Xenia by A. Dragomoshchenko and Ja. Iwaszkiewicz: The Typological Similarity of Genre Innovation

Abstract

One of the fruitful ways of the genre repertoire renewal of contemporary Russian poetry is its appeal to genres with traditional origins. In doing so, the poet uses a certain aura associated with the name, or the “core”, i.e. a set of stable features which forms the essence of a particular genre. The genre nature of the contemporary poem in this case is often determined by discovering these attributes or denoting their absence. A special case is the poet’s appeal to rare or ancient genres that do not have certain steadily reproducible “core” features. One such case is xenia by A. Dragomoshchenko (1946–2012). The genre of the xenium has ancient origins, and its history can be traced back to Martial. In Goethe’s poetry, xenia acquired a number of new features that distinguished them from ancient samples. Thus, this genre already existed in several varieties in the nineteenth century. In order to establish which genre features A. Dragomoshchenko used, the author turns to the history of the genre undertaking a keyword analysis, as well as a comparative study involving the xenia of the Polish writer Ja. Iwaszkiewicz (1894–1980). A comparison of the two variants of xenia demonstrates that the two poets belonging to different national-historical traditions can find very close solutions when there is a typological similarity in their poetics, namely, questioning as an attribute of philosophicity, a close understanding of poetry as unstoppable cognition and thinking, and attention to nature and natural images. The genetic similarity is determined by common sources, i.e. ancient culture and genres and Goethe’s poetry. The poets created different but at the same time close xenia following different patterns. Ja. Iwaszkiewicz’s xenia are closer to those written by Goethe, while Dragomoshchenko’s ones are closer to those by Martial.