Powieść "Monasterka" (1830-1833) Antoniego Pogorielskiego

Abstract

The article has been devoted to the discussion of a novel by a prominent prose writer who was Pushkin’s contemporary, and whose work largely contributed towards the consolidation of realism in Russian literature of the first half of the nineteenth century. The author of the article regards "The Convent Girl" ("Monastyrka" in Russian) as a synthesis of several trends which were evolving in the early nineteenth century in Russian prose, above all of the ethnographic trend and of the tendency to depict human morals; he regards it also as a successful attempt at departing from the popular at the time schematic presentation of plot and trite subject matter. The plot of "The Convent Girl" takes place in the Ukraine and this fact places it within the richly represented category of "ethnographic" Russian writing which was particularly prominent during the first three decades of the nineteenth century, and which was finally crowned by Gogol’s work. Pogoryelski, while resorting to some of the traditional motifs of this trend, was able to depict the life of the Ukrainian population in its true light, contrary to the idyllic pictures created by the sentimentalists writing on this subject. In the article the author has stressed that Pogoryelsky’s novel should be listed among the few works which favoured the origination of the "Prose Period" in Russian literatura of the early eighteen thirties. The significance of "The Convent Girl" cinsists in the synthesis it presents of two mutually isolated methods of contemporary prose which was either concerned w ith depicting, in a satiric vein, the morals and manners of the time, or was full of psychological and sentimental descriptions. While the former group of works dealt only with the negative phenomena of social life, the latter depicted only the feelings and emotions of the characters. In "The Convent Girl" Pogoryelski was able to combine the good qualities of both these trends while avoiding their one-sidedness. Pogoryelski was to a large extent a continuator of Russian prose of the preceding period; but in his work the traditional means of artistic expression were made to serve a different aim. The opposition beetwen "black" and "white" characters, almost universal in eighteenth-century writing, in his novel, owing to its cheerful humour and to the fact that the various human defects are not presented there in a demoniac light, acquired more verisimilitude. Another feature which one can observe in Pogoryelski’s novel is the continuation of some thematic traditions of the eighteenth-century Russian literature. The picture of the provincial existence of the landed gentry with typical comical incidents and situations presented in "The Convent Girl" recalls the corresponding descriptions in "The Ignoramus" by D. Fonvizin. The author of the article quotes the opinions expressed by the Russian reviewers and critics of the eighteen thirties concerning Pogoryelsky’s novel; in view of the fact that they were all favourable one can conclude that it was an important event in the literature of that period. In "The Convent Girl" there is no satiric exaggeration of human drawbacks and defects, no melodramatic effects in the presentation of the inner feelings of the characters, neither has the writer abused of the juxtapposition of styles (the "low" and the "high" style). In the style, vocabulary, and above all in the method of character presentation (indirect characteristics by means of describing the characters’ material environment) applied in the novel one can trace the elements of Russian prose which were to acquire its classic shape in the writings of Nikolai Gogol and this is chiefly where the author sees the historical significance of Anton Pogoryelski’s "Convent Girl".