I. One of Eugene Onegin's sources
Reading the monuments of Russian and foreign literature, every now and then you come across more and more new sources of Pushkin. I will give two examples, the comparison of which clearly shows the range of interests of the poet. Dona Anna says: "poor widow, I remember everything about my loss, I mix my tears with a smile, like April." Pushkin found this image in Karamzin: "Twilight and clarity, bad weather and a bucket are now changing in my soul, just like in the fickle April" (Letters of a Russian traveler under February 28, 1790). The verse from Anchar "Here and the bird does not fly and the beast will not enter" is taken from a folk tale: "It is not enough to wander here and the bird does not fly and the beast rarely runs" (The tale of a quiet peasant and a pugnacious wife, Rovinsky, Russian folk file 1, 216 cf.) 1 . The fairy tale, as can be seen already from the title, is close in motif to the Tale of the Fisherman and the fish. So the work on Russian folklore nourished Pushkin's creativity in general.
Of particular interest are Pushkin's borrowings from the then Russian "literature for the occasion" - journalism, literary polemics, intimate or impersonating letters, literature partly scattered in magazines and almanacs, and partly passed around in manuscripts. Two sources of this kind have already been indicated by me. Slavia, 1931, p. 575 villages. Here is another similar example. In the Son of the Fatherland for 1813, anonymous Letters were published from Moscow to Nizhny Novgorod (reprinted in R. Arch. 1876. III. 129-154) 2 . They are dedicated to the hackneyed theme of "Frenchomania". But the author interprets it in his own way. Rejecting the French language, denying its significance as a model for Russian, the author, however, opposes the French language not Slavic, as such, on the model of which Russian should be formed, but the languages of classical antiquity: "None of the latest literature has been improved... from ...
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