The Icon and the Axe

Under such unfortunate auaspices was introduced the term "cosmopolitan," which became a classic tersrm of invective in Imperial and Soviet Russia alike. Sensuality, superficialklity, and cosmopolitanism were interrelated sins -all equated with the viruus of Voltaire and with bearers of the infection like Chudi.

The first dim outlines ? of a deeper moral reaction to Voltairianism was evidenced in the theater: tithe central ideological arena of Catherine's era. The importance of the emerrging Russian theater derived not solely from the sheer numbers of the playys, operas, ballets, and pantomimes that were written and performed-inncluding those of the imperial playwright and patron herself. Its importanace lay in the fact that in a world where the court life of the aristocracy had b become stylized and theatrical, the impersonal, formal theater tended to boecome by ironic transposition the only public arena in which the deeper ? concerns of the aristocracy could be dealt with in poUte society.

The alienation of the «intellectuals in many ways begins with the growing antagonism of serious playwrights toward the increasingly frivolous, largely musical theater of CCatherine's later years. A typical comic opera of

the 1780's, hove Is Cleverer than Eloquence, made fun of professors, philosophers, and enlightenment generally, ending with the chorus:

However people deceive, However reason jokes,

Truth proclaims to everyone:

Love will out-deceive you all.

Catherine forced the entire Holy Synod to sit through another, Le Philosophe ridicule; and her own profligacy was extolled in The New Family Group, which ended with a chorus to happiness at last freed from "either longing or monotony":

As you wish, so shall you live We will never interfere .. .Be

One sees the beginning of the reaction in Alexander Sumarokov, the director of the St. Petersburg theater, whose tragedies, comedies, and opera libretti provided the mainstay of the repertoire throughout the eighteenth century. Though always operating within the framework of secular enlightenment, Sumarokov tried to lead Russian taste back from hedonistic Voltairianism to Fenelon, Racine, and the Stoic philosophers of antiquity.

He gave Russian tragedy a disciplined fidelity to the classical unities of time and place and at the same time a bias for instructive moralistic themes. The aim of tragedy was "to lead men to good deeds," "to cleanse passion through reason."57 His short sketches and fables also sought to edify, and his writings did more than those of any other single figure of the age to provide Russian aristocratic thinkers with a new lexicon of abstract moral terminology. Far less religious than a natural scientist like Lomonosov, this natural philosopher attached the supreme value to reason, duty, and the common good. Even when writing "spiritual odes," he was calling for a new secular morality of aristocratic self-discipline.

To some extent, Sumarokov's ideal was that of "the immortal Fenelon" in Telemaque: vaincre les passions. This pseudo-classical poem was the first French work to become a smash literary hit in Russia. It was translated several times, and inspired a Russian continuation: the Tilemakhida of Tred'iakovsky-just as the Telemaque had been offered by Fenelon as a kind of continuation of Homer's Odyssey.

The search for links with the classical world led Sumarokov and other philosophically inclined Russian aristocrats to Stoic philosophy. The play that had been staged in Kiev in 1744 on the occasion of Elizabeth's pilgrimage to the Monastery of the Caves was The Piety of Marcus

Aurelius.68 The vanquished villain in the play was Anger, just as it was invariably passions like self-seeking and carnal love in the plays of Sumarokov. Falconet's statue of Peter was originally modeled on the statue of Marcus Aurelius in Rome, and was popularly referred to as Marcus Aurelius; Fonvizin's translation of the contemporary Elegy of Marcus Aurelius appeared in 1771; and La Harpe cited Marcus Aurelius as a model for all kings in his memorandum to Catherine on the education of Alexander I.59 The Stoic calm of the Roman emperor was seen as a model for the Russian aristocrat's efforts to master passion with reason. As Sumarokov put it:

The man of reason

Moves on through time with tolerance,

The happiness of true wisdom is not moved to rapture

And does not groan with sorrows.60