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At the beginning of the XIX century, a new noun appeared in the Russian language, expressing the concept of melancholy or boredom - spleen. Borrowed from English (spleen) , it was probably first introduced into the artistic text by Pushkin in "Eugene Onegin": "A disease whose cause/ It would have been time to find long ago, / Similar to English spleen, / In short: Russian melancholy / I mastered it a little bit." And in another chapter: "But who is this in the chosen crowd / Is it silent and foggy? (...) What, spleen or suffering arrogance / In his face? Why is he here?". Really, why? For what purpose did the poet use a foreign word several times in the "novel in verse"?

The fact is that the followers of Romanticism, to which Pushkin also belonged at the first stage of creativity, paid special attention to depicting the world of human experiences. In the literary tradition created by the English poet Byron, one of the key concepts associated with the sphere of emotional life was considered "romantic melancholy, boredom". Among the means of denoting such "melancholy", that is, a special, "high" sadness, a despondent mood of the soul associated with disappointment in life, was the English spleen. Together with

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by borrowing literary techniques and images, Russian poetry borrowed this word. Here is how Pushkin himself writes in the preface to the first chapter of Eugene Onegin about the literary associations that could be caused by his novel: "[The first chapter] contains a description of the social life of a St. Petersburg young man, at the end of 1819, and recalls... Beppo, the comic work of the gloomy Byron." It is curious that apart from the "novel in verse", spleen is not found in any of Pushkin's works of fiction, especially in one of his letters: "My dear angel! I was about to write you a 4-page letter, but it came out so bitter and gloomy that I didn't send it to you, but I'm writing something else. I have a strong spleen. It's boring to live without you... "(N. N. Pushkina, June 8, 1834). Apparently, the use of the word spleen in "Eugene Onegin" was determined by special stylistic, artistic goals.

Onegin, with his fruitless melancholy, with a sense of despondency that "swallowed up all others" (Pushkin's expression, used by him in the preface to the first chapter), found himself among the fashionable so-called "Byronic" heroes at the beginning of the XIX century. Their most prominent representative was Childe Harold, a character in Byron's poem " The Pilgrimage of Childe Harold "(written in 1812-1818). It is known that Pushkin read this poem while working on the " novel in verse "(see Lotman Yu. M. Pushkin. SPb., 1995). Thus, Pushkin's spleen not only denotes one of the main feelings that Onegin possesses, but also indicates the non-Russian, borrowed character of such an emotional state: English spleen.

It should be noted that this word did not spread in the language of Russian literature and remained a feature of the romantic style of the first half of the XIX century, cf. Lermontov (Princess of Lithuania-Pechorin): "...you are so shy of everyone that it is not like anything else. I hope that the air in my drawing-room will dispel your spleen... "(Princess Mary). In the language of the second half of the XIX-XX centuries, splin is used only in exceptional cases, as a rule, to characterize a character, cf.: "[Borkin]... I gave him a wonderful idea, but my gunpowder, as usual, fell on the wet ground... You can't explain it to him... Take a look: what does it look like? Melancholy, spleen, melancholy, melancholy, sadness... "(Chekhov. Ivanov).

At the beginning of the 19th century, along with spleen, another noun appeared in literary works, which was opposed to spleen as Russian, but was also new to the language of poetry and fiction, spleen. For example: "My ruddy critic, fat-bellied scoffer, / Ready to make fun of our languid muse for a century, / Come here, sit down with me, / Try to see if we can get along with the damned blues" (Pushkin. "Ruddy critic..."). To understand the history of this word, you should remember about two more not very common words:

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nouns that meant "depressed state of mind": melancholy and hypochondria. What is the general history of their appearance in the Russian language? (For more information, see: Otin E. S. "Melencolia, which is a disease called hypochondria" / / Russian speech. 1986. N 2).

Both words come from the Greek language. Melanhofia (melas "black" + hole "bile") meant "spillage, an overabundance of black bile" and "the disease caused by this overabundance: mental depression". Hypohondria (hypo "under" + hondros "chest bone") meant "a part of the body, an organ located below the chest bone", and also "a disease developing in this organ: a depressed state of mind". In both cases, the formation of the meaning of "mental depression" was due to the ideas that existed in medieval medicine about the close connection between the physical and mental states of a person. It is important to note that splin also ultimately dates back to the Greek noun splen, which had the meanings "spleen" and "disease associated with mental depression."

From Greek melancholy and hypochondria passed into medieval medical Latin, and in the XVI-XVII centuries were borrowed by the Russian language. In the monuments of the specified period, they were presented in various spelling variants-melancholia, melencolia, hypochondria, pohondria, hypochondrium, etc. - and were used as synonyms, cf.: "Disease: hypocondria, called both melancholia and fainting in the head" (Materials of medicine. 1679. An example from the Old Russian Dictionary File). Borrowing these two words was associated with the enrichment of the Old Russian concept of "sorrow, sadness, melancholy". In the XI-XIV centuries, attention was drawn to the social significance of the experience, respectively, for Ancient Russia, grief, sadness, anguish , grief-this is often "public lamentation, crying" and "an event that caused grief for many people: fire, famine, etc." in accordance with the ideas of the era, in the unity and indissoluble connection of one's psyche and physiology, hence one of the varieties of a depressed state - "the spiritual manifestation of a bodily ailment".

The further fate of the two nouns turned out to be different. Melancholy spread in broader contexts and from natural science writings penetrated into the realm of fiction, where it was fixed in a single form, melancholy. As a result of semantic interaction with other members of the synonym series (grief, melancholy, etc.), a semantic transformation of the word occurred: melancholy began to denote a purely mental phenomenon that is not related to physiology; at the same time, the indication of pain, the pathological nature of the emotion disappeared - the meaning of "light, insignificant sadness or melancholy"developed. Such a semantic movement was largely guided by the requirements of sentimentalist aesthetics, within the framework of which it was created.

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which paid special attention to the display of human experiences and, in particular, those that had not previously found their lexical expression: "O Melancholy! the most delicate overflow / From sorrow and longing to the joys of pleasure! / There is no fun yet, and there is no torment anymore; / The desperation was gone... But, having dried your tears, / You do not yet dare to look joyfully at the light / And your mother. Sorrows, you have the appearance" (Karamzin. Melancholy).

The noun hypochondria has not undergone any fundamental semantic changes: it remains a terminological designation for a certain type of disease. However, as a result of its vulgar alteration, a new word appeared in the colloquial language - spleen. It turned out from a truncated version of the original word (pokhondria), from the secondary verb form pokhandry that developed on its basis (Otin E. S. Decree. op.). In the literary language, the noun penetrated at the beginning of the XIX century, when the process of democratization of the language was maximally embodied in Pushkin's work, which was expressed, in particular, in the replenishment of the synonymous series "sadness, sorrow, despondency" at the expense of folk-colloquial and folk-poetic vocabulary. The dictionary of the Pushkin language notes 19 cases of the use of melancholy, but most of them - 13 - fall on various letters of the poet: he actively used the word in ordinary speech, but considered it not yet completely acceptable and appropriate to use it in poetic works and in fiction. The exception is "Eugene Onegin". The fact that melancholy occurs in the" novel in verse " as many as four times (cf. with general statistics), is explained by the poet's desire to find the most appropriate word to express a special, "romantic" state of mind. Pushkin, apparently, did not seem quite successful terms neither borrowed spleen, nor popular among sentimentalists melancholy, nor traditional Russian sadness or tuga-and therefore the poet turned to the resources of the popular colloquial language. Let us recall once again the above quote: "An illness, the cause of which / It is time to find it long ago. / Similar to English spleen, / In short: Russian spleen / I got hold of it a little bit" (Evgeny Onegin).

Thanks to Pushkin, the meaning of the word melancholy in the XIX century was noticeably enriched, there was a conceptual filling of the lexical meaning, the noun entered into paradigmatic relations with members of various synonymous series, cf.: "Then he clearly saw / That boredom was the same in the village / ... melancholy was waiting for him on guard / And she ran after him, / Like a shadow or a faithful wife" (Eugene Onegin); "[Versilov] - I feel weirdly disgusting today - is it the blues or something?" (Dostoevsky. A teenager).

However, most often the blues still had a stylistic connotation of a colloquial word in the literature of the XIX century. Cf.: "[Platonov] - I decided, Vasya, to take a trip with Pavel Ivanovich through holy Russia.

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Maybe-or it will make my moping worse" (Gogol. Dead souls);

"[Versilov] is a completely different type of dishonest person, and perhaps even more disgusting than the first one. The first one is all delight! "Just let me lie to you and see how well it turns out." The second is all melancholy and prose: "I won't let you lie, where, when, in what year? "- in a word, a man without a heart" (Dostoevsky. A teenager).

It is interesting to note that melancholy also acquired a special stylistic coloring in the XIX century, now no longer "sentimental", as before, but "romantic". The word began to indicate such mental displeasure, which is inherent primarily in the character (often reduced), subject to romantic moods, to despondency or melancholy, arising for no apparent, significant reasons. And very often such melancholy was already considered as a negative phenomenon. Cf.: "[Ivanov:] I laughed at myself and almost went mad with shame. (Laughs) Melancholy! Noble melancholy! Unaccountable grief! I don't want to write poetry yet. To whine, to sing Lazarus, to make people sad, to realize that the energy of life is lost forever, that I am rusty, that I have outlived my time, that I have succumbed to weakness and am up to my ears in this vile melancholy - to realize this when the sun is shining brightly, when even the ant is dragging its burden and is satisfied with itself-no, my humble servant! " (Chekhov. Ivanov).

So, spleen and melancholy, as well as melancholy and hypochondria-all these nouns served as a means of expressing specific concepts generated by one or another "fashionable"system of views relevant for the era ("mental and at the same time physical illness" - until the XVIII century, "sentimental", elegiac sadness" and "romantic"). despondency " in the XVIII-XIX centuries).

Melancholy and hypochondria spread in the field of medical terminology of the XVI-XVII centuries, but after the deepening and expansion of natural science knowledge, they had to be semantically reconstructed. Their history in Russian became a kind of reflection of the evolution of the English lexeme spleen, which from denoting the spleen and mental illness turned into one of the symbols of romantic literature - and it was in this capacity that it was borrowed by Russian poetry. In the same way, melancholy has become a "sentimental" and "romantic" word, and as a result it seems to have been reborn in the language. And hypochondria has remained an outdated medical term, but as a result of its vulgar alteration, it has generated a new lexeme - moping. The latter, in turn, developed a different meaning than hypochondria when functioning in the vernacular and colloquial environment and significantly enriched it as a result of subsequent penetration into the language of fiction.

In the modern language, the lexeme splin is almost out of use. Moping became stylistically neutral

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the word, however, is much lower in frequency than such nouns. as sadness or melancholy (the same meaning is more often conveyed by the verb mope). Melancholy is also a fairly rare word. Cf.: "When the blues came, Levitan ran away from people. They seemed to him enemies" (Paustovsky. Isaac Levitan); "Hjalmar has been moping for the last few days, he should be entertained" (Arbuzov. European Chronicle); "Anxiety for the poor situation of children often seized her, and she began to fall into melancholy at times "(Morozov. The Story of my life).


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