This article examines the French sources of two dissimilar Russian
verse works that touch on the theme of the Annunciation: Pushkin’s
narrative poem “Gavriiliada” (1821) and Batiushkov’s sestet “K Mashe”
(1810). The French source of Batiushkov’s madrigal and the tradition to
which it is connected can be reliably identified: it is an adaptation of Boufflers’s
parody of the “Ave Maria.” As for “Gavriiliada,” one of the models for
its plot might have been “Pot-pourri sur l’Annonciation.” The two works
share a whole set of common motifs, and both have the same combination of
an ideological set toward libertinage, both of morals (libertinage de moeurs)
and of the mind (libertinage d’esprit), with a generic and stylistic set toward
the burlesque. They are stylistically different (the French potpourri is
straightforward burlesque, whereas the Russian narrative poem draws on
genteel erotica), so their similarities can be explained not only as a genetic
connection, but also as a typological convergence.