Ruslan and Lyudmila. Poem.

Painted in 1818-1820, after leaving the Lyceum, Pushkin is sometimes pointed out that he began to write a poem still in high school, but, apparently, by this time are only the most general ideas, it is hardly the text. Driving after leaving the Lyceum in St. Petersburg life "the most scattered," Pushkin was working on a poem primarily during disease. Pushkin put the task to create a "heroic" fairy poem in the spirit of the well-known for his French translation of "Crazy Roland" Ariosto (critics called the genre "romance" that should not be confused with romanticism in the modern sense). He also was inspired by Voltaire ("Virgin of Orleans", "What the ladies like it") and the Russian literary fairy tales (such as the popular print a story about Eruslane Lazarevic, "Bahariyana" Kheraskov, "Ilya of Murom" Karamzin, or especially the "Alosha Popovich" Nicholas Radishchev). The immediate stimulus to the beginning of work on the poem was the release in February 1818 the first volumes Karamzin's "History of the Russian state," borrowed from many of the details and the names of the three contenders Ruslana (Rogdai, Ratmir and Farlaf). A poem written astroficheskim iambic tetrameter, which, beginning with "Ruslan" has become the dominant form of strong romantic poem. The poem contains elements of parody in relation to the ballad of Zhukovsky's "Twelve sleeping virgins." Pushkin consistently reduces ironically sublime images of Zhukovsky, imbues the story comic erotic elements, grotesque fantasy (an episode from the Head), uses "folksy" language ("strangled", "sneeze"). Pushkin's "parody" Zhukovsky initially has no negative connotations and is more of a friendly nature, it is known that Zhukovsky "heartily rejoiced," Pushkin's joke, but after Pushkin's poem gave his portrait with the inscription "winner-loser from the student teacher." Later, in the early 1830s, the mature Pushkin, critically inclined to overestimate their youthful experiences, lamented that parodied the "Twelve sleeping virgins" "to please the rabble."