«Первая областническая сибирская поэма...»: Алексей Ачаир, «Казаки» (1927)

Abstract

The article precedes the republishing of the poem of the Harbin poet Alexei Achair (Gryzov; 1896–1960) “Cossacks”, completed by the author at the end of 1927. It was published twice in 1929 in hard-to-reach publications for the modern reader: in two issues of the collection “Free Siberia” (Prague) and in the newspaper “Russian Word” (Harbin). The forgotten poem deserves attention as a case of early imitation of Marina Tsvetaeva’s poems, primarily the Pied Piper, and also as a detailed essay reflecting the regional mentality of the “storm and onslaught” period of the “Young Churaevka” circle. In addition, this is the largest in volume and the most significant in scale work of Air, the only poem published during his lifetime. Achair reproduced the characteristic techniques of Tsvetaeva’s “big form” poetics and tried to put them at the service of the propaganda of Siberian regionalism. Along with Tsvetaeva, who determined the artistic structure of the poem, echoes of Soviet poetry (Khlebnikov, Mayakovsky, Selvinsky) are also heard, which makes the overall impression of the poem mosaic.