Bulat Okudzhava Research Articles

THE ESTATE TOPOS OF YASNAYA POLYANA IN THE NOVEL BY B.SH. OKUDZHAVA “THE ADVENTURES OF SHIPOV, OR STRANGE VAUDEVILLE”

The article analytically comprehends the role of the estate topos of Yasnaya Polyana in the novel by Bulat Okudzhava “The estate topos of Yasnaya Polyana in the novel by Bulat Okudzhava “The Extraordinary Adventures of Secret Agent Shipov in Pursuit of Count Leo Tolstoy, in the year 1862”. It is noted that the characteristics of the composition, stylistics of the novel, and the key principles of the organisation of the literary text are unthinkable without assessing the role of the estate topos. In the artistic world of the work, there are two images of Yasnaya Polyana – fictional and real. The first appears immediately and exists until the final trip of the gendarmes with a search to Leo Tolstoy’s estate; the real image of Yasnaya Polyana is realised in the text through short excerpts from Leo Tolstoy’s letters to his family and friends. In relation to the novel, the work characterises the semantics of the estate supertext and describes its levels. The topos of Yasnaya Polyana promotes a harmonious combination of the genres of historical and adventure-psychological novels, allowing Bulat Okudzhava to build a whole system of oppositions of heroes, points of view, and attitudes to events.

Testing Textual and Territorial Boundaries in Bulat Okudzhava’s Song “And We to the Doorman: ‘Open the Doors!’”

This paper contextualizes Okudzhava’s song “And We to the Doorman” (AWD), initially marginal in the Soviet poetic mainstream. It explores its shifts in tone, irregular rhythms, colloquial language, and semi-criminal undertones. AWD’s structure, with uneven stanzas and no clear refrain, reveals underlying symmetry and recurring themes. The meter is predominantly iambic but varies. Unconventional verse endings and various rhyme schemes, including distant chains, characterize its prosody. The narrative touches on social cohesion and class conflict. The style reflects a challenging attitude toward privilege, employing rhetorical devices and indirect threats. The melody aligns with thematic elements, featuring repetitive patterns and a spoken quality. Semantically, AWD presents an ambiguous message on class struggle and moral issues. In sum, this analysis uncovers Okudzhava’s song’s formal complexities, thematic nuances, and stylistic innovations.

Песни Булата Окуджавы на итальянском языке. Переводческий анализ

This article investigates the evolution of the approach to translating Bulat Okudzhava’s songs into Italian. The first collections of Okudzhava’s poems and songs, published in Italian in the 1970s and 1980s, were characterized by lack of respect toward any formal features of the source text. The translated songs provided an opportunity to acquaint the Italian public with the writer’s work, and were used as didactic material for teaching Russian in Italian universities, but they could not be performed on stage. Since the 2000s, poets and singers have started paying attention to the rhythmic-metrical structure of Okudzhava’s works and trying to reproduce the equivalent form of the source text. This change corresponds to the general trend in the translation of Russian poetry in Italy, with more attention recently being paid to analysing and translating the formal features of the poetic text, in a quest for a “fruitful hybridity” between the source text (ST) and the target text (TT). The first part of the article briefly describes Okudzhava’s first collections of poems and songs, mentioning his famous performance at the Tenco Festival of Songwriting in 1985. The second part examines the disc Alla corte dell’Arbat, released in 2018 by the poet and bard Alessio Lega. The analysis highlights a promising approach to the translation of Okudzhava’s songs, and marks an original technique in the very narrow niche (within the practice of translation) of song translation.

СБОРНИК КАК ФОРМА РЕПРЕЗЕНТАЦИИ Я-СОЗНАНИЯ (НА ПРИМЕРЕ «ЗАЕЗЖЕГО МУЗЫКАНТА» БУЛАТА ОКУДЖАВЫ)

The author of this article raises the question of the conceptual status of the «digest» and its artistic originality. A distinction is made between a «book» and a «digest». The historical and cultural origins of the formation of the «digest» as a form of representation of self-consciousness are revealed. For this purpose, collections by D.S. Merezhkovsky, V.V. Rozanov, the publication activity of P.P. Pertsova are used. As a digest, the «Visiting Musician» by Bulat Okudzhava is analyzed. Analytical procedures are performed on the basis of hermeneutics, involving such concepts as self-consciousness, subjectivity, time, and the author’s personality. Features of subjectivity are manifested in autobiography, assessments of historical events and private life. It is noted that the narrative identity is provided by the personality of the author. The self-consciousness functions as the identity of the author in the changing life, and also provides the narrative of the actual story.

СЧАСТЛИВЧИК ОКУДЖАВА РЕЦЕНЗИЯ НА КНИГУ: АЛЕКСАНДРОВА М .А. ТВОРЧЕСТВО БУЛАТА ОКУДЖАВЫ И МИФ О «ЗОЛОТОМ ВЕКЕ». М.: Ф ЛИ НТА, 2021. 592 С.

The review considers the book “Bulat Okudzhava’s creative path and the myth of the ‘golden age’ ” by M.A. Aleksandrova. This monograph covers the creative heritage of Bulat Okudzhava. M. Alexandrova considers it in a broad literary context. She adequately interprets the writer’s cultural landmarks and the artistic features of his works. She convincingly refutes the popular opinion about the poet as a “singer of antiquity”. The monograph thoroughly examines the motive of personal responsibility as the dominant of Okudzhava’s work of the 1980s - 1990s.

Пушкин-памятник в поэтической картине мира Булата Окуджавы

The poems of Bulat Okudzhava, “Aleksandr Sergeich” and “Tourist family is photographed at the Pushkin Monument,” are analyzed through the system of contexts. These are traditional poems in the “ekphrasis” genre, reflecting the cult status of the monument by Opekushin, various debates with the tradition of poems “to the monument” by Mayakovsky and Brodsky, and Pushkin’s works united in the reception of the modern poet by the ideas of benevolence and gratitude. Okudzhava’s interpretation of the “bronze Pushkin” was inspired by the idea of a poetry monument. The theme of mercy from Pushkin’s poem “Exegi monumentum” is realized in “Aleksandr Sergeich” by the connection between the title, the dedication, and the content. The dedication of the poem “Tourist family is photographed at the Pushkin Monument” to a friend of his youth is considered through the author’s creative task: the poet and photoartist Tsybulevskiy becomes a judge in a dispute with Samoylov (“Amateur photographer”). Finally, the disagreements between the distant interlocutors become imaginary, as is the conflict between the “little man” and eternity “in front of Pushkin.” After substantiating the meaning of the allusion to Pushkin’s “Birdie” in the poem’s refrain, a conclusion is made: the metaphor of the soaring souls of “little people” develops the idea of “Aleksandr Sergeich”, with a monument symbolizing a hierarchy of values. Okudzhava’s interpretation of Pushkin’s monument was not influenced by prejudice against the “deadening” (Mayakovsky) or “ice-cold” (Brodsky) bronze form. For Okudzhava, the spirituality of the “bronze Pushkin” signifies his harmonizing role in modern life.

On the main-meta-song by Bulat Okudzhava

The article analyses Bulat Okudzhava’s ‘The Main Song’ [‘Glavnaya pesenka’] (1962). The poem’s metapoetic leitmotif and expressive structure are examined in a broader context of corresponding common literary motifs, Okudzhava’s poetic invariants, and immediately contemporary subtexts, including in song lyrics. The intertextual field comprises poems of the same metric structure, namely, three-foot amphibrachs. M. Gasparov specified themetre’s appropriate halos: suggestions of a drinking song ( ‘zazdravnaya,’ sung to toast someone’s health); a ballad; an allusion to Heine’s manner (memory, dreams, daily life); a Romantic intonation; and, lastly, a ceremonial verse, including metapoetic works, i.e., written by poets about poetry (namely, V. Bryusov’s, A. Akhmatova’s, and V. Khodasevich’s poems). Okudzhava’s ‘The Main Song’ belongs with the aforementioned series, as well as with poems united by the leitmotif of walking (departing), rejection and the actual process of poetry writing. A detailed analysis of Okudzhava’s intertext and method helps reveal the originality of the poet’s take on a traditional topic.

Образ Лермонтова в поэзии советского времени и «Встреча» Булата Окуджавы

The article examines the literary context of one of the most important poems of Bulat Okudzhava. Special emphasis is placed on the pattern of making a classic poet a myth in the belles-lettres of the Soviet era. The connections of the poem Meeting with Lermontov’s poetry are noted, the functions of reminiscences are examined. The place of Lermontov’s image in the ‘poetic mythology’ of Okudzhava’s poetry is defined.

Древний Рим в иносказательном контексте позднесоветской культуры: три “исторических” стихотворения

This paper offers a genealogy of Roman-themed writing in recent Russian cultural history, with special attention for so-called “Soviet antiquity” – that is, the extent to which allusions to the history of Ancient Rome were used and allowed within officially accepted Soviet literature. The author maps and compares different instances of interest towards Roman antiquity among poets of the second half of the twentieth century. She demonstrates that there was a strong tendency towards using Roman subject matter as part of the Aesopian language of the time, transforming covert messages into explicit expressions of the author’s viewpoint. More pointedly, the author unpacks the social and literary context of Rome-inspired Jaan Kaplinski’s (‘Vercingetorix’) and David Samoilov’s (‘Remus and Romulus’) lyric poetry, as well as their relationship with Classical subject matter and nineteenth-century civil poetry. The analysis also traces how Roman mythologemes developed in writings by coeval poets. In their work, ancient exempla morph into a source for ideological and literary creation. Bulat Okudzhava’s poem ‘Roman Empire’ is analysed as an act of reflection about the tradition of allegory in civil poetry, and as a mark of the poet’s weariness of Aesopian language in historical situations like the decline of the Roman Empire.

ФОРМУВАННЯ «ВІН – ВОНА» ДОМІНАНТИ ЛІРИЧНОГО ТЕКСТУ (на матеріалі поезій Булата Окуджави й Сергія Жадана)

У статті розглянуто використання парних співположень особових займенників ВІН – ВОНА, які формують поетико-граматичну домінанту ліричного твору. Стверджується, що відсутність у ліричному тексті з «ВІН – ВОНА» домінантою співвідносних із займенниками субстантивів сприяє узагальненню ліричної ситуації. Наголошується, що використання у ХХ сторіччі родової пари особових займенників «ВІН – ВОНА» в значенні ‘закохані’ є поетичною універсалією, яка характерна для російської й української лірики ХХ–ХХІ століть. В окремих віршових творах вона формує поетико-граматичну домінанту, що ґрунтується на категорійному протиставленні жіноче – чоловіче й пов’язана з темою любові. Ключові слова: лінгвопоетика, поетична морфологія, гендерна пара, співпозиція, особові займенники, домінанта віршового тексту, відсутність субстантива.

„Co było nie wróci?” – czyli Bułata Okudżawy nostalgiczne powroty do Rosji dekabrystów

In the presented text I undertake the reflection on the forms of expressions of nostalgia in Bulat Okudzhava’s historical prose. His novel takes place in the first half of the nineteenth century, the times associated with the movement of the Decembrists. The writer really appreciated the Decembrists, but showed their era objectively or even critically because he saw the analogy between the past and his present.

The Collapse of the Romantic Illusions in the Story of Bulat Okudzhava "Be Healthy, Schoolboy"

The story "Be healthy, scholar" - a unique phenomenon of the Russian Soviet literature of the twentieth century. The heroes of the war of prose and poetry of the time was not supposed to think about the proximity of death, of hunger on the front line, about the confusion in the orders, feelings of loneliness and hopelessness. Authors of books on military subjects portrayed brave people, ideological fighters against fascism. Writer Okudzhava departed from the prescribed literature templates and showed war as seen through the eyes of yesterday's schoolboy. 60 years of the last century were a period of "thaw" not only in the socio-political life of the country, but also in literature. For a little while, but strict censorship was lifted and the opportunity to write honestly about his own military experience. After all, the story is autobiographical Okudzhava: it is about him - yesterday the boy, who was dressed in a soldier's greatcoat and sent to war. Tale of how the scholar wants to live and afraid of death, ready to give their lives for their country, but would prefer, if possible, not to give up. Brutal military weekdays saved the young hero of the story psevdoromanticheskogo nonsense, revealing the truth - in war there is nothing great. "War can not be great" - openly declared Okudzhava. Only a convinced pacifist courage allowed the writer to express a point of view is radically different from the conventional. Research task article - evaluate the novel by Bulat Okudzhava "Be Healthy, scholar" as an attempt to debunk the literary romantic myths about the war in the Russian literature of the twentieth century. author of the article believes thatBulat Okudzhava's story reflects the realities of war and is indispensable in the study of front-line prose. The focus of the paper, the author focuses on the fact that people in war is left alone with his weaknesses, fears, pain.

"Doctor Stockmann" by Stanislavsky in the Light of Criticism and History

«Вестник Санкт-Петербургского университета. Искусствоведение» — научно-теоретический рецензируемый журнал, обобщающий результаты исследований ученых всего мира в различных областях искусства, включая музыковедение, культурологию и художественное образование.

Стихотворение Булата Окуджавы «Оловянный солдатик моего сына» в культурно-историческом контексте 1960-х годов

Стихотворение Булата Окуджавы «Оловянный солдатик моего сына» в культурно-историческом контексте 1960-х годов

Комическое в поэзии Булата Окуджавы, Владимира Высоцкого, Александра Галича

Комическое в поэзии Булата Окуджавы, Владимира Высоцкого, Александра Галича

Russian as Native, Non-native, one of Natives and Foreign Languages: Questions of Terminology and Measurement of Levels of Proficiency

The 21st century has brought globalization of people’s lives and education. Dramatic economical, political and natural cataclysms has made our planet’s population mobile and that concerns not only highly developed countries but also so called the third world countries. While moving and changing their places of residence people bring with them their native language, their culture, knowledge and experience. They also bring to their new county of residence their own perception about communication, both an inner communication and an intercultural one. Bulat Okudzhava said in one of his poems, “To understand each other is a sacred science”, and today this approach to communication becomes a vital necessity in everyday life, in the sphere of science and education, in real space as well as in the virtual one. While people actively learn foreign languages with approved status, minor languages become suppressed in spite of the fact that the population - bearers of these minor languages are quite numerous and these bearers should be taken into consideration. But this problem is likely to be referred to politics. In the frames of practical educational activities we deal with various problems. One of them quite often causes obstacles not only in organizing of the methodically correct educational process but also in its monitoring process. Its impact on marking the final results, on achieving targeted competences all these are the subjects of correct terminology. To be more precise – correlation of terminology that is accepted in Russian Federation and in the world (in the first place in Europe, the USA, Israel).

Булат Окуджава и Владимир Высоцкий: История знакомства

The study of writers' biographies is an integral part of literary history. Very often in this context most important is information about the contacts and personal relations between major authors. Of course, for literary scholars biographical material is mainly auxiliary and assists them in comprehending the writer's work. However, in any case this material should be based on reliable and controllable information.The history of the Russian bard song (“author song”) has only begun to be written, but already after a short time, one can easily observe a great number of unreliable and/or mythologized data, that will not pass the test of available correct information. In our article an attempt is made to set more or less exact points of orientation for the investigation into an important event: the acquaintance with each other's works, and subsequently the personal acquaintance of two authors, whose significance for the “author song” is beyond doubt: Bulat Okudzhava and Vladimir Vysotskii.

Zhivago’s Children: The Last Russian Intelligentsia by Vladislav Zubok (review)

Reviewed by: Zhivago’s Children: The Last Russian Intelligentsia by Vladislav Zubok Michael Rouland (bio) Vladislav Zubok, Zhivago’s Children: The Last Russian Intelligentsia (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2009). 453pp. Index. ISBN: 978-0-674-03344-3. Like Alexei Yurchak’s soliloquy to the “last Soviet generation,” Vladislav Zubok’s Zhivago’s Children: The Last Russian Intelligentsia is an expansive and sober sociological analysis of the late Soviet era. Seeking to understand the intellectual and cultural elite that emerged at the demise of Stalinism, Zubok offers vivid and often intimate personal accounts of the lives of the penultimate Soviet generation with their precarious balance of idealism and moderation as well as their hopeful aspirations to change a socialist society destined to fail. The generation of Soviet intellectuals who came of age in the new openness of the 1960s claim allegiance to a larger group of shestidesiatniki. According to V. P. Danilov, “The shestidesiatniki have suffered two defeats: one, at the end of the 1960s; the other in 1990–1991”.1 Echoing their travails, Stephen Kotkin has written in Armageddon Averted that the shestidesiatniki [End Page 482] were misguided in their attempts to reform the Soviet Union.2 Zubok provides a more nuanced view of the first post-Stalinist generation who were forged by the devastation of World War II. He sees education as a critical criterion; he is particularly interested in “the generation that entered the universities of Moscow and Leningrad after the war” (P. 21). In Zubok’s mind, their education culminated with “the first sizable demonstration of unofficial civic solidarity in Soviet Russia” during the June 2, 1960, funeral of Boris Pasternak in Peredelkino (P. 19). Pasternak was best known abroad for winning the Nobel Prize in literature for his novel Doctor Zhivago. At home, however, his unfavorable critique of the revolution’s excesses and the demise of the Russian imperial intelligentsia brought censure from the Stalinist regime. In Zubok’s view, the 500 mourners at his funeral represented a turning point and a new “spiritual and civic community emerged in the popular mind” (P. 20). Despite the emphasis on “Russians” throughout his work, Zubok’s protagonists were multiethnic, of varied backgrounds, and had differing views on the merits of socialism: Andrei Sakharov, Joseph Brodsky, Ilya Ehrenburg, Aleksandr Tvardovskii, Oleg Yefremov, Bulat Okudzhava, and Mstislav Rostropovich to name a few. In Zubok’s mind, they were all “descendents of the great cultural and moral tradition that Pasternak, his protagonist Yuri Zhivago, and his milieu embodied” (P. 20). Zubok’s heroes “preferred the muse to the risk of political radicalism” (P. 327). Yet like their predecessors, they found that the lure of politics was difficult to escape. Mention of an “intelligentsia” is destined to raise important questions about intellectuals, the Russian and Soviet states, and their relationships to each other. Scholars separate the intelligentsia of the Russian imperial era from members of the “Soviet intelligentsia,” workers who toiled with their minds to build the Soviet dream in official discourse. Zubok proposes yet another categorization of the intelligentsia. Zubok defines his intelligentsia as those who sought a “Moscow Spring” akin to the Prague unrest of 1968. In his epilogue Zubok declares, “I came of age in Moscow after Soviet tanks had crushed the Prague Spring, thus reinstating the Iron Curtain and demolishing the idealistic project of socialism with a human face. In those years the word ‘intelligentsia’ was often on the lips of my parents and their friends” (P. 437). The 1968 protests destroyed [End Page 483] “the myth of a socially engaged and morally potent intelligentsia” (P. 293). And as Vladimir Lakshin lamented in his diary in 1969, “Only tasteless clowns remain. Frightening thought” (P. 333). Zubok explains, “The reaction to Khrushchev’s bombshell reactivated the traditional alienation between the ‘thinking’ segment of the younger generation and the ruling class. This kind of tension had given rise to the Russian intelligentsia a century earlier. Moreover, the questions of who was to blame and what was to be done were the same ‘accursed’ questions that had tormented and fragmented educated circles in Russia earlier” (P. 66). Unlike their nineteenth-century predecessors, this generation of intellectuals gave...

Чудесный вальс Булата Окуджавы в польских переводах

The article is a comparative analysis of three Polish translations of the Russian bard’s (Bulat Okudzhava’s) poem Chudesnyi vals translated by Irena Piotrovska and two different versions by Vitold Voroshilski. The author of this article concentrates on similarities and differences between the original text and its translations, as well as on poem’s musical aspects. The author also investigates how patterns and processes of lexical change determine and affect modification of poetic images and metaphors, concentrating especially on metamorphosis of a man into a plant shown in one of Okudzhava’s poems.

Bulat Okudzhava: 9 May 1924 (Moscow)–12 June 1997 (Paris)

Bulat Okudzhava: 9 May 1924 (Moscow)–12 June 1997 (Paris)