"What show to eyes": the elements image in Russian culture of a boundary of the XVIII-XIX centuries
The author of the article considers the principles of social optics. In Russian classicism the catastrophic sphere rarely was a subject of the poetic image. At an initial stage Russian romanticism acquires the external (“picturesque”) part of the catastrophic phenomena. The image of the raged elements does not change the ideas of stability of life. An accident is a part of picturesque space.