Придворная словесность: институт литературы и конструкции абсолютизма в России середины XVIII века - [155]

inscribed his recent works into a history of Russian language which in this version went back to Church Slavonic, the language of the Slavic Orthodox Bible, and its tradition of “church books” translated from the Greek. While seemingly disconnected from post-Petrine languages of Westernization and secularization, the Preface in fact derived its arguments from pan-European discourses of empire as a politico-theological union between church and crown. Paradoxically, secular Russian poetry emerging under court patronage should, according to Lomonosov’s manifesto, skillfully appropriate elements of Church Slavonic vocabulary, along with the public “admiration” associated with this language of liturgy. Placing his own festive odes at the core of this vision of literature, Lomonosov viewed poetry as a medium of imperial secularization, capable of transforming the church as a community of the faithful into the political nation centered around the media-shaped cult of the monarch. The theory of literature presented in the Preface masks a Hobbesian model of sovereignty and the political “commonwealth”. Published with the approval of the court, Lomonosov’s short essay firmly established literature as a medium for Russia’s imperial self-fashioning.