Towards the Communicative Strategies of Russian Modernism: the Poetic Correspondence of V. Bryusov and A. Bely

Abstract

The object of this article is the poetic correspondence of Valery Bryusov and Andrei Bely in the 1900s. The analysis allowed us to draw a number of conclusions about the communicative strategies of Russian modernism. Firstly, in the structure of the correspondence, the dominant genre setting for dialogue with the addressee is identified, which allows identifying these poems as messages. This, on the one hand, makes it possible to fit the messages of Bryusov and Bely into the all-symbolist poetological and communicative context of the early twentieth century, when this genre was a kind of mainstream. On the other hand, the analysis of genre dominants allows us to identify their genre renewal associated with the formation of an original metastructural cycle resembling a "novel in letters", the heroes of which are Bryusov and Bely, simultaneously combining the roles of author and addressee. Secondly, in the titles of the poems under consideration ("Balder Loki", "Balder II", "Ancient Enemy", "Magician"), mythological codes are revealed, genetic links are established with Christian apocrypha and Scandinavian legends, in which the author's "I" and "you" of the addressee are associated with images of light and dark forces rooted in religious and pagan traditions. Thirdly, with the help of the biographical method, the parallels of the lyrical plots of the poems with the life and creative relationships of the poets are established. As a result, the poetic correspondence of the masters of symbolism is interpreted as a philosophical duel implicitly realizing dramatic situations of personal and "workshop" relationships, with a clear separation of aesthetic and ethical roles, these roles structure the plot of an epistolary "novel", the vicissitudes of which are reduced to binary oppositions of "light" and "darkness", heavenly and earthly, divine and demonic principles. However, at the same time, this exchange of messages appears as a dialogue about the poet's role in symbolist discourse, a dialogue reflecting different vectors of creative aspirations of symbolists and, consequently, the ambivalent tendencies of the current towards both consolidation and separation.