of the Russian Warriors" (1812) and "The Singer in the Kremlin" (1814-1816)) marked a new view on the problem of civic poetry. His epistle "To Emperor Alexander" (1814) marked the orientation to a dialogue with the authorities, the self-determination of the poet as the spokesman of the national consciousness. In 1817, Zhukovsky's service at the court began; he regarded it as a culture triggering mission. More than 300 letters to the royal people contain the most important events of Russian and European history from the Napoleonic wars, the Decembrist uprising on 14 December 1825 to the revolution of 1848 in Germany. They are also a behavioural gesture, a word in defence of the persecuted, the humiliated, the unjustly accused. In these letters, the teacher and mentor constantly spoke about the usefulness of history for rulers. Many of these letters were published in periodicals, and organically combined the imperial text with the national one. Having completed his pedagogical activities after his marriage and departure to Germany, Zhukovsky gives lessons of political pedagogy to Russian society. His journalism in the 1840s is an original experiment to create a national idea based on the experience of modern European life. The bearer of the ideas of "world-wide responsiveness", who did a lot as a translator for the propaganda of the world culture, Zhukovsky could not turn into a Slavophile. A sober realisation of the consequences of European civilization and of the abuse of democratic reforms leading to anarchy and proletarianisation of society and, as a consequence, to the revolution did not make him a Westerner. Unlike the ideologists of the official nationality, he viewed autocracy and Orthodoxy as a developing phenomenon and warned against their apologetics.