The image of the teacher of literature in the poems of students’ In Memoriam

The article is devoted to the daily life of a Russian language teacher. A peculiar andinsufficiently studied source of everyday life description is the poems In Memoriam. We have analyzed poems published in various sources and dedicated to famous language teachers of the late XIX – early XX centuries: V.I. Vodovozov, S.A. Varsher, V.P. Ostrogorsky, P.V. Smirnovsky. The purpose of the work is to reconstruct the perception of the image of a language teacher in the In Memoriam poems of students’. The article uses a comparative historical research method, recruits memoirs, introduces previously little-known materials to the scientific community. It is revealed that the poems In Memoriam have a single organization principle: The emphasis in them is put on the perception of the death of the teacher and the teacher himself. At the same time, personal qualities and biography facts are mentioned in a condensed form. The authors do not create specific images of their heroes (one can only catch the real traits), but artistically recreate the image of the teacher with his set of virtues. Poems have a specific emotional coloring: the motives of sadness, grief, irreplaceability of loss dominate in them; there is a combination of motives for passing away and immortality. At the same time, the primary attention is paid specifically to the teaching merits of the educators’, their role in shaping the spiritual world of their students. It is established that the category of memory is the most important in the system of artistic coordinates of all works. It is concluded that all the poems are united by the author’s understanding of the personality and fate of the teacher of literature, expressed in them, and the works of memorial poetry can supplement the overall picture of the history of school literary education.