Studia Litterarum (Dec 2017)
Оn a Poem by Johann Gottfried Gregory
Abstract
The article examines a little known and understudied Stuttgart poem that belongs to Johann Gottfried Gregory, Russian author of the German origin, author of the first play for the Russian court theatre and a minister of the Lutheran Church in Moscow. In 1667, while being on the diplomatic mission to Germany, Gregory leaves the autograph of the poem devoted to Russian life in the “album amicorum” of his friend, the owner of the hotel in Stuttgart Johann Allgayr. The text of the poem in German was first published by Nikolai Petrovich Likhachev in his book Friendly Aliens in the 18 th century Russia (1898). This article, for the first time, endeavors to reconstruct the history of the poem and show the evolution of Gregory’s literary style in the first phase of his work that remains obscure. The first part of the poem describes the life of the Russian people and bears on the main “encyclopedic” work of the 17 th century Russia, Description of the Journey to Muscovy written by Gregory’s contemporary, a German traveler, geographer and historian Adam Olearius. The second part of the poem is a praise to the Tsar Aleksey Mikhailovich, a genre that will be found in all Gregory’s plays written for the Russian theatre and will become integral part of the Russian court ceremonial in the last decades of the 17 th century. The poem was written under the influence of the 17 th century Baroque German poetry as represented in the work of Paul Fleming. Besides, Gregory’s Stuttgart poem is an authentic document of its time that reflects major cultural, religious, and historical events of the 17 th century, the life of the German Quarter in Moscow, and the foreigner’s vision of Muscovy under the reign of the Tsar Aleksey Mikhailovich.
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