Simeon’s Lament: An Instance of Transnational Culture

• In Event: The Transnational Slavic Lyric

Abstract

By analyzing Simeon Polotskii’s Lament written for Maria Ilyichna, the first wife of Tsar’ Aleksei Mikhailovich who died in childbirth in 1669, this presentation demonstrates how the transnational character of East Slavic culture between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries allowed Simeon Polotskii (1629-80) to introduce into Muscovy elements typical of Latin and Catholic culture and to realize a synthesis between West and East Slavic traditions. Mediating between Western and Eastern spirituality led Simeon Polotskii to perceive the presence of death in a new, dramatic way, a determining factor for the emergence of self-consciousness and of lyric selfhood and for the flourishing of lyric poetry in Muscovy and the Russian Empire—from the elegy to theatricality, from occasional poetry to philosophical poetry.

Author

• Erica Camisa Morale, Stanford U