Academician Bayer on Rus’ and Russia: Figurative Language in Scholarly and Poetic Texts

This study examines the individual style of Academician Gottlieb Siegfried Bayer (1694–1738) of the Imperial Academy of Sciences, who composed his scholarly works in Latin. The investigation focuses on the features of the 18th-century scientific style, which differed significantly from modern academic Russian and allowed authors to construct rhetorically effective, elegant, and artistically expressive prose. The primary sources for this analysis are Bayer’s scholarly article “De Russorum prima expeditione Constantinopolitana” and his poetic work “Ad Petrum Secundum Augustum imperatorem totius Russiae et autocratora patrem Patria, cum insigna Imperii sanctissimis caeremoniis Moscvae capesseret”. Bayer’s language in his writings on Russia is explored in two key aspects: first, the paper demonstrates how elements of literary speech manifest in his scientific language; second, it analyzes the academician’s explicitly artistic, poetic output through an examination of a fragment from an ode dedicated to Emperor Peter II. The findings indicate that metaphors in Bayer’s scholarly text form coherent figurative patterns and are grounded in the inner form of words, whereas in his poetic text, they become extended and elevate to the level of allegory. The study concludes that a defining characteristic of Bayer’s individual style is his precise consideration of historical and textual context, which is reflected in his deliberate choice of words with a specific inner form.

Gottlieb Siegfried Bayer, Latin language, Classical Latin poetry, metaphor, ode, Imperial Academy of Sciences