A. S. Pushkin’s Poem The Hermit Fathers and the Immaculate Wives... (Linguostylistic Analysis of a Poem and Its Source)

Abstract

The following article presents a linguistic and stylistic analysis of A. S. Pushkin’s poem The hermit Fathers and the immaculate wives... in comparison with the Greek text of the prayer of St. Ephrem the Syrian and its Church Slavonic translation, which was the source of the Poet’s poem. The similarities of the text content and the existing differences are shown. The outstanding role of Pushkin’s text, which essentially performs the ‘transliterating’ function of transmitting Church Slavonic literature to the system of Russian verbal culture, is acknowledged. For Alexander Pushkin, the Church Slavonic language was very important as a source (or one of the sources) of formation of the Russian literary language. The poet introduced many Church Slavonic words into Russian literary speech, for which he was often criticized. Indeed, from the point of view of a native speaker of an exquisite literary language, many lexical introductions of Church Slavonisms to the text of Eugene Onegin were a stylistic challenge. Russian lexical field was regularly expanded by the poet by the means of the Church Slavonic dictionary. This is clearly confirmed by works where the Church Slavonic words fit the theme logically, without causing complaints from adherents of literary norms, but also serve the purpose of lexical enrichment of the Russian language. The analyzed poem is among such works. A comparison of the two texts (the Church Slavonic translation of the prayer of St. Ephrem the Syrian and the poem of Alexander Pushkin) shows a very important difference between them. There is humility as the highest Christian virtue and Evangelical hope in Ephrem the Syrian’s work. And there is Evangelical love as a goal and the most cherished, necessary value for a person who has fallen, but lives in hope, in A. S. Pushkin. Each of these ascetics (St. Ephrem the Syrian and Alexander Pushkin) has his own vision of the outcome of earthly life. For all its signs of Lenten prayer, the poet’s requests have a different sound. More general, more generalized. The text goes beyond the category of calendar-timed (within the Church year) prayers, it pushes the boundaries of its use. This is its further development, its further life. And this is quite natural. Having left the liturgical, prayerful, more secluded and more strict sphere for the sphere of literature (resp. in the sphere of public perception and worldview, addressed to contemporaries who are not always aware of the significance of the presence of God in their lives), the text has already changed, it has spread out. A shift in internal emphasis changes its content. It is a fundamentally independent work.