Poet-visionist S.S. Bobrov and his letters on the new year

The article deals with the poetics and ideological content of nine New Year's verse epistles, written by S.S.Bobrov - one of the greatest Russian poets-predromantics between 1789 and 1804. The addressees of the letters are the monarch, the patron, the friend, the «associate», beloved / «shepherdess». The addressing of the letters has a great influence on the convention of poetic imagery degree. At the same time, the poet's mood on the New Year's Eve is quite stable and the «idea» of the New Year holiday is unchanged for him. Bobrov hardly knows how to see the bright side in the life, he is constantly in anticipation of death that is perceived as a transition to the eternal life, according to the Christian-Masonic spirit. Compared with his predecessors and contemporaries (in the 18th century almost all famous poets - no less than thirty-five authors created New Year's poems), Bobrov brings motifs of the mysterious, terrible and fatal to the theme of Time / the change of years. Drawing the image of the Old Year, the poet combines the archaic features, horrifying its appearance, deeds and attributes of deities and / or supernatural beings - Saturn, Death, Time / Chronos, Destiny. To Bobrov's spiritual sight the very movement / flight of Time opens - the sacred action taking place in some cosmic, otherworldly space. The Eternity is an abyss or a cemetery of centuries for him. His visions are imbued with a premonition of misery and death. The poet opposes the hope of the indulgence of the Higher Powers and the belief in his chosenness to the irreversibility of the Time flow and the inevitability of the Death. In general Bobrov's artistic individuality can be defined as a «poet-visionist». In Bobrov Russian literature finds the missing link between the «metaphysical» poets of classicism (V.K. Trediakovsky, M.V. Lomonosov, G.R. Derzhavin, A.N. Radishchev) and «metaphysical» poets of the Romantic era (V.K. Kukhelbeker, F.N. Glinka, E.A. Boratynsky, F.I. Tyutchev).