and playwrights such as Mikhail Lomonosov, Vasilii Petrov, Gavrila Derzhavin,
and Aleksandr Sumarokov, in addition to scientific treatises in translation or by
Academy scholars.
The century was one of tremendous ferment in literary genres, language, and
style; Russians“telescoped”two centuries of intellectual change into an indiscrim-
inate, simultaneous embrace of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century genres and
themes; they“transplanted”European literature and made it their own with
turbulent, charged intensity. Russia’s intellectuals from the 1730s through the
century and beyond consciously considered themselves the creators of“new”
Russian literature, as Irina Reyfman, Luba Golburt, and others have argued. The
stakes were high and the tasks were momentous: What form of versification works
best for Russian? Shall Church Slavonic or more vernacular be preferred? What
exactly was Russian vocabulary for the new scientific, philosophical, and narrative
needs of the day? Did different genres merit different registers of language? How
deeply should Russian poets, writers, and playwrights emulate classical genres, often
through the intermediary of French or English models? How much of secular, free-
thinking, Deist European thought should Russian writers accept in their pursuit of
European Enlightenment?
Russia’s great triad of writers in the middle of the eighteenth century—Vasilii
Trediakovskii (1703–69), Mikhail Lomonosov (1711–65), and Aleksandr Su-
marokov (1717–77)—struggled mightily with these and other issues of language,
linguistics, and poetics across the century, bequeathing a legacy to early
nineteenth-century writers such as Nikolai Karamzin and Alexander Pushkin
whoalsowerecalledtodefine“new Russian literature.”Irina Reyfman calls the
process the forging of a“creation”myth, in which unambiguous answers needed
to be found and a canon established. Tempersflared, polemics raged, but in the end
these eighteenth-century authors were, well into the twentieth century, dismissed as
inferior to the nineteenth-century greats. In their own day, Lomonosov and his
supporters managed to win the upper hand in issues of versification and eminence,
relegating Trediakovskii even in his day to a reputation as a buffoon and pushing
Sumarokov to the sidelines as well. Nineteenth-century critics tended to dismiss the
eighteenth century entirely, dismissing its baroque and classical forms and language as
not authentically Russian, awarding those laurels to the Romanticism and realism of
Pushkin and his followers. The eighteenth century’s dismissal was perhaps cemented
in the twentieth century, when Soviet scholars latched on to Lomonosov as a peasant
hero and Renaissance man of science and underplayed his literary work.
Observing such myth making and paradigm creation, scholars now are working
to recognize the tremendous work done by Trediakovskii, Lomonosov, and
Sumarokov, and many others, to advance language and literature in the eighteenth
century. Trediakovskii and Lomonosov laid the foundations for versification;
Trediakovskii wrote a Russian grammar; all developed vocabulary for the literary
language. Sumarokov founded Russian theater with an oeuvre of nine short
comedies and nine tragedies, four operas or ballet-operas and a religious drama,
and he worked out a Russian idiom of tragedy that encompassed Russian Orthodox
values in the face of French Enlightenment skepticism. Sumarokov also founded
Nobility, Culture, and Intellectual Life 437