V.K. Trediakovskii's "In praise of summer": on mushrooms, flies, and some mechanisms of cultural memory

V.K. Trediakovskii’s poem «In Praise of Summer» was not included in his collections of poetry or complete works and only appeared in manuscripts, and many welleducated people remembered it as example of his bad poetry. In collective memory the poem was reduced from six to four lines and was always cited ironically, almost as a selfcaricature. However, over time its original lyrical quality could also be perceived. In the 1840s. the poem, despite the ironic quotation marks presumed by lovers of poetry, «In Praise of Summer» began to reassume its original function - the function of a lyric utterance describing the summer season.