“The Queen of Souls…”: The Myth of Catherine the Great in M.N. Muravyov’s Worldview and Poetry

The present article deals with typology of Catherine’s myth in national literature of the last quarter of the 18th century based on lyrical works, collection of letters and archive materials of M.N. Muravyov — one of the pioneers of Russian Sentimentalism and Pre-Romanticism. The writer’s biographical and prose data are involved as parallel examples too. It is of importance for us to trace the evolution of M.N. Muravyov’s genre system “under the sign” of the myth about Catherine the Great, beginning with juvenile half-imitative odes and concluding with mature historico-philosophical prose and innovative examples-experiments of “light poetry”. The Catherine’s myth in Muravyov’s literary and public activities also acquires an extensive socioeducational “dimension”, allied to a literary one. One of the most important refrains of the Catherine’s myth in the period of its flowering, the striking example of which we find in Muravyov as well, is the polylogue of various arts, each of which strives for exalting, in a combined chorus with others, both the ruler herself, and the country protected by her. The headline formula is a kind of summative assessment of the Catherine II (the Great) phenomenon, proposed by an outstanding sentimentalist writer and enlightener.