Making a life from whom: how pioneers from Perseus took an example
In his book, philologist Georgy Mineralov examines four mythological love stories — Cupid and Psyche, Orpheus and Eurydice, Perseus and Andromeda, Pygmalion and Galatea. The author's goal is "to help the reader see the beauty of images and vicissitudes created by authors in different eras and cultures based on the same ancient plots" and to understand what new meanings can be found in long—known material with a change in the social and spiritual situation, under the influence of both artistic and social factors. To what extent he succeeded, the critic Lidia Maslova found out, especially for Izvestia.
Georgy Mineralov
"Divine couples in myths, literature and art"
M.: KoLibri, ABC Publishing House, 2026. — 272 p.
According to Mineralov, the process of adapting ancient plots to the trends of the surrounding reality is subject to a certain general law: "The development and reinterpretation of myths and the ideas expressed in them in the works of writers, composers, painters and sculptors always preserves the logic of dialectics. Some authors try to deny the past, others creatively rework it, but everyone manages to add some new idea."
In the first chapter, Cupid and Psyche, which is the most extensive and occupies about a third of the book, the most interesting is a rehash of ancient history into the language of native aspens performed by a respectable man, academician and civil servant, editor of the newspaper of the Imperial Academy of Sciences, Ippolit Fedorovich Bogdanovich. In his spare time, for his own pleasure, he wrote the poem "Darling", starting not so much from the "Golden Donkey" of Apuleius, in which Cupid and Psyche meet for the first time, but from a later story by the French interpreter Jean de La Fontaine "The Love of Psyche and Cupid". In 1783, encouraged by the reviews of familiar readers, Bogdanovich decided to put "Darling" into print and thereby secured his place in the history of literature.
Perfectly aware of himself as the successor of Apuleius and La Fontaine, Bogdanovich at the same time brought a powerful national element to his "ancient tale in free verse", "brought the realities and reality of the world of Psyche closer to Russian reality: Psyche (or in earlier translations of Psiche — in the French manner) became a Darling, the dragon turned into a Snake of a Mountain.""Yudo, Koshchei and the Tsar Maiden appeared right there." Explaining that Bogdanovich shifted the accents in the story of Cupid and Psyche in accordance with the Russian mentality, Mineralov shows how in the text of the poem, the logic of the plot begins to unobtrusively determine the motives of Christian imagery, even if not openly mentioned.
Although the title of Mineralov's book contains "divine couples", that is, characters connected primarily by love relationships, the romantic theme of Minerals is far from limited. Perhaps his train of thought (as well as the thoughts of the artists, musicians, and poets mentioned in the book) only becomes more interesting when he manages to distance himself from the actual love theme and penetrate into completely different spheres.
For example, how Gavriil Romanovich Derzhavin managed to do this, who wrote the cantata Perseus and Andromeda with the subtitle "To the victory of the French by the Russians" during the war with Napoleon in 1806-1807. The analysis of this cantata is contained in the last pages of the book, in a special appendix, where the author, who adheres to a popular rather than strictly academic manner, decided to place additional materials with a particularly "high degree of literary criticism."
The philologist clarifies the historical and political context of the Derzhavin cantata: the work is specifically dedicated to the battle of Preussisch-Eylau, "where there were no clear winners, but in St. Petersburg it was considered a victory." The metaphorical series constructed by Derzhavin in poetic form is extremely clear: "Andromeda is Europe, Perseus is the Russian people, Zeus is Alexander I, and the monster is Napoleon Bonaparte." Russian Russian myth thus actualizes the ancient myth, giving it a "semantic ambiguity," and the important idea of the heroism of the Russian people makes him almost forget about the love meanings inherent in the myth (although, if you delve into Derzhavin's metaphor, it would be interesting to speculate about the prospects of a difficult geopolitical "love" between Europe-Andromeda and the Russian people- Perseus).
A very original refraction of the same plot can be observed in the sub-chapter "Perseus of the Soviet Man", which sheds light on the relatively little-known hypostasis of Korney Chukovsky as a popularizer of works of world literature for Soviet children in free retellings. The only ancient Greek myth that Chukovsky decided to retell was the myth of Perseus, which in 1934 was first published in the pioneer humor magazine Hedgehog under the guise of the fairy tale "Brave Perseus". Telling how Chukovsky refined and perfected the image of the ancient Greek warrior, Mineralov notes the educational potential of the "brave Perseus": "The young reader sees a story with clearly defined cause-and—effect relationships - Perseus becomes a role model for everyone. Not only a child of the gods, but any reader can be like him, seeing the value not in the benefits of kingship and power, but in a simple and honest life. Wherever he finds himself, with his actions, bravery and dedication, he will be able to endear himself to others, and the only thing that is important is that a loving person be by his side."
In addition to Chukovsky's tale, it is quite appropriate to recall the Soviet cartoon Perseus from 1973, where Perseus, being an example to follow, again "cannot be treacherous, prudent and unscrupulous," as is often typical of ancient Greek heroes, and "shows nobility in everything."
A frame from the cartoon "Perseus"
Summing up his philosophical research, Mineralov very elegantly arranges for characters from various myths, as he puts it, a "general gathering" recalling Vladimir Solovyov's poem "Three Feats" written in 1882. In it, the Russian religious philosopher gives from the height of his wisdom some useful instructions to Pygmalion, Perseus, and Orpheus. In short, they boil down to advice not to delude yourself too much, not to rest on romantic laurels even after exploits, and not to stop the hard hard work that is love: "...Solovyov would not be a philosopher if he did not believe that the realization of his dreams, the creation, the "revival" of this mutual love is a monumental achievement, but only the first step. <...> Two different people are constantly looking for a balance in which they will make each other better, support and defeat the monsters that threaten their happiness. <...> It is not for nothing that they say that one should not forget: after the completion of the fairy tale and the words "they lived happily ever after," the story only begins."
And Mineralov's research story rather ingeniously ends with a fundamental analogy between different characters: Psyche creates order out of chaos, like Pygmalion, uses ingenuity, like Perseus, and descends to the realm of the dead for beauty, like Orpheus, and all of them will eventually be saved by "forgiving love." Moreover, as the author of the book reassures in the final pathetic chord, such love may well save "all of us," if, of course, we are not lazy and frivolous: "But we will have to work hard, the main thing is to remember the idea of A.F. Losev, which became the epigraph to this book: "There is love on earth." a feat."
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