Time in the Elegiac Poetry of I. Brodsky and R. Kharis: to the Problem of Differences

Abstract

This article is devoted to a comparative study of elegy and elegiac works of I.Brodsky and R.Kharis in the aspect of the category of time as the most important in the architectonics and content of the elegiac genre. The actual basis of the article is formed by such well-known works of Brodsky as “Almost elegy”, “Roman elegies”, “Autumn cry of a hawk” etc. and the elegies of R.Kharis the Tatar poet of the 2nd half of the XX - beginning of the XXI century: “Elegy (There is blue smoke in my room)”, “Seven elegies about the sense of life”, “August”, ‘Cemetery dust”. The conclusion is made about similarity of the type of artistic thinking of the two authors, which is based on the dominance of the rational beginning in creativity. It is stated that lyrical hero of Kharis’s elegies is not opposed to time, his century unlike the hero of the elegies of Brodsky, who chooses the point of “non-occurrence” in relation to time; time in his poetry is taken beyond the limits of being. If the value for the elegiac hero of the Tatar author becomes the natural connection of phenomena and things with each other, as well as the interaction of life and death, then Brodsky emphasizes the fragmentation and fragility of the world as a property of its metaphysical perception (“Almost elegy”, “Roman elegies”). The comparative analysis also revealed different forms of transformation of the elegy and the elegiac mode of artistry in multilingual works. Thus, in the “Seven elegies…” by Kharis the final part of the cycle differs from the state of “mixed feelings” necessary for the poetics of the genre. On the contrary, in the elegy, the idea of human loneliness is strengthened: expansion into the world of heaven turns it into a stable state of cosmic being.