The article presents an analysis of the semantics of the phrase "the quarrels of shepherds" in the early letter of M.N. Muravyov to his university mate I.P. Turgenev. This letter, titled "Friendship," is significantly different from all other youthful poems by M.N. Muravyov, written in the "bucolic tradition," using "shepherd" semantics. The structure of this work and the vocabulary used in it raise doubts about whether it is one of the "student" compositions written to master the genre of "shepherd idyll" – one of the dominant themes in Russian poetic creativity of the mid to late 18th century. The opening lines of the poem "Friendship" refer the reader to the realities of modernity, which contradicts the overall "timeless" orientation of "bucolic" works and the general tendency to idealize a distant past. Moreover, this poem lacks the obligatory connection of man with nature characteristic of "rural idylls." The aim of this article is to identify the pastoral and non-pastoral motives of the phrase "the quarrels of shepherds" in one of the early works of N.M. Muravyov. To achieve this goal, a combination of semantic and contextual analysis of Muravyov's letter is necessary, related to texts written in two different "shepherd" narratives – biblical and bucolic. The result of the conducted analysis was the identification of the discrepancy between "bucolic" and the semantics of Muravyov's letter, in which features of another genre were revealed – "friendly letter," a tradition tracing back to Boileau. An additional biblical semantics likely overlapped this, where "the quarrels of shepherds" represent one of the elements of the archetypal construction of "kin conflict." The overlay of the archetype of "kin conflict" onto the semantics of M.N. Muravyov's letter suggests, if not a quarrel, then a falling-out between friends, for which the blame lies with certain slanderers. In this case, the motive for the beginning of work on this poem (the desire to restore friendship) becomes clear, as well as the impression that the letter leaves of incompleteness.
Konstantin Anatol'evich Solovev (Fri,) studied this question.