Biography. Sir Philip Sidney as an Elizabethan 'iconic figure' Hopefully not forgotten
Jan. 8th, 2007 | 12:25 pm
mood: bad
music: Sting - John Dowland's The Battle Galliard
Since we are talking about Elizabeth, I would like to write about one of the most beloved personalities of that time, Sir Philip Sidney. I admit, I don’t know too much about him, but this limited biographical information, as well as his poems, was enough to create sympathy :-)
Sir Philip Sidney (30 November 1554 - 17 October 1586), poet, courtier and warrior, is one of the most prominent personalities of the Elizabethan era.
The eldest son of Sir Henry Sidney and Lady Mary Dudley, Philip was born on the family estate of Penthurst, in Kent. His mother was the daughter of John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, and the sister of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, a favorite of Elizabeth I. His younger sister Mary, who married Henry Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, was a translator and philanthropist. It was to her that Sidney dedicated his greatest work, the novel Arcadia. Sidney Jr.'s godfather was the Spanish King Philip II.
After studying at Shrewsbury School and Christ Church College, Oxford, Philip traveled through Europe for three years, visiting France, where he took part in the marriage negotiations between Elizabeth and the Duke of Alençon, and also witnessed St. Bartholomew's Night, Germany, Italy, Poland and Austria. During the trip, Sidney not only improved his knowledge of languages, but also met with famous politicians and thinkers of the time, for example, with the famous poet Torquato Tasso.
Returning to England in 1575, Sidney met 13-year-old Penelope Devereaux, who inspired him to write the famous cycle of 108 sonnets “Astrophil and Stella” (1581, published in 1591), which became a significant phenomenon in English poetry (he used the poetic techniques of his beloved Petrarch, without, however, falling into dependence on the Italian teacher). The Earl of Essex, the girl's father, planned to marry his daughter to Sidney, but his death (1576) upset the marriage plans.
Philip devoted himself not only to art, but also to politics, defending the administrative reforms of his father, who was viceroy in Ireland, and also opposing the queen's French marriage, which led to Sidney's quarrel with Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford. A challenge to a duel followed, but Elizabeth forbade this duel. Philip wrote a long letter to the queen, in which he argued for the folly of marrying the Duke of Anjou. Elizabeth was outraged by such insolence, and Sidney had to leave the court.
During his disgrace, the poet composed the novel “Arcadia” (1581, published in 1595), dedicating it to his sister, and the treatise “In Defense of Poetry” (1580, published in 1590). Another famous Elizabethan, Edmund Spencer, whom Sidney met during that period, dedicated his Shepherd's Calendar to him. It is likely that Sidney took part in the Areopagus circle of English humanists, designed to bring English verse closer to classical models. He also began a verse translation of the book of Psalms, completed after his death by his sister.
In 1581 Sidney returned to court. That same year, Penelope Deveraux married Lord Robert Rich, against her will.
In 1583 the poet was awarded a knighthood.
Philip's original plans to marry Anne, the daughter of William Cecil, Queen Elizabeth's minister, fell through towards 1571. In 1583, Sidney married 14-year-old Frances, daughter of Sir Francis Walsingham, Secretary of State.
The following year, the poet met Giordano Bruno, who subsequently dedicated two of his books to him.
Family traditions and personal experience (during St. Bartholomew's Night he was in Walsingham's Parisian house) made Sidney an ardent Protestant. He repeatedly spoke out in favor of an attack on Spain, as well as the creation of a Protestant league to repel the power of Spain and its Catholic allies. In 1585 he was appointed governor of the Dutch Vlissingen, a year later he commanded a successful attack on Spanish troops near the Axel fortress. A few months later, Sidney fought under Sir John Norris at the Battle of Zutphen, during which he was wounded in the thigh. Twenty-two days later Sir Philip died. According to the famous story, wounded, he gave his flask to another mutilated soldier, with the words: “You need it more than me” (Thy need is greater than mine).
Philip Sidney was buried in London's St. Paul's Cathedral (02/16/1587). During his lifetime, for many Englishmen, the poet became a symbol of the ideal courtier: educated, dexterous - and at the same time, generous, brave and impulsive. Edmund Spenser immortalized him as one of the most brilliant representatives of English chivalry in his elegy Astrophel, one of the greatest works of the English Renaissance.
During the poet's lifetime, his works were not published, being known to a narrow circle of admirers. In 1591, the Countess of Pembroke collected and published her brother's works.
Sidney's very first biographer was his schoolmate and friend Fulk Greville.
In 1590, the poet's widow married Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, Sidney's failed brother-in-law, giving birth to three children.
One of the participants of the so-called "The Rye Plot" (1683), Algernon Sidney, was the great-nephew of Sir Philip.
Philip Sidney
Penelope Deveraux, Lady Rich
Francis Walsingham
Robert Devereaux, 2nd Earl of Essex
Philip Sidney wounded
|
Comments (10)
(no subject)
from:
date: Jan. 8th, 2007 10:43 am (UTC)
Yes, yes, he has a wonderful poem “My true love hath my heart and I have his”, which Lester reads to Elizabeth in the film “Elizabeth”. As far as I remember, he was considered the ideal of chivalry and his death was greatly mourned.
Thanks for the portraits;)
|
I hope they won't be forgotten...
from: labazov
date: Jan. 8th, 2007 11:26 am (UTC)
His sister Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke and his daughter Elizabeth, wife of Roger Manners, Earl of Rutland.
According to I. Gililov’s version, the married couple Mzhners were “Shakespeare”, and according to V. Novomirova’s version, Mary Sidney Herbert and her sons were “Shakespeare”. See William Shakespeare's Identity Mystery. .
P.S. There is also an absolutely speculative, but most interesting conspiracy theory that Philip Sidney did not die, but disappeared, and from the “underground”, together with Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, created Shakespeare.
Philip Sidney
(1554-1586)
Already during his lifetime, this wonderful poet turned into a legend. Family ties connected him with outstanding people of the era. The famous Italian Giordano Bruno dedicated his famous book “On Heroic Enthusiasm” to him. Sidney's godfather, who gave him his name, was the future King of Spain Philip II, married to the English Queen Mary Tudor. While fighting with his godfather's army in the Netherlands, Sidney received a fatal wound to the thigh. Tormented by thirst, he was given water, but, feeling that he was dying, he handed it to a slightly wounded soldier, saying that he needed help more. For the last time, Sidney served as a court steward, although this time he gave a drink not to the king, but to a simple warrior.
There was something Hamlet-esque in the personality of the poet, disappointed, composing poems in forced solitude, tormented by the fact that he was not allowed to serve for the glory of his fatherland. Nothing he wrote was published during his lifetime. Only in 1595 did the treatise “Defense of Poetry” see the light of day. In it, Sidney rebelled against violations of common sense and verisimilitude, especially in drama, thereby anticipating the tastes of the coming era of classicism. In 1591, two editions of the collection “Astrophil and Stella” were published, which marked the beginning in England of what is called the time of sonnets - it occurred in the last decade of the 16th century. (although this form arose much earlier).
“Astrophil and Stella” is the first complete poetic cycle in England, compiled into a book, composed of 108 sonnets and 11 songs. The number of sonnets was not chosen by chance: in Homer’s Odyssey, this is exactly how many playing stones were in the game played by the suitors who claimed Penelope’s hand. The winner could win - knock out the central stone, symbolically called Penelope, but only to feel more acutely that, receiving the symbol, he remained just as far from the desired goal. Sydney's lover was also named Penelope. According to the will of her father, the Earl of Essex, Sidney was even once considered her fiancé, not being too keen on marrying a very young girl whom he hardly knew. The marriage was upset, but Sidney truly fell in love with Penelope in London in 1581, when she was getting married. Then his sonnet cycle took shape. The hero's name is Astrophil, which in Greek means “star-lover”; Stella means “star” in Latin.
It is often said - and not without reason - that Sidney completed the process of creating the sonnet, and more broadly, the poetic form in England. Under his pen, the sonnet form was freed from imitation and ceased to be just a convention. This is discussed in the first sonnet of the cycle, the theme of which is creativity. To answer the painful question for the poet: “How to write?” - the answer is already ready. "Fool! - was the voice of the Muse. “Look into your heart and write” (hereinafter translated by V.V. Rogov).
In the second sonnet, love is born - unusual, non-banal. This is not love at first sight, but the poet is captivated by it all the more painfully and completely. Here Sidney has one of the first Russian associations in English poetry: “Like a Muscovite, born under a yoke, / I keep saying that slavery is no problem.” It turns out that in 1553 the first Englishman to travel to Ivan the Terrible’s Muscovy, Richard Chancellor, was recommended for this purpose by Sidney’s father. As you can see, the interest in the distant country was family.
The emotional plot of the collection is based on the feeling of the unattainability of the beloved, the gap between her and the poet. At first, hope grows, the poet passionately tries to be convincing. Then hope disappears, because the beloved, although she reciprocates, cannot break the vow of fidelity given to her spouse. Then separation sets in, and the feeling of hopeless loneliness grows in the poems.
Peering at the movement of the month across the night sky, the poet recognizes the image of a rejected lover, that is, his own image. Sidney uses the usual sonnet parallel between the earthly and the heavenly, but he does not see in the earthly an exalting similarity with the heavenly, but is surprised to discover the opposite: injustice reigns not only on earth, but also in heaven. Love in Sidney's poetry exists according to different laws than those set by the sonnet convention, dating back to Petrarch and preserved by his successors. Sidney in his sonnets even changed the physical type of beauty of his beloved - traditionally blond and blue-eyed - by glorifying her dark eyes and thereby anticipating the appearance of Shakespeare's Dark Lady.
Philip Sidney.
Illustration for the novel “Arcadia” by F. Sidney. Edition 1643
Key dates in the life of Philip Sidney
November 30, 1554- birth of Philip, eldest son of Sir Henry Sidney.
October 17, 1564. - departure to the Shrewsberg school.
Between 1566 and 1568- Became a student at Oxford University.
1571- left Oxford.
May 1572- Queen Elizabeth gives permission to Philip Sidney for a two-year journey to the continent.
May 1575. - return to England.
1576 g. - the death of Lord Essex and negotiations about marrying Penelope.
1577 g. - embassy to Germany. Writing "Discourse on Irish Affairs." Visiting Ireland, possibly with Edmund Spenser.
1578 g. - creation of the pastoral "Queen of May".
1579 g. — Letter to Queen Elizabeth regarding her proposed marriage.
1580 g. - Sidney lives on his sister’s estate and begins composing “Arcadia.” Writing of the treatise "Defense of Poetry", apparently between 1580 and 1583
1581 g. - may have been elected to the House of Commons.
1582 g. - the estimated time of creation of the cycle of sonnets “Astrophil and Stella”.
1583 g. - marriage to Frances Walsingham. Meetings with Giordano Bruno.
1584 g. - election to the new House of Commons. At the beginning of the year, he may have started work on New Arcadia.
1585 g. - leaves England. Stay in the Netherlands. 17 October 1586 - death of Philip Sidney.
In compiling this material we used:
1. Internet encyclopedia Wikipedia;
2. Philip Sidney. Astrophel And Stella. An Apologie For Poetrie Philip Sidney. Astrophil and Stella. Defense of Poetry The publication was prepared by L. I. Volodarskaya. M., "Science", 1982
Sidney had a love of science, language and literature, and became a patron of poets before becoming famous in this capacity himself.
Paying tribute to other forms of poetry - elegies , ballads , odam, heroic and satirical verse, after Sidney English poets preferred the sonnet to all others. E. Spencer, D. Davis left hundreds of miniature masterpieces contained in the same 14 lines.
F. Sidney acted as a serious theorist of literature and art in the treatise “ Defense of Poetry» - aesthetic manifesto his mug, written in response to Puritan pamphlets condemning “frivolous poetry.” He's penetrated humanistic reflections on the high purpose of literature, educating a moral personality and helping to achieve spiritual perfection, which is impossible without the conscious efforts of the people themselves. According to the author, the goal of all sciences, as well as creativity, is to “know the essence of man, ethical And political, with subsequent impact on it." With humor and polemical enthusiastically, leaning on " Poetics » Aristotle, as well as examples from antique stories, philosophy and literature, Sidney argued that for propaganda high moral ideals a poet is more suitable than a moral philosopher or a historian with their boring sermon and edification. Thanks to his boundless imagination, he can freely paint the image of an ideal person in front of an audience. The poet in his eyes grew into a co-author and even a rival of Nature: everyone else notices its laws, and “ only the poet... creates essentially a different nature,... something that is better than what is generated by Nature or has never existed...»
Sidney's thoughts about the purpose of poetry were accepted by the best writers of that time - E. Spencer, W. Shakespeare , B.Johnson. He laid the foundation for a tradition that determined the face of literature in the era of Queen Elizabeth, created by intellectual poets obsessed with high ethical ideals, but alien to philistine moralizing.
F. Sidney and his protégé E. Spencer became the founders of English pastoral. Sidney's unfinished novel " Arcadia ", in which prose and poetry freely alternated, telling about the exciting adventures of two princes in love in a blessed land, idyllic the description of which resurrected the image of the ancient Arcadia, but at the same time one can guess in it scenery native poet of England.
Links
- E.V. Khaltrin-Khalturina. An Anthology of Poetic Forms in Philip Sidney's Old Arcadia: Under the Sign of the Opposition between Apollo and Cupid// Verse and prose in European literature of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance / Rep. ed. L.V. Evdokimova; Institute of World Lit. them. A.M. Gorky RAS. – M.: Nauka, 2006.). (in Russian, in the author's design and with the permission of the author)
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.
- Philip Staros
- Philip Stamma
See what "Philip Sidney" is in other dictionaries:
Sydney- Philip (Philip Sidney, 1554 1586) one of the largest representatives of English noble literature of the Renaissance. An aristocrat by birth, a brilliant representative of the Elizabethan court, a brave warrior, poet, critic, traveler,... ... Literary encyclopedia
Sydney Philip- (Sidney, 1554 86) English poet. Genus. in an aristocratic family (he was the nephew of Lord Leicester), received an excellent education, visited France, Germany and Italy, meeting poets, scientists and artists everywhere, and was a welcome guest... ...
John Philip Key- John Key (born John Phillip Key; born August 9, 1961, Auckland, New Zealand) New Zealand politician, leader of the National Party of New Zealand. On November 8, 2008, in the 49th national elections, the National Party won... ... Wikipedia
Renaissance culture in England- The culture of the Renaissance, with its ideological basis - the philosophy and aesthetics of humanism, arises primarily on Italian soil. It is not surprising that the influence of Italy can be seen in all English writers of the Renaissance. But much more noticeable than... The World History. Encyclopedia
Comedy- a dramatic reproduction of the bad, vicious, but only such that it would excite laughter and not disgust (Aristotle, Poetics, Chapter V). This definition, given in Greece, is also true for modern culture, although the path of its development is purely ethical... ... Encyclopedic Dictionary F.A. Brockhaus and I.A. Efron
Aesthetics- constitutes a special branch of philosophy dealing with beauty and art. The very term E. comes from the Greek αίσθετικός, which means sensual, and in this sense it is found in the very founder of the science of beauty, Kant, in Criticism... ... Encyclopedic Dictionary F.A. Brockhaus and I.A. Efron
HUMANISM- (lat. humanus humane) a system of worldview, the basis of which is the protection of the dignity and self-worth of the individual, his freedom and right to happiness. The origins of modern geography go back to the Renaissance (15th-16th centuries), when in Italy, and then in... ... Philosophical Encyclopedia
Humanism- (from Lat. humanitas humanity, humanus humane, homo man) worldview, in the center of which is the idea of man as the highest value; arose as a philosophical movement during the Renaissance (see Renaissance ... ... Wikipedia
Humanist
Humanism- Humanism (from Lat. humanitas humanity, Lat. humanus humane, Lat. homo man) a worldview centered on the idea of man as the highest value; arose as a philosophical movement during the Renaissance (see Renaissance humanism) ... Wikipedia
An amazing story has been happening for several centuries with Philip Sidney (1554 - 1586), an Englishman of the Renaissance, who was nicknamed the English Scipio, Cicero and Petrarch rolled into one, as well as the most charming gentleman of his time. This is partly due to the ongoing search for a character who could replace William Shakespeare as a great playwright and who would be more in keeping with the tastes of later Shakespeare scholars. Partly - with all sorts of versions of the origin of the Protestant leader Philip Sidney, born in the minds of people for whom the truth is not enough about the incredibly rich life of a diplomat, warrior, writer, philosopher, founder of the Areopagus society, which united progressive secular and religious thinkers and poets who were very concerned about " ideological superstructure" over a social base that had just begun to take shape. And since there is irrefutable evidence that Sidney himself did everything he did and wrote everything he wrote, then there’s not much to go on with “epoch-making discoveries,” which is why from time to time people like to delve into his family relationships appear, and, apparently , “dissatisfied” with the non-aristocratic origins of his father, a faithful servant of Queen Elizabeth I, assign Elizabeth I as his mother, and, most often, Philip II as his father. And it would not be worth mentioning this (for example, portraits of brothers and sister have been preserved (1) - the family resemblance is obvious), if such “revelations” did not occupy - and more and more confidently - a place on the shelves in bookstores, worthy of a better life.
In my opinion, the people whose creations have survived to this day have themselves, in one form or another, told a lot about themselves so that it is worth bothering them with speculation, sometimes extremely ridiculous. Where everything is transparent, there is no need to turn stones upon stones, doing useless work, because reality, as a rule, turns out to be much more interesting than fiction, which we will try to convince our contemporary readers of. It is necessary to leave aside fantasies that are not supported by facts, and, turning to the historical and biographical tradition in Russian literary criticism, “to understand the biography,” as Yu. N. Tynyanov wrote in a letter dated March 5, 1929 to V. B. Shklovsky, “in order she harnessed herself to the history of literature, and did not run along like a foal. “People” in literature is a cyclization around the name; and the use of techniques in other branches, testing them before putting them into literature; and there is no “unity” and “integrity ", but there is a system of relationships to different activities, and a change in one type of relationship, for example, in the field of political[ly] activity, can be combinatorially connected with another type, say, attitude to language or literature... In general, the personality is not a reservoir with emanations in the form of literature, etc., but a cross-section of activities, with the combinatorial evolution of series" (2).
Philip Sidney was born on November 30, 1554 and, having lived only thirty-two years, remained forever in the history of England not only as a diplomat and military leader, but also as a three-time innovator of national literature - in poetry, prose and literary theory. The most charming gentleman of his time, the author of the famous aphorism: “I am not a heraldist, to explore the pedigree of people, for me it is enough if I know their merits” (3), - on his mother’s side he belonged to the highest English nobility, to the Dudley family, but On the side of his father, Sir Henry, he could not boast of the same, since Sir Henry was only knighted for personal merits in 1550 by King Edward VI (4), whose protector from 1549 was John Dudley, who married his son to the future " nine days old queen." The godfather of Philip Sidney, the eldest nephew of the Dudley sons and, in particular, the one who became the husband of Queen Jane and, together with her, was spared for some time by Queen Mary, was Prince Philip, who had not yet become King Philip II of Spain, but had already married the queen Maria and hopelessly expecting offspring. Most likely, such an honor was given to the noble family for political reasons, because Queen Mary did not immediately acquire the nickname “Bloody” and was still interested in influential supporters.
Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, was Elizabeth I's favorite, but he and Lord Warwick, Philip Sidney's uncles, also held senior government positions under her. For almost ten years of governorship in Ireland (1565 - 1571 and 1575 - 1578), Henry Sidney did not make much money, but his eldest son was long considered an enviable heir to the childless Earl of Leicester, which provided him with a high position and, probably, some advantages even among his young men circle. In any case, he received an excellent education at the Shrewsbury School, the most progressive of its time, where the first director was the respected scientist Thomas Ashton, who instilled in his brainchild the humanistic content with which it stood out from other educational institutions for a long time. Students studied Greek, Latin, and French in Shrewsbury, read and studied Calvin's Catechism, the works of Caesar, Cicero, Sallust, Horace, Ovid, Terence, and Virgil.
Boys from noble English families lived at the school and rarely saw their parents. However, in the Sidney family, the connection between parents and children, as far as we know, was not interrupted, and, addressing his eldest son in letters, some of which have survived to this day, Henry Sidney in one of them instilled in a TWELVE-YEAR-OLD boy moral concepts, probably simple, but not becoming obsolete over time: “Let the first impulse of your mind be a sincere prayer to Almighty God... Comprehend not only the feeling and essence of what you read, but also their verbal embodiment, and you will enrich your language with words and your mind with thoughts... Remain in joy... But let your joy be devoid of rudeness and ridicule of the people around you... Most importantly, never allow yourself to lie, even in a small way... Learn to be kind. Once you get used to it, you will do only good deeds, even if you don’t want to you, for the bad ones will be unknown to you. Remember, my son, the noble blood that you inherited from your mother, and know that a virtuous life and good deeds will be the best adornment of your glorious name" (5). This is what parental pedagogy was like in 1566...
As for the time of study, and even after that, information has been preserved about the friendship that connected Philip Sidney with the poet Fulk Greville, a classmate and his first biographer, as well as with his sister Mary Sidney, the future Pembroke, on whose estate he lived for several years and " for entertainment" which he wrote "Arcadia". Of course, he had parents, uncles, a brother, some kind of childhood and youth environment, but as for personal connections, very little is known even about his wife during the period of her relationship with Sydney, by the way, unlike Penelope Devereux, who became the heroine cycle of sonnets "Astrophil and Stella". There is also no information about Sidney's studies at Oxford, except that he probably stayed at the university from 1568 to 1571 and left due to the plague epidemic. Moreover, there is a version that Sidney studied not at Oxford, but at Cambridge University. However, it is known for sure that in childhood and adolescence Philip Sidney was brought up in an atmosphere of Protestantism, in love and respect for the great minds of antiquity.
May 1572 marks one of the most important events in the life of Philip Sidney, the significance of which is difficult to overestimate in the light of the young man’s entire future life. Queen Elizabeth gave him permission to travel to the continent for two years to improve his languages. However, instead of two years, the journey dragged on for three years, and Philip Sidney returned to England only in 1575. He was prudently provided with a letter of recommendation to the English ambassador in France, and first of all the young man went to Paris, where he lived for three months and witnessed the tragic events of St. Bartholomew's Night. The bloody massacre committed by Catholics against the Huguenots forever left a deep imprint on the minds of the young Protestant, finally establishing him in anti-Catholic sentiments.
After leaving France, Philip Sidney lives in Germany, Italy, where, according to some reports, he had a meeting with the great Torquato Tasso, in Hungary and Poland. Sidney is fluent in French, Latin, Italian and Spanish. So, one goal was achieved, but it was hardly the main one.
It is easy to assume that the eldest son of Sir Henry, nephew and heir of Lord Leicester, was almost destined from birth to a career as a diplomat and (or) warrior. And, if so, then Philip Sidney could not help but know about it and was preparing himself to be worthy of a future career. During the trip, he spent a lot of time meeting with government officials, studying the political, economic and religious life of the countries he visited. By the way, we note that the politicians, military leaders, scientists and representatives of the nobility that Sidney met during his travels were almost exclusively Protestants.
When Philip Sidney was in Frankfurt for the first time, he met the Frenchman Hubert Lange (1518 - 1581) (6), with whom he retained a friendly attachment for the rest of his life. He was a French Huguenot, a lawyer, a so-called "monarchomac", that is, a tyrant fighter who opposed absolutist theories, about whom Philip Sidney later wrote as a man with a "true heart, honest hands and a truthful tongue" ("Old Arcadia"). A prominent figure in European Protestantism, fifty-six-year-old Lange found a faithful comrade-in-arms in the eighteen-year-old boy, correctly assessed his talents, and remained his devoted friend and adviser until his death. It is possible that Philip’s Protestant environment during this trip to the continent and his further attempts to strengthen the ideas of Protestantism in Europe depended to a large extent not only on his upbringing in the family and school, on the St. Bartholomew’s Night he experienced in Paris, but also on the influence of the elder on the young man friend. In any case, the “tyrant-fighting theories” (7), deeply studied by the French, could not remain undiscussed in the conversations of Hubert Lange and Philip Sidney, which is obvious both from the behavior of the young courtier when he returned to England, and from his writings when the queen sent him from the court to his sister's estate, and from his military experience in the Netherlands, where he went not only by order of Elizabeth I, but also by the dictates of his heart.
It is interesting to note that evidence of Philip Sidney’s meetings during his travels (1572 - 1575) with many people who could become useful to him in the royal, primarily diplomatic, service has reached our time, but there is not a single reliable confirmation of either his acquaintance with European writers, nor his interest in modern European literature; moreover, not a single mention of Sidney of this time as a lover of poetry has been preserved. There is not a line about literature in his letters, and for the beauty of his style he does not use poetic quotations, unlike, for example, the same Lange, who from time to time quotes lines from Petrarch’s poems. True, it cannot be denied that all educated people - Sidney's contemporaries - were well versed in literature and knew how to compose in iambic and in rhyme. Well, and the quotes... Most likely, Philip Sidney was so focused on a different path in life that he did not need poetry to express his thoughts.
In June 1575, having returned to England after a fairly successful trip, the ambitious Philip Sidney was probably counting on important diplomatic assignments, since there was no significant war in which he could prove himself. As you know, the Queen of England did not like to fight. However, favorably received at court, Philip Sidney was initially awarded the honorable, albeit unprofitable, position of royal cupbearer. The fulfillment of this position, apparently, did not require Philip Sidney to be constantly present at court, because he lived for a long time with his father in Ireland. And in these same months, Philip’s spiritual rapprochement with his sister Mary (1561 - 1621), the future Countess of Pembroke and patroness of poets, who was considered one of the most educated women of her era, took place. It is assumed that the brother and sister read tirelessly, in the original and in English translation, Greek, Latin, Italian and Spanish books. Philip Sidney's interest in literature is clearly becoming more serious, not only in the cognitive sense, but also in the creative sense. In any case, in 1577 the German poet Melissa (1539 - 1602), who met Sidney in Heidelberg, writes about him as a poet, and this is the first mention of this kind about the Englishman Philip Sidney.
Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian II (1527 - 1576) died in 1576, and in February 1577 the Queen appointed Philip Sidney as ambassador to his heir, Rudolf II (1552 - 1612), with the task of conveying her condolences to the new emperor on the recent death of his father. At the same time, the queen instructed Sidney to collect information about what they thought on the continent about a pan-European Protestant league that could oppose the Catholics. It is worth noting that Rudolf II differed from his predecessors, since he was brought up at the Spanish court, from where he learned hatred of “heresy” and almost absolute obedience to the Jesuits. And if he did not play any significant role in the religious and political life of the territory under his control, then, as far as we know, it was only because his love for science and art prevailed over everything else. However, the situation in Europe was turbulent, the growing confrontation between Catholics and Protestants, who longed for not only religious, but also political independence, became increasingly dangerous, since, first of all, Philip II no longer had enough strength support papal power and exercise their own in foreign countries. In this regard, Elizabeth I needed to correctly assess the strengths of the warring parties and, out of many possible decisions, make the only right one for the benefit of England. Sidney, considering the war with Catholic Spain inevitable and necessary, with the consent of Lord Leicester, undertook active negotiations, most likely going beyond the orders of the queen, who, as time has shown, was doing her best to delay the moment of direct military conflict. From this time on, Philip Sidney's fame as a Protestant leader began to strengthen both in his homeland and abroad. However, having apparently regarded Philip Sidney’s embassy as unsuccessful, his Protestant aspirations as too aggressive, and his behavior as inadmissibly ambitious, the queen removed the young courtier, who dreamed of “exploits and glory,” from diplomatic activities for eight whole years. unaware of what a priceless gift she gives to English literature. Year after year passed, and Sidney was not honored with a single official commission, and it is not difficult to imagine how insulted, offended, oppressed he was, otherwise we would not have read in his letter of 1578, addressed to Lange, bitter complaints that his mind begins to “lose strength, weaken from the lack of resistance, for what else is worth applying efforts and thoughts to, if not to a cause that should serve the general good, which in our corrupt age we do not dare to hope for” (8).
Removed from the type of activity that the idealist (judging by the letter) Sidney probably considered his calling, he still did not give up trying to somehow gain the queen’s favor in order to implement his plans for creating a Pan-European Protestant League led by Elizabeth, which he had not forgotten, there are associations of European countries against Catholic Spain, which he considers the main enemy of Protestants in particular and independent Protestant states in general.
And then he takes up his pen.
Philip Sidney's first essay was political. Queen Elizabeth expressed dissatisfaction with the gentleness of Henry Sidney, who ruled in Ireland on her behalf, and in the fall of 1577 Philip Sidney wrote a Discourse on Irish Affairs (unfortunately lost), in which, as is known from historical sources, it is completely justified in meaning and eloquently in form supported the peaceful policy of his father, which did not very quickly, but brought the necessary results, in contrast to any attempt to forcefully influence the rebellious people (9). A year later, that is, in the fall of 1578, Philip Sidney entertains the queen with a pastoral of his own composition entitled “The May Queen” (10), which does not yet indicate the seriousness of his literary pursuits, for such writing was in vogue among the English nobility. By the way, in the same 1578, the poet Gabriel Harvey (1545? - 1630) published a volume of poems as an offering to the queen, the authors of which were the most powerful people in England. And among them is twenty-three-year-old Philip Sidney. It is unlikely that this publication speaks about the poetic ambitions of Philip Sidney, although for us this book is notable for the fact that his poems were published in it for the first time. Gabriel Harvey most likely expressed the respectful attitude towards Lord Leicester's nephew that was established at court after his return from his second trip to the continent.
In 1579, Philip Sidney made another attempt to interfere with the plans of the queen, who at that time was playing out the farce of her engagement to the Duke of Anjou, a Catholic by religion. On the advice of the Earl of Leicester, he wrote a letter to the queen urging her to refuse her marriage to a Catholic. And if for a daring attempt to give unsolicited advice on the same matter, a certain low-born William Stubbs had his hand cut off, but for the high-born Philip Sidney no visible troubles followed. Moreover, in November he took part in a tournament in honor of the anniversary of Elizabeth’s coronation, and on New Year’s Day, as usual, he exchanged gifts with her, still remaining one of the people closest to the throne.
However, dreams remained dreams, hopes for a military or political career faded, and then the Earl of Leicester, having married, produced a direct heir to his fortune, noticeably worsening his nephew’s position in the court hierarchy. In the absence of official positions, with the exception of the position of cupbearer, left to himself, Philip Sidney, in “his most (in his own words) carefree years,” turns to literature and, very quickly going from apprentice to master, in five to six years, that is, between 1578 and 1585, creates three works that became innovative, pioneering in the new English literature of the Renaissance. Quite rightly, William Ringler wrote in the preface to the complete collection of the poetic works of Philip Sidney about the motivation that always guided the author’s talents: “When Sidney, having retired from politics, took up poetry, he remained an opponent of the usual state of things. Unable to fight against the enemies of his religion outside his homeland, he led a decisive campaign against the literary backwardness of his compatriots" (11). The novel "New Arcadia", the cycle of sonnets "Astrophil and Stella", the aesthetic treatise "Defense of Poetry" (12) were first published after the death of the author, but they were rewritten many times, were widely distributed among the reading public and most decisively influenced the then literary process in England.
During these years, the so-called “most carefree years”, when Philip Sidney accomplished the seemingly impossible, creating, among others, three of his main works, which were not only of historical significance, he also took part in the work of Parliament, helped his father in his works , fought in knightly tournaments, and provided hospitality to noble political exiles from Catholic Spain. As far as is known, in 1583 he met Giordano Bruno, who dedicated his works to him. And at the beginning of the 1580s there was a very difficult love story in his own life, which, firstly, raises almost no doubt about its authenticity and has been preserved for centuries as one of the most famous love stories of all times and peoples, and, secondly, secondly, it became the reason for writing the cycle of sonnets “Astrophil and Stella”. We are talking about the relationship between Philip Sidney and Penelope Devereux (Deverex), who were, with a high degree of reliability, the prototypes of Astrophil and the black-eyed Stella, that is, the Lover of the Star and the Stars. In 1576, Lord Essex, Penelope's father, died in Ireland, and four days before his death, he expressed a desire for his daughter, who was thirteen years old at that time, to become the wife of Philip Sidney. However, his closest relatives, and Philip Sidney himself, were unlikely to take this news with pleasure, since the only heir to two childless, rich and high-ranking uncles could count on a better match. But two years later, Lord Leicester, secretly from the queen, married the widow of the Earl of Essex, that is, the mother of Penelope, as a result of which he fell out of favor, and with the birth of his cousin, who, however, did not live long, Philip Sidney lost his plans for the inheritance. There is no evidence that Philip Sidney ever saw Penelope until November 1581, when she became the wife of Lord Rich, so their actual meetings could only have taken place in 1581 and 1582, for the sonnet cycle was most likely written as According to English researchers of the poet's work, in the summer of 1582 in Wales, where his father was at that time. Despite direct indications of the reliability of the events and characters described by Sidney, the cycle of sonnets is not an exact recreation of what actually happened, but is a close interweaving of reality and fiction, since, according to Sidney himself, poetry creates only what it should or it could be, for “The poet is driven by the Idea... the perfection of what he creates depends on the imagination” (13). The idea of the cycle is this: in the confrontation between love and passion, morally elevating, and therefore true, love wins.
Like the Queen, send my mind away
May he, submissive to you, fully
Everything that is supposed to work will work at once:
The shame of a servant is the Master of wine.
Don't let fools blaspheme me
And "Here is love!" speak with contempt.
(Sonnet 107, translation by L. Temin)
Having led Astrophil along the difficult path of internal struggle to moral perfection, Sidney entrusted him with the task of leading others along it (14). Of no small importance for English sonnets, and lyrical poetry in general, was the image of Penelope, the predecessor of magnificent female characters (in particular, Shakespeare’s too), lively, vain, contradictory, but for whom duty still turns out to be above love. But in fact, the real and extraordinary Penelope Rich (though after Sidney’s death) had a lover, left her husband, helped her brother in the London uprising against the queen, that is, she was not at all a symbol of the “triumph” of moral duty.
Some time later, Philip Sidney married Frances Walsingham, the daughter of the Queen's Secretary of State, and in 1585 they had a daughter, Elizabeth, named after Queen Elizabeth. Subsequently, Philip's widow Sidney became the wife of the Earl of Essex, brother of Penelope Rich. And Elizabeth Sidney is the wife of Earl Rutland, to whom some researchers attribute the authorship of Shakespeare's works.
In 1585, the literary period in the life of Philip Sidney ended and ended as it began, due to external circumstances. This year he finally got what he had been waiting for for so long and for which, despite all sorts of obstacles and his own statements, he never stopped hoping. In November 1585, Queen Elizabeth expressed a desire to send Philip Sidney at the head of English troops to the Netherlands, where the Duke of Orange was fighting against Spanish rule. Sidney spent only eight months on the continent, but, judging by the memoirs of his contemporaries, with his intelligence and courage he earned the love of everyone with whom fate brought him together. In a battle near the city of Zutphen, he was wounded and, courageously enduring the pain, died on October 17, 1586. His body was transported to England and buried with military honors in St. Paul's Cathedral.
The Renaissance, or Renaissance, occurred in Europe in the 14th - early 17th centuries. At this time of great social change, modern European nations were formed, and new literature was born, reflecting the death of old feudal relations and the emergence of new, bourgeois ones. Liberation from the oppression of religious dogmas, the penetration of humanistic ideas into the spiritual life of Europe affirmed the idea of man as “an active being, connected by many complex relationships with other people, dependent both on the mysterious processes occurring in his body and on the even more unknown secrets of his spirit ", - wrote the famous literary critic R. M. Samarin, as if he saw before him the politician and writer, warrior and thinker Philip Sidney. - A new idea of \u200b\u200ba person developing in the struggle of contradictions that exist both in him and in the society around him was born together with the first glimpses of a historical view of reality, of society, along with that sense of perspective that is already emerging among writers and thinkers of the 16th century, along with a sense of retrospection, with an attempt to look into the past in order to understand the present and the future" (15).
The heyday of English humanistic literature came somewhat later than in other Western European countries, although already in the 14th century, the “father of realism” (in the words of M. Gorky) Geoffrey Chaucer (1343 - 1400) was familiar with the new Italian poetry, in particular with the poetry of Francesco Petrarch (16), and worked on the approaches to a new era, following the Italian pioneers who, “defending man’s right to glory... won for man the possibility of immortality not in the other world, but in the real world of history, politics, culture” (17 ).
Although Chaucer's followers did little to further the development of humanistic ideas in English literature, which at that time had essentially lost touch with Italian literature of the Renaissance, the 15th century was in its own way important for the establishment of national consciousness and, accordingly, for the history of literature, as it became for England, a period of accumulation of classical knowledge. English youths, who went in large numbers to Florence and Padua to study the Greek language, along with knowledge of Greek and Roman literature, brought home Hellenistic views, which thus penetrated into England primarily through the mediation of the Italians (as well as the French and Spaniards), who had already assimilated the indigenous who modernized these views, as R.I. Khlodovsky wrote about Petrarch: “The lyrical “I” of the “Book of Songs” is not just Petrarch falling in love, but a certain social and historical ideal, which Petrarch contrasted with the ascetic ideals of the Middle Ages and which... he tried to embody not only in his creativity, but also in himself, in his personality, in his private and public life. This was the “I” of the “new man,” a kind of lyrical personification of humanistic individualism" (18). And in 1474, printing also appeared in England, which greatly contributed to the formation of an independent personal worldview, as well as the formation of the English national language, the main core of which was laid in the 16th century.
The beginning of the 16th century saw, so to speak, a “breakthrough” of qualitatively new literature in England. Just as important as the discovery of new lands and the culture of antiquity, the knowledge of the spiritual and emotional life of man became for this time. What had previously been the sole responsibility of the priest was now also the work of the artist and poet. "Utopia" by Thomas More (1478 - 1535), dedicated to Erasmus of Rotterdam (1469 - 1536), poignant, popular among contemporaries, "The Book of Colin Clout" and "The Book of Philip the Sparrow", written by Erasmus' student - John Skelton (1460? - 1528 ?), as well as the lyrics of Thomas Wyeth (1503 - 1541) and Henry Howard, Earl of Surry (1517? - 1547) clearly marked the arrival of a new time in English literature. I would like to note that both Wyeth and the Earl of Surry, who wrote lyric poetry, successfully expanded the boundaries of the sonnet genre, the favorite poetic form of Renaissance poets in all European countries. They put into it not only the joys and sufferings of the heart, but also political content, as, for example, Henry Howard Earl of Surry in the sonnet “Sardanapalus”, in which he ridicules Henry VIII:
In the days of peace the Assyrian king stained
The sovereign spirit of debauchery and sin,
And at the time of battles I did not know the ardor of battle,
Dear to glorious souls, but defeat...
(Translation by V. Rogov)
However, after the death of Wyeth and Earl Surry, who successfully experimented with the sonnet, there suddenly came a certain lull in English poetry, which lasted, no less, for several decades, until the last third of the sixteenth century, that is, until the seventies, when literary creativity in England begins to pick up unprecedented rates and is taking on hitherto unprecedented scales (19). However, unprecedented interest in theater and literature is accompanied by persecution of their creators. Behind the religious campaign of the Puritans, who proclaimed: “The cause of the plague is sin, the cause of sins is ideas,” stood a class whose main principles of existence were the absence of emotional and any other connections between people other than naked calculation. And Philip Sidney “led the fight” not only against the English “lag”, but also against those “new Englishmen” who considered the category of “utility” as a legitimate reason for persecution of theaters. First of all, Sidney’s position is expressed in the treatise “Defense of Poetry” (20), which became the basis for Sidney’s own writings, as well as English humanistic literature in general as the first historical-philosophical-normative poetics in the English language, which proclaimed the highest cognitive and educational purpose literature in modern times. Sidney argued that literature, unlike science, has two components - knowledge and pleasure, and only it has the category of pleasure, which is necessary for the consistent embodiment of its cognitive essence and the achievement of its ultimate goal - the moral improvement of man. And one more thing, no less important. While not recognizing the idealistic concept of the nature of literary creativity, Sidney nevertheless does not deny the “divine origin” of talent, or gift, adding: “However, I must admit that if the most fertile soil still requires cultivation, then the mind, directed upward, must be led by Daedalus. Daedalus, as we know, has only three wings, which lift him to the glory he deserves: Art, Imitation and Exercise" (21).
We do not know in what order Sidney created his three great works, however, in opening the cycle of sonnets "Astrophil and Stella", he, as far as possible for a sonnet, accurately defined the task of English poetry, or literature (in the terminology of the "Defense of Poetry"), to the end 1570s and my task as the author of this time:
I thought of pouring out the ardor of sincere love in verse,
To entertain my sweetheart with images of troubles -
Let him read, understand and take pity later,
And mercy will show me after pity.
I leafed through volume after volume of other people's books:
Perhaps I dreamed, some poet,
Sprinkling songs on me like blessed rain,
The brain, burned by the sun, will tell you the way... But no!
My style, alas, was lame, far from Fiction,
The scourge of teaching hangs over Fidget,
The gossip of alien lines was hateful to me,
And in the pangs of childbirth I gnawed the feather in vain,
Not knowing where the words are that are really good...
“Fool!” was the Muse’s voice. “Look into your heart and write!”
(Sonnet 1, translation by V. Rogov)
It was time to embody the accumulated knowledge in one’s own creativity, naturally, taking into account the achievements of Italian, French, Spanish and other literatures, however, applying them to the English language, checking, firstly, their necessity for English literature and, secondly, the capabilities of the English language for their implementation.
Piece by piece, collecting factual material from the life of Philip Sidney, most English researchers make a completely justified assumption that the treatise "Defense of Poetry" was written somewhere in the period 1579 - 1583, the cycle of sonnets "Astrophil and Stella" - probably in the summer of 1582, and Philip Sidney began writing "Old Arcadia" either in 1577 or in 1580, when he lived at Wilton, the estate of his sister Mary Pembroke. In the early 1580s (most likely, after writing the “Defense of Poetry”), he began to redo it and, having rewritten two and a half books out of five, without finishing his work, he went to the Netherlands, where he died. Philip Sidney's biographer, his friend and poet Fulk Greville (1554 - 1628) in 1590 published the text of "New Arcadia", torn in half a phrase, and in 1593, thanks to the efforts of Mary Pembroke, both "New Arcadia" and "Old Arcadia" were published "together, that is, the ending of the "Old Arcadia" was added to the "New Arcadia". Thirty-four years later, Sir William Alexander wrote and included an interpolation in the text, which he placed after the New Arcadia and before the Old Arcadia. In this form, “New-Old Arcadia” is usually published in the native language, and in this form we present it to our readers (22).
Obviously, for the content of Sidney’s work, an important factor was the creation of the Areopagus society (23), probably following the example of the French Pleiades. Gabriel Harvey called it "Areopagus". The society was headed by Philip Sidney, its members were Gabriel Harvey, Edmund Spencer (1552? - 1599), Fulk Greville, Edward Dyer (1543 - 1607), probably some bishops. Judging by the name of the society, its members, coming together, discussed not only poetry, but also political and religious problems, problems of state power and the admissibility of an uprising against a ruler vested with royal power. It is possible that when “Old Arcadia” was created, this society did not yet exist. Therefore, in the “trifle” written for the entertainment of his sister, there are probably no motives present in “New Arcadia”; however, in the first version, as all English researchers admit, these prosaic borrowings are by no means student-like, either in form or in spirit , in contrast to the poetic inserts, which, judging by the variety of rhythms and meters, were intended not only to decorate the novel, but also to become an experiment in English versification. Philip Sidney wrote 286 poems, and 143 of them contain different types of stanzas and lines, and 109 appear only once, and most were previously unknown to the English. Moreover, in Sidney's poetic heritage there is not a single native English ballad. “I leafed through volume after volume of other people’s books...” If Sidney took the setting from the pastoral novel “Arcadia” (1481 - 1486, published in 1504) by the Italian Jacopo Sannazaro (1458 - 1530), from the entertaining “Ethiopica” by Heliodorus ( III century AD) - a rather unexpected ending, in which the judge and the condemned are related by family ties, and from the Spanish novel "Amadis of Gaul" (late XIV - early XV centuries), from which the epic element had already begun to be replaced by the allegorical and educational , - the main storyline with disguises, then all these borrowings in one way or another already “betray their genre roles” (24). Firstly, almost nothing remained of the epic even in the first version, and “Old Arcadia” affirms a new genre - the novel. Secondly, this is not so much a knightly novel (as a love, political, philosophical, adventure novel, with elements of almost all prose genres of TODAY), since the heroes are not actively involved in real knightly activities (unlike the second version), since are in a state of love and long to achieve reciprocity from their ladies. Thirdly, in the comedy with disguises before, unlike “Old Arcadia,” characters of such high status did not participate, because this implies comedic situations that are impossible for real chivalric romances. And so on... Actually, the first version, although written, according to Sidney, solely for the entertainment of her sister, is, if not an original text, then an obvious parody of existing genres in Europe. Perhaps in this too, Philip Sidney (following the example of D. Chaucer, who borrowed the plot of the poem "Troilus and Cressida", or T. Malory, the author of the novel "The Death of Arthur") influenced William Shakespeare, who firmly learned that it does not matter what the source is original composition, the main thing is the end result. By the way, this is probably the only thing that Philip Sidney inherited from traditional folk art with its principle of anonymity, since in everything else, as regards his main works, he was a convinced innovator.
As a member of the Areopagus, in which his like-minded poets participated, Philip Sidney could not sooner or later come to the idea that it was necessary to somehow express his (or common to all his comrades) ideas regarding what a new English literature should be and what should be its place in the spiritual life of the country. It must be said that before Sidney, two poetics were written in England. One was written by S. Gosson and was called “The School of Errors” (1579, dedicated to Philip Sidney), and in it the author rejected poetry, insisting on the principle of “usefulness.” Another was written by Thomas Lodge, and was published in the same year under the title "Reply to Gosson." In it, Lodge opposed Gosson from the same positions of “utility.” And only Philip Sidney, taking this too into account, managed to overcome the narrow class boundaries of Protestant thought and at the same time affirm, as already said, the highest cognitive significance of literature. Therefore, it is very important, it seems to me, to draw a line between the early works of Philip Sidney, that is, written before the Defense of Poetry, and the later ones, in which he appears at the same time as a brilliant writer, a philosopher of modern times and a tireless innovator. It is not known exactly when Philip Sidney wrote his treatise, A Defense of Poetry. However, it is known that this was in the period 1579 - 1583, and only after writing it did he create the cycle of sonnets "Astrophil and Stella", permeated with the ideas of his poetics, as well as the (unfinished) novel "New Arcadia", which also could not appear on light before the work on the “Defense of Poetry” and before the establishment of the Areopagus Society.
First about the poems. All the poetic insertions from the first version of Arcadia were retained in the second version, but were mainly moved to the end of the “books”, creating a so-called pastoral frame, and this suggests that Sidney was not particularly interested in his poetic achievements of these years, since he had already conceived or, possibly, even written the sonnet cycle “Astrophil and Stella,” consisting of one hundred and eight sonnets and eleven songs. The period of “pioneering” transformation of individual poetic techniques and genres into something holistically English, following the behest of his older contemporary Roger Ascham (1515 - 1568): “To write about an English subject for the English and in English” (25). Most likely, the poems from "Old Arcadia", as well as the poems from the cycle "Some Sonnets", exhausted Sidney's innovative interest, convincing him that the English language was suitable for almost all genres of European poetry. By the way, we note that almost half of all the poems written by Sidney are sonnets, of which there are thirty-three different types. At first, as far as is known, Sidney preferred the form of the sonnet, which became established as the Sarri sonnet, but later became known as the English or Shakespearean sonnet. This sonnet contains three unrelated rhymes, a quatrain and a final couplet. Twenty of the thirty-four early sonnets are written in this manner. However, then the most preferred form (out of one hundred and eight sonnets in the cycle “Astrophil and Stella” there are sixty such sonnets) became the form with a rhyme like abbaabba vgvgdd, that is, the form that Wyeth preferred: the classical Italian octave and sestet with a couplet highlighted by rhyme. Most often, the conclusion becomes unexpected and sometimes paradoxical for the reader. For example, in sonnet 71 in the cycle “Astrophil and Stella,” the octave glorifying the spiritual perfections of Stella is followed by a sestet in which the final couplet would be the envy of the master of paradox Oscar Wilde himself:
Without knowing it, maybe
You are all around - and I am a witness to this! -
Do you know how to make someone fall in love with you?
And turn love into Virtue.
“Alas,” sighs Passion, the hungry beggar,
All this is so... But I would like some food!
(Translation by L. Temin)
Having written the first full-fledged novel in English history, Philip Sidney saw the main task of literature in its positive - from a moral point of view - impact on people, in particular, in such an important issue for the Renaissance as the attitude to love, which became the reason and cause of many philosophical works in all European countries. In “Defense of Poetry” he writes: “... the creation of Cyrus as a special perfection may be accessible to Nature, but only a Poet can show him to the world so that many similar Cyruses will appear, let them only see with their own eyes why and how his creator created him " (26). He considered it necessary for a writer to create a perfect character, but in order for the reader to believe in his perfection, it is necessary to lead this character along a difficult path of improvement, as the author quite clearly said in “New Arcadia”: “... although the roads are bad, the end of the journey is the very pleasant and worthy" (book 1).
"New Arcadia" is (over)saturated with love conflicts. It seems that there is not a single question discussed in the 16th century about the love of a man for a woman and a woman for a man that would not be illustrated here. Judging by the author's erudition, as well as by the text of the second version of "Arcadia", as a philosophical basis on which Sidney builds his concept of love, from many significant works (Guido Cavalcanti, Francesco Cattani, Tullius Aragon, etc.) on Two essays come to the fore. The first is the treatise “On the Courtier” (1516 - 1521) by the Italian Baltassar Castiglione (1478 - 1529). In it, the author shows an ideal person who, in addition to all other virtues, must also demonstrate the ability to love: “In the fourth book, Castiglione ... talks about the nature of love, and although he attaches the highest importance to spiritual, ideal love, he does not bypass sensual love , reveals her psychology, for example, discusses kissing in detail" (27). And the second is the dialogue “Raverta” (1554) by the Italian Giuseppe Betussi (1515? - 1573?), in which the Neoplatonic tradition is completely rethought (28) and the psychology of earthly, human love comes to the fore with many questions that remain insoluble to our time . Who loves stronger and more permanently - a woman or a man? What is more difficult - winning love or keeping it? What is jealousy? Can love change? What is the dialectic of love? And so on... The conclusion is obvious. “The philosophical tradition (in Betussi) merges with practical issues of life, with questions of morality and morality. And this was precisely the new thing that formed the basis of the philosophical and literary tradition of the New Age...” writes V.P. Shestakov in the article "Philosophy of love and beauty of the Renaissance" (29). Moreover, considering the Renaissance love story to be one of the most important traditions of European culture, he argues that “it permeates art, literature, philosophy, ethics and aesthetics. That is why familiarity with the concepts of love of the Renaissance helps to understand much about the character of European culture... "(30) The first in England to show almost all versions of the love relationship between a man and a woman, Philip Sidney still paid special attention to the love of the two main characters, princes Muzidor and Pyrocles, creating from them, in the words of Du Bellay, "talking pictures of Poetry" and conducting them along the difficult path of moral improvement, at the end of which he saw not so much heavenly bliss as fruitful activity for the benefit of humanity.
Nevertheless, even if the remaining episodes of happy and unhappy love in “New Arcadia” are mostly background, they represent a colorful variety of love pictures that not only highlight the two main love lines in the novel, but also serve as a unique and, which is impossible not to emphasize, once again, England's first "encyclopedia" of Renaissance ideas about love. By the way, in this Sidney also develops the European tradition, since treatises on love were not always scientific treatises, turning through the efforts of some authors into real works of art, for example, “On the Courtier” by Baltassar Castiglione.
I'm looking for you, love, I'm running for you.
I’m burning with fire, putting out someone else’s fire.
Whatever I condemn, I do the same:
("New Arcadia", translation by L. Volodarskaya)
Shortly after St. Bartholomew's Night, which Philip Sidney experienced in Paris and which literally shocked him, the anti-tyrant treatise "Claim against Tyrants" was published (first in Latin, then in 1574 translated into French as "Claim against Tyrants or on Legal Power sovereign in relation to subjects and subjects in relation to the sovereign"), and although it was published under a pseudonym, it was established that signed in the name of the Roman republican Junius Brutus, it was the work of F. Duplessis-Mornay and Hubert Lange, whose friendly, mentoring closeness to Sidney is known to all researchers of the life and work of the English humanist. The treatise states that (1) the rebellion of any person against a tyrant who has no legal right to the throne is just and justified, for this tyrant is trying to destroy the established order of government, and also (2) if the legitimate ruler “deliberately destroys the welfare of his subjects if he unceremoniously opposes official proceedings and laws... if he persecutes his subjects as enemies" (31). This means that the ruler is not just “not very good” and they have already tried many times to exhort him before the aristocrats holding high government positions can call for an uprising, which under no circumstances can be done by a simple person, who in case of defeat can only rely on God or flee the country. Note that this kind of writings by the British, for example, those close to the Areopagus, Christopher Goodman and George Muchanan, as well as Bishop Ponet, are much more radical than the French treatise; in any case, they all believed that the common people have the right to speak out against the tyrant, and neither one did not support “the correct order of the uprising” (32). As for Philip Sidney, whatever importance he attached to the theoretical writings of the English, he fully supported the concept of the uprising of the French Huguenots, as Martin Bergbusch writes: “There is no doubt that when he wrote about the uprising in New Arcadia, he was more interested in events on continent than the situation in England, because for Sidney, as for more orthodox politicians, rebellion against their intelligent, diligent and highly Protestant queen was unthinkable" (33). This is partly true, judging by what is known about Philip Sidney. But in his youth, he did not remain silent and gave the queen advice. So why, even with undiscussed loyalty to Queen Elizabeth, should he not be interested in events in Britain? It is possible that Philip Sidney could have meant not only events on the continent, but also the confrontation between Mary of Scotland (1542 - 1587) and Elizabeth of England that lasted for many years, and the right to the throne of Elizabeth herself, and endless attempts at rebellion in Ireland, and much more from the turbulent life of Britain in the 16th century, which by no means had a negative impact on his loyalty to the queen, on the contrary, encouraged him to defend her rights (as later William Shakespeare did in the Chronicles). Maybe he was simply frightened by “rebellion, senseless and merciless,” as two and a half centuries later he would be frightened by another poet, who also followed the path of a pioneer, but in Russian literature?
The New Arcadia describes five uprisings in which Pyrocles and Musidorus are involved. In three, in Laconia, Pontus and Phrygia, they help the oppressed population, and in the other two, in Arcadia, they protect the monarch. It is clear from everything that the author approves of the uprisings in Laconia, Pontus and Phrygia and disapproves of the uprisings in Arcadia, and the first three uprisings were raised against a “completely bad” (as defined by M. Bergbusch) monarch, the uprisings were led by representatives of the nobility, who are able to curb the intemperance of the people and accustom them to the discipline necessary for victory. And the participation of foreigners is not a contradiction, of course, if they do not act from selfish motives. Thus, in “New Arcadia” Sidney fully agrees with the concept of rebellion proposed by his teacher Hubert Lange, showing such an attitude towards the people, allegedly unable to act with dignity without aristocratic leaders, which runs counter to the opinion expressed in their writings by the Englishmen Ponet and Goodman and Buchanan, since they did not consider the only duty of the people to obey the authorities. As for the two uprisings in Arcadia against King Basilius, it is obvious that neither the more radical English nor the more cautious French could approve of them, firstly, because King Basilius was not a tyrant, and they did not really try to " educate,” and, secondly, because the reasons that led to both uprisings were the most selfish.
One of the most famous researchers of European cultural history, P. M. Bicilli, wrote this: “The Middle Ages opposed the world of nature not to the world of culture as the creative activity of man, but to the supernatural world, supernatural, given once and for all - God, to whom humanity joins through contemplation. Redemption, in the sense of liberation from the spontaneous power of blind, natural law, the Middle Ages thought it was possible only by leaving the “world”, escaping from nature, death, but (unlike the Renaissance - L.V.) not by creatively overcoming nature, asserting one’s self-legitimacy and the subordination of nature to this latter" (34). Moreover, it was “during the Renaissance that a person’s attitude to the world changes dramatically. From an object to a subject, from a “field” to an actor, from “personification” to a person” (35). This is how, having crossed the line between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, one of the greatest humanists, Philip Sidney, using the experience accumulated by European literature, was the first to cross the English literary “off-road”, paving the way for Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, John Donne, John Milton and many others. many others. The “trifle,” that is, “Arcadia,” supposedly written for the entertainment of his sister, which to this day is accused by foreign researchers of many sins, in particular the sin of unoriginality, is in fact an outright MYSTIFICATION, which the author not only drew a line under the medieval epic and marked the beginning a new type of narrative literature, that is, the novel, but also within the novel laid the foundation for many different prose genres that appeared in the relatively near and distant future.
There remains one question that probably arises in any reader of both Philip Sidney’s novel and this article: why were the three greatest works of the English author in demand in Russia only in the second half of the twentieth century? One can assume an element of chance. Someone called Shakespeare the first English writer, and so it was, especially since Shakespeare was to some extent Sidney’s heir (not only in sonnets). Chaucer, Malory, Sidney, and not only them, remained left out of Russian literary history for a long time. Shakespeare - and then immediately the romances. It was the romantics, and not the philosophizing pioneer, who were needed at the beginning of the 19th century in Russian poetry, in which the pioneers worked, and since the English romantics were dependent on the poets of the Renaissance, their experience one way or another penetrated onto Russian soil. It's a pity of course. It is possible that otherwise, that is, if Sidney had appeared in the field of view of Russians earlier, Pushkin would not have had to so painfully build the edifice of Russian literature, and Lermontov would not have desperately sought topics for his poetic revelations and complained about their absence...
And one last thing. Several poetic translations from the novel "Arcadia", published for the first time:
Ah, I changed my appearance and my thoughts too,
I no longer fight, doubly in captivity,
Remnants of strength, oh woe is me, the result,
I don’t curse my betrayal.
But whose eyes could bear such a blow?
My mind sank, unable to bear it.
And the strongest citadel is no longer there,
And the battlefield has long been yours.
My eyes are only happy for you,
The mind knows power with just one thought:
The servants * he is in slavery - embraced with joy,
And I dream of falling before you.
So why be surprised at women’s dresses?
When do I long to know you alone?
…………………………..
Thank you, God Pan,
That you saved my life.
And thank you for being elected
I am the one who won the battle -
Rumors sing his praises,
But I held the enemy.
When the moon caresses your gaze,
Showing us your bright face,
Then Sir Sun awaits rewards,
After all, he sends her a golden ray, -
Well, let the rumor sing to him,
But I held the enemy.
………………………
It was in vain that you wanted to darken your eyes
The image that slipped away through tears
After all, you etched it in your heart,
And I see, even though I can’t bear to see.
In vain, heart, you, flaming,
Still, I thought I could put out the fire with sighs,
After all, sighs, as if returning to bellows,
They will only inflate the heat even more than before.
You have lost your mind and heart from now on,
So don't give up my head,
Even though they predicted the fall of the stronghold
My eyes have opened the gates to the enemy;
Although my struggle, alas, is in vain
And my life is subject to strange death.
………………………..
Let old age not disgrace my desires,
The holy soul in mortal flesh is:
The older the oak, the brighter the blaze,
And the smoke shouts a message to us about youth.
May my hair not become white
In your eyes, disgracing me,
After all, whiteness attracts all eyes,
And they all welcome you.
In old age we are wise and fair,
In old age we don’t fuss in vain,
In our old age we are not childishly mischievous,
Another honor has been appreciated over the years.
In its own way, old age is blessed
And it does not disgrace high desire.
…………………
O you, in the sanctuary of living trees
Having found your home, O Deities,
Lords of the forests, I, unable to bear it,
I address bitter words to you,
I swear to you, Gods, I am firm in my oath:
I am pure in thoughts and feelings.
Whitest stone, your whiteness
That my mind is pure; you are so strong
Like a heart in my chest; and I
I take you as a messenger so that everyone
I found out: no matter what happened to me, oh shame,
Your law will not be forgotten.
Innocence, you are the highest in the sky,
Our appearance is your immortal gift,
I am faithful to you in reality and in dreams,
My heart is forever captivated by you:
While my soul is carried away to you,
I swear to live and die innocent.
……………………….
Wanting to give eternity to solid thoughts,
This strong marble was chosen by words,
But thoughts and words suddenly began to lie,
Not afraid to stain yourself and the stone,
Words are powerless, marble is full of strength,
There are many words, marble is always lonely,
The words are black, although not blacker than ink,
Natural marble is not whiter than white,
Oh, never with eternal marble
A woman's hand, alas, cannot cope.
…………………………
I live in love and yearn for love,
Loving, I perish, as if not loving.
In cruelty I seek mercy,
I'm looking for you, love, I'm running for you,
I’m burning with fire, putting out someone else’s fire,
Whatever I condemn, I do the same:
I lie without strength, passion has driven away peace,
I'm sick of love. Go away, please.
Oh, blind God, this is your fault,
Boy, even though you are hundreds of years old.
So a child with a bird, the hour is uneven,
She’ll take it to play, but there’s no life in it.
I pray to you, child Cupid, unfortunate one:
Give me love or don't torment me in vain.
…………………………
The more dangerous force is not death, but love,
Their arrows have been familiar to me for some time:
But death, having wounded me, did not kill me;
Love shoots thoughts point blank.
Perhaps the doctor will save us from death,
You cannot escape from the illness of love;
Death will torture the body meticulously,
Love tortures the mind with happiness.
Death makes no difference to anyone,
More legible love arrow!
Death has a more merciful custom,
Love is sweet even in cruelty.
Death is deliverance, love is prison,
Not death, love is free to execute itself.
……………………….
Love in the soul is like a stamp of beauty,
Dressed in the veil of innocence,
I couldn’t hold back my loud moans,
After all, now she is despised.
Like this. That's it, the more I love,
All the more bitter is the wrong verdict for me,
With melancholy comes anger, no matter how hard I endure it,
She furiously wages her eternal argument.
The stronger the evil, the more thoughts about
Who do I hate and then
I remember good things, good things,
Love takes over me again.
Where to find the medicine - to cleanse the blood,
So that anger does not inflame my love.
…………………………
Oh night, you are a rest from worries,
A delight for lovers, a time of passion,
You bring us peace in any adversity,
Day dreams quietly come true.
What Phoebus? Golden vestment?
Looking at its shine, we are in its power,
And he deprives earthly life of sweetness,
Plunging her into self-humiliation.
Shining stars, innocent dream
And silence (the mother of the wisdom of the immortals),
Everyone knows: at night even the sun melts.
In a desert life you are the only shelter,
The soul is brighter in the cherished twilight,
There is heaven in the heart, and there is plenty of goodness.
_______________________________________________________________________________
- By the way, funny tales also appear from time to time about the origin of her sister, Mary Pembroke, née Sidney, as well as about the fate of Elizabeth, daughter of Philip Sidney.
- RGALI, f. 562, op. 1, units hr. 724.
- Quoted from the book: Barg M.A. Shakespeare and history. M., 1979, p. 162.
- Edward VI (1537 - 1553) - King of England and Ireland, the only son of King Henry VIII. His reign was marked by the strengthening of Protestantism, not only by the wishes of the protectors, but also by his own consent.
- . Edit. By W. Ringler. Oxford, 1962, p. XVII.
- By the way, it was he who wrote about Russia in a letter to Calvin in 1558: “If any power is destined to grow, it is this one.”
- For more details see: Elfond I.Ya. Tyrannoclasts. Saratov, 1991, pp. 79 - 102.
- The Poems of Sir Philip Sidney, p. XXVIII.
- In sonnet 30 of the sonnet cycle "Astrophil and Stella", Sidney directly speaks of the advantages of England's peaceful policy in Ireland, which his father adhered to.
- The title echoes the title of the poem “The Fairy Queen” by E. Spencer.
- The Poems of Sir Philip Sidney, p. XXVIII.
- The cycle of sonnets “Astrophil and Stella” and the treatise “Defense of Poetry” were published in Russian in the book: Philip Sidney. . - M.: Science, Literary monuments, 1982.
- Philip Sidney. Astrophil and Stella. Defense of Poetry. M., 1982, p. 154.
- For more details, see: Volodarskaya L.I. The first English cycle of sonnets and its author. In the book: Philip Sidney. Astrophil and Stella. Defense of Poetry. M., 1982; Volodarskaya L. I. The poetic innovation of Philip Sidney (1554 - 1586). Abstract of the dissertation for the scientific degree of Candidate of Philological Sciences. M., 1984.
- Samarin R. M. ...This honest method... M., 1974, p. 36 - 37.
- Geoffrey Chaucer mentions Petrarch's name in the Prologue and the Scribe's Tale in The Canterbury Tales. Moreover, he translated Petrarch's sonnet CII into English within the poem "Troilus and Cressida" (Book I, stanzas 58 - 60), which in terms of genre and content represents a completely new example for English poetry.
- Khlodovsky R.I. Petrarch. Aesthetic problems of Renaissance humanism. Abstract of the dissertation for the scientific degree of Candidate of Philological Sciences. M., 1975, p. 12.
- Khlodovsky R.I. Francesco Petrarca. Poetry of humanism. M., 1974, p. 160.
- For example: for the period 1582 - 1601. In England, more than twenty sonnet cycles were created, marked by talent and originality and surviving to this day.
- For more details see: Volodarskaya L.I. First English poetics. In the book: Philip Sidney. Astrophil and Stella. Defense of Poetry. M., 1982, pp. 292 - 304. Volodarskaya L. I. P poetic innovation of Philip Signey (1554 - 1586). M., 1984.
- Philip Sidney. Astrophil and Stella. Defense of Poetry. P.201.
- In the second half of the 1920s, an opinion arose that “Old Arcadia” did not belong to the pen of Philip Sidney, since it was a reworking of “Arcadia” by Sannazzaro, “Ethiopica” by Heliodorus and “Amadis”. The British probably have a whole library of meticulous studies of what borrowings were made by F. Sidney when creating “Old Arcadia”. Even here in the 1980s, a dissertation was defended, naturally, a compilation on this topic. However, in my opinion, this problem should be of interest only to literary historians and is unlikely to be of interest to readers who often deal with borrowings. The result is important. That is, how original, attractive, and viable the end result is. By the way, William Shakespeare borrowed plots from Arcadia, and his black-eyed and dark-haired lady from the cycle of sonnets Astrophil and Stella.
- Areopagus, Areopagus - an authority, a council of elders in Ancient Greece. In ancient mythology, the founder of the Areopagus was Athena.
- Andreev M. L. Chivalric romance in the Renaissance. M., 1993, p. 214. It’s funny that the author first recognizes Philip Sidney’s “Arcadia” as essentially not written by him, and then just as confidently admits that Philip Sidney completely modified the borrowings, pursuing his own goals.
- Quoted from the book: Saintsbury D. The Early Renaissance. L., 1901, p. 260.
- Philip Sidney. Astrophil and Stella. Defense of Poetry. P. 154.
- . M., 1992, p. 78.
- For more details see: About the love and beauty of women. Treatises on love during the Renaissance. M., 1992.
- Shestakov V.P. Philosophy of love and beauty of the Renaissance. In the book: About the love and beauty of women. Treatises on love during the Renaissance. P. 13.
- There, p. 14.
- Bergbush M. Rebellion in "New Arcadia". In" Philological Quaterly", published by the University of Iowa, vol. 53, no. 1, p. 30.
- Ibid., p. 31.
- Ibid., p. 41.
- Bitsilli P. M. The place of the Renaissance in cultural history. St. Petersburg, 1996, p. 224.
- There, p. 165.
Notes: