The 2000s: Applied eschatology

Abstract

The article is devoted to an eschatological journey, a poetic tackling of the mystery of life and death. In her analysis of the new publications by A. Pereverzin, S. Saprykina and L. Yugay, the author discusses the diverse types of the 2020s’ ‘eschatological poetics’: the traditional Christian variant, the mythological one, which entails a journey to the underworld, and the one based in research; the latter typifies, for example, the poetics in the works by Yugay, who has a background in folklore studies. Exploring the poetics of the aforementioned poets in the context of the lyrical poetic tradition of the 20th and 21st cc., the critic discovers that modern poems on death are largely therapeutic, bringing closer the space of comforting memory — but without classical tragedy or the poignancy of the experience. That world and this world are brought together by soothing memory; it is the category of memory that determines the new poetic mysticism — with a mild flavour of a life’s tragedy offset by a promise of a continued relationship with the departed within a private or familial mythology rather than a traditional clan myth.