Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamsin

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Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamsin

Nikolay Karamzin ( Russian Николай Михайлович Карамзин , scientific. Transliteration Nikolai Karamzin Michajlovič ; born December 1 . Jul / 12. December  1766 greg. In the village of Mikhailovka in the province of Simbirsk (Russia), † May 22 jul. / 3. June  1826 greg. in Saint Petersburg ) was a Russian writer and historian. Karamsin marks the transition from classicism to sentimentalism in Russian literature . At the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries, no other writer in Russia had such an audience success and so many imitators as Karamzin.

Life

Karamsin was born on December 12, 1766, the son of a landowner near Simbirsk (Ulyanovsk). He received his first lessons from private tutors.

From 1780 to 1783 he learned modern languages ​​and literatures in the Moscow boarding school of Professor Schaden. Karamsin's first work was his translation of an Idylle by Salomon Gessner (1730–1788) in print in 1783 : The wooden leg .

After a brief interlude in the St. Petersburg Guard Regiment and the return to Simbirsk, Karamsin moved to Moscow, where he joined the circle of the great enlightener, publisher and writer Nikolai Ivanovich Novikov from 1784 to 1789 . He published translations, short poems and short stories in the magazine founded by Nowikow.

From 1789 to 1790 Karamsin traveled through Europe: Tver , Memel , Tilsit , Königsberg (encounter with Immanuel Kant ), Berlin (encounter with Friedrich Nicolai and Karl Philipp Moritz ), Dresden, Leipzig, Weimar (encounter with Wieland , but not with Goethe), Frankfurt and Strasbourg. During a stay in Switzerland he met Lavater in Zurich and Charles Bonnet in Genthod . At the end of March 1790 he came to Paris, where he attended the Hôtel-Dieu hospital ; in Greenwich the naval hospital, now the university . The journey home took him from London, where he stayed from July to September 1790, by ship back to Kronstadt .

From 1791 to 1792 Karamsin published the literary journal Moskovskii zhurnal and published the letters and diary notes that were made on the trip to Europe, before they came out in a six-volume book version from 1797 to 1801 as letters from a Russian traveler . The travelogue was so successful that the second edition appeared between 1801 and 1803. In the Moscow Journal Karamsin also published his most famous sentimental stories such as Poor Lisa and Frol Silin . The journal was shut down after Karamzin, in his poem To Mercy, advocated pardoning Novikov, who was incarcerated without a judgment.

From 1793 to 1801 he published a number of literary anthologies of his own and other works: Aglaja , Meine Bagatellen , The Aeonids , a pantheon of Russian authors and a pantheon of foreign literature .

From 1802 to 1803 Karamsin headed the editorial department of Westnik Jewropy (Messenger of Europe), which became the first model for the thick Russian literary journals. In Vestnik Jewropy Karamzin published his most famous historical narrative Marfa, the governor .

When Alexander I appointed him imperial historiographer in 1803, Karamsin stopped his literary work and devoted himself entirely to scientific research into the history of Russia . In 1818 he published the first eight volumes of his history of the Russian state , which he led with the unfinished twelfth volume until the time of turmoil (1605–1613). The work became an exceptional success because of its rich source material and brilliant style.

After Karamsin survived pneumonia, he was too weak to go on a planned vacation trip to southern France and Italy . He died on June 3, 1826 in Saint Petersburg.

effect

Karamsin is important for Russian culture in three ways: as the founder of sentimentalism - he overcame the abstract pathos of classicism and placed human emotions at the center of his works - as a historian and as a linguistic reformer. He created new Russian words based on the French and sometimes German models, which immediately became common knowledge. Examples of this are the Russian words for consciousness , development , industry or touching . He simplified the Russian sentence structure based on the French model.

With the so-called Novij slog (New Style) he set the first important building block for the establishment of a new prose language, which was later perfected by Pushkin .

Works

  • Yevgeny and Julia (Евгений и Юлия), 1789
  • Letters from a Russian Traveler (Письма русского путешественника), 1791/92
  • Frol Silin (Фрол Силин), 1791
  • Poor Lisa (Бедная Лиза), 1792
  • Liodor (Лиодор), unfinished story 1792
  • Natalja, the boyar daughter (Наталья, боярская дочь), 1792
  • Bornholm Island (Остров Борнгольм), 1793
  • Julia (Юлия), 1794
  • Sierra Morena (Сиерра-Морена), 1794
  • The Sensitive and the Cool ( Two Characters ) (Чувствительный и холодный (Два характера)), 1801
  • A Knight of Our Time (Рыцарь нашего времени), fragment of the novel 1802/03
  • Marfa, the governor or submission of Novgorod (Марфа Посадница, или Покорение Новагорода), 1803
  • History of the Russian State (История государства Российского), 1818

Poems and a .:

  • To Mercy (К Милости), 1792
  • Poetry (Поэзия), 1792
  • Melancholy (Меланхолия), 1802
  • Poor Lisa , Reclam, Ditzingen (1982)
  • Letters from a Traveling Russian , Winkler, Munich (1984)
  • Letters from a traveling Russian , Reclam, Ditzingen (1998)

literature

  • History of classical Russian literature Aufbau, Berlin 1973 (Chapter NM Karamsin: pp. 90-100)
  • Adolf Stender-Petersen: History of Russian Literature CH Beck, Munich 3rd edition 1978 (second part, chapter 4: Karamzin's travel letters; chapter 5: Karamzin as the founder of sentimentalism; chapter 7 Karamzin's novelistic art)
  • Ulrike Brinkjost: Stories and History. Aesthetic and historiographical discourse with NM Karamzin Otto Sagner, Munich 2000 ISBN 3-87690-755-1 (partial print of Diss. Phil. Bielefeld 1999)
  • Hans Rothe: NM Karamzin's European journey. The beginning of the Russian novel 1968 ISBN 3-515-02209-0
  • Robert Marzari: The development of the historiographical style in comparison to the literary in Lomonosow, Karamzin and Pushkin Otto Sagner, Munich 1999 ISBN 3-87690-728-4
  • Gabriele Sauberer: The syntax of the "Pis'ma russkogo putešestvennika" by NM Karamzin ibid. 1999, ISBN 3-87690-744-6
  • H. Graßhoff: On the role of sentimentalism in the historical development of Russian and Western European literature In: Zeitschrift für Slawistik VIII (1963) pp. 558-570
  • M.Fraanje: Suicide out of love: Karamzin's poor Lisa in the context of the history of ideas In: Journal of Slavic Philology, Volume 59, Issue 2, 2000, pp. 305-316
  • Erhard Hexelschneider: Europe and Russia in contemporary travelogues from Fonwisin to A. Turgenjew in: Russia & Europe. Historical and cultural aspects of a problem of the century Rosa Luxemburg Verein, Leipzig 1995 ISBN 3929994445 pp. 49–64.
  • Dirk Kemper: Stars, Goethe, Ossian. On the evocation of a European frame of reception in Nikolaj M. Karamzin's first travel letter (foreign cultural analysis). In: Dirk Kemper, Aleksej Žerebin, Iris Bäcker (eds.): Self-cultural and foreign-cultural literary studies. Munich. Wilhelm Fink 2011 (= series of publications by the Institute for Russian-German Literary and Cultural Relations at the RGGU Moscow, 3), pp. 119–143.

Web links

Commons : Nikolai Michailowitsch Karamsin  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Karamsin, Nikolai Mikhailovich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Николай Михайлович Карамзин (Russian); Nikolaj Michajlovič Karamzin (scientific transliteration)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Russian author and poet
DATE OF BIRTH December 12, 1766
PLACE OF BIRTH Mikhailovka, Simbirsk Governorate
DATE OF DEATH June 3, 1826
Place of death St. Petersburg