“In Memory of N.K. Mikhailovsky.” Features of an Obituary Poem

Death of N.K. Mikhailovsky in January 1904 became a landmark event for contemporaries, which is expressed in the rhetoric of numerous obituaries: “the last of the Mohicans,” “cliff,” “sword,” “lighthouse,” “lamp”, “leader,” “standardbearer,” “banner.” But the poetic feast was relatively scarce: three poems were published in 1904 (P.F. Yakubovich, P.I. Weinberg, K. Gorbunov); two were printed on the first anniversary of his death in 1905 under the general title “In Memory of N.K. Mikhailovsky” (S.S. Sinegub, A.I. Gukovsky), — all of them were published in Mikhailovsky’s magazine “Russian Wealth.” The formula of “memory of so-and-so” appeared rather late. It is not found among the poems on the death of A.S. Pushkin (1837); and among the 34 poems on the death of M.E. Saltykov (1889) it occurs only in ten of them. At the center of all poems in memory of Mikhailovsky is the image of a teacher and a “fighter” “under the banner of science,” which was formed in the mass consciousness of the Russian intelligentsia at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.