‘ Winds from afar did bring hints of a song of a spring…’. Aleksandr Blok’s poetic traditions in the Russian ‘lieutenant prose’

Abstract

The article considers the spiritual, moral, and poetic influence of A. Blok’s (himself enlisted during the First World War) patriotic poetic traditions on ‘lieutenant prose’ writers, who fought in the trenches of the Great Patriotic War in the lowly ranks of privates and junior officers. The author argues that it was to Blok that ‘lieutenant prose’ writers turned for a frame of reference to comprehend the situation and provide a universal standpoint — as, for example, in Blok’s poems ‘On the field of Kulikovo’ [‘Na pole Kulikovom’], ‘The Commander’s steps’ [‘Shagi komandora’], or ‘Those born in times of the decay…’ [‘Rozhdyonnye v goda glukhie…’]. That Blok’s poetry was relevant to them was confirmed by several ‘lieutenant prose’ authors, including B. Vasiliev, V. Nekrasov, and V. Tendryakov (whose entire short story ‘Donna Anna’ is constructed on the reminiscence of a Blok’s poem). According to Perevalova, Blok’s relevance to the aforementioned writers stems from the fact that, describing war, he never preached violence or the art of extermination but appealed instead to the eternal existential questions and values.