The Tactile in the Poetry of Yury Levitansky

Abstract

The name of Yuri Levitansky (1922–1996) is rarely found in the literary, critical, and educational reviews of the Russian poetry of the second half of the 20 th century. The merit of his poems is mostly seen in the organic combination of front “memories” with “today’s sense of the world”, and researchers attempt to point out the dominant features of his poetry. They are “time”, “kindness and sympathy”, “shame”, “compassion”, a tendency to “melancholy”, and “low voice”. However, this only establishes a limited number of connections with the artistic expressivity of his poems that are of special interest to the author of this article. What is as important though to understand Levistansky’s poetry is the tactile component connected with the category of “the live” which is reflected on different levels of the poetic texts and is one of the fundamental principles of the poet’s works. The author analyses the images and themes of his main books, i.e. Cinematograph (1970), Such and Such Day (1976), Letters to Catherine, or Walks with Faust (1981), White Verses (1991), and for the first time reveals the ever transforming imagery perceived tactilely. Considering the tactile motifs key to the poet’s creative work, the author points out the prevailing character of the aforementioned motif combined with the visual and acoustic components which helps establish the following pattern between the poems in question, regarding the most pronounced components in them: the visual component in Cinematograph , the visual and tactile in Such and Such Day , the visual, tactile and acoustic in Letters to Catherine , and the tactile and acoustic in White Verses . The characteristics revealed are essential for the understanding of genre of the poetry book as viewed by Levitansky.