Historical Poetics Research Articles

This is really not the point

I. Shaytanov offers his polemical response to D. Ivanov’s review of William Shakespeare. Sonnets, a book compiled and commented by Shaytanov, that was published in the journal Inostrannaya Literatura. The author addresses several of Ivanov’s criticisms and is disappointed that the collection’s main component, the poetics of genre Shakespeare itself, completely escaped the critic’s attention, even though it is crucial for the book’s distinct and innovative approach. Shaytanov points out that the concept of genre, with its origin in historical poetics (a system pioneered by A. Veselovsky with subsequent studies by Y. Tynyanov, M. Bakhtin, V. Propp, and Y. Lotman — scholars who upheld dissimilar and often incompatible views), is the main criterion of understanding and translating Shakespearean sonnets in the book. Ignoring the genre conventions, Russian translators ended up struggling with limitations since they focused on rendering the text rather than the genre, whereas Shaytanov’s own translations included in the volume deal with the genre of Shakespeare’s sonnets first and foremost. Failure to recognize the book’s principal subject resulted in missing its point.

<em>Mimesis</em> und <em>Methexis:</em> Skizze einer Poetik der Teilhabe für die Gegenwart

The paper draws on the history of the concept of participation (methexis) in its conflictual relation to imitation or representation (mimesis) for a deepened understanding of identity-related questions in contemporary literature. Plato subjected mimesis to rigorous critique in favor of participation in 'ideas'. In contrast, the history of poetics since Aristotle develops along the valorization of mimesis, while participation here was not understood as an aesthetic category at all. In a synoptic overview, the first part of the paper argues, that mimesis and methexis can only be understood in their dialectic relationship as modern literature has witnessed a periodic return of the problem of participation in poetics. Against the background of this dialectic, the specific profile of contemporary literature and its treatment of questions related to identity becomes visible. The second part of the paper shows this with regard to Olivia Wenzel's novel 1000 serpentinen angst (2020) and Kim de l'Horizon's Blutbuch (2020), that articulate two very different poetic traditions of methexis.

GHAZAL GENRE IN NIMA YUSHIJ’S POETICS

The article introduces the classical ghazals in the poetry of Nimá Yushíj (1897–1960) that were previously unexamined in Russian and Western Iranian Studies, and that provided an impetus for the development of this traditional genre in the contemporary Persian literature. Analysis of the canonic language signs of medieval lyrics by the “father of Iranian new poetry’s” sheds light upon the transformation of the author’s self-awareness in line with the original artistic manner. Conventional images and stable motifs of love lyrics, which have absorbed traditional mystical and allegorical connotations, are uniquely refracted in Nima Yushij’s ghazals. The semiotic and structural aspect of research along with the methods of historical poetics reveals the polysemanticism of classical motifs. The multi-stratified text structure turns out to be a tool for the poet to allegorically present his artistic view. In accordance with his intentions, Nima applies both the normative components of the formal plan (e. g., husn at-taxallus) and the execution methods that are not typical for the classical canon (frame text). To sum up, semantic and formal wholeness of Nima’s ghazals is observed.

Russian World in Yakut Heroic Epic Olonkho

This article evaluates the impact of Russian culture on the Yakut epic, Olonkho. The emergence and evolution of the Russian character in Olonkho are analyzed. Texts from various local traditions and time periods of Olonkho serve as the research material. The study employs a historical poetics approach, showcasing the evolution and changes in the portrayal of the Russian character in Yakut epic texts, considering the territorial and temporal differences in the texts and the individual characteristics of storytellers. It is determined that the semantics of this character transform from “foreign” to “native”. The Russian character in Yakut heroic epic texts initially appears through epic formulas, comparisons, and epithets, manifesting foreignness and alienation. Subsequently, the Russian individual becomes a character participating in the Olonkho plot. A transition from “foreign” to “different,” “other” is observed: intermediary zones (the meeting place of heaven and earth, forests, mountains) start resembling objects belonging to Russians. When Russian material culture aligned with the life and customs of the Yakuts, objects adopted from Russians began resembling parts of the main hero’s (bogatyr) body, vividly demonstrating the incorporation of the Russian character into the category of “ours.” References to certain realities of Orthodox Christianity are also made in Olonkho. Images of Baba Yaga, Zmey Gorynych, the forest spirit, motifs of path selection are borrowed from Russian fairy tales and myths. Russian names, names of Russian cities and places, among others, are mentioned.

PUSHKIN IN A. MAKHOV’S NEW EMBLEMATICA

The article is based on the material of the recently published A. Makhov’s Emblematica: Microcosm. Pushkin is included in the “personal pantheon” of A. Makhov, being a link between the main research worlds of the scholar: emblem studies, the history of Russian and European poetics, the history of European Romanticism, etc. By Pushkin’s “presence”, we mean not only mentions of Pushkin’s name and direct quotations from his writings, but also more or less easily readable convergences at the topic level. Makhov’s new book is devoted to man as a subject of European emblems of the 16th and 17th centuries; an important place in it is occupied by the study of the human body as the language of emblems and the source of signs, the application of the main four combinatorial operations in the creation of emblematic composite images. When interpreting European emblems, associations with Pushkin’s work constantly arise — for example, the figure of the conciliatio of the stingy rich and poor, expressed in the topos “rich is poor”, allows a Russian reader to see a parallel with Pushkin’s “The Miserly Knight”; the topos of “vain flight from love, the incurable love disease” — with his lyrics. The method of reading “through the prism of Pushkin” used in the article allows us to look at the rich material of the monograph at least in two aspects: to shed new light on Pushkin’s connection with European emblems and to incorporate his work even more deeply into the European cultural tradition; to see how the Pushkin principle can serve as a kind of core, an immanent dominant in interpretations of European cultural realities by such a multi-world scholar as A. Makhov.

<i>The Stone Guest</i> [<i>Kamenniy gost</i>]: Shifting ideals in literature

The article examines the change of ideals in the metaplot of A. Pushkin’s drama The Stone Guest [Kamenniy gost] through the prism of A. Veselovsky’s concept of ‘counter-current.’ The author shows that the play’s three female characters epitomize an ideal of the respective period. Don Juan’s three muses – Inez, Laura, and Donna Anna – appear in the play as three principal ideals symbolizing the ‘spiritual currents of the epoch’ (in the words of I. Rodnyanskaya). As a result, Pushkin’s metaplot features Don Juan as an embodiment of a wavering ‘literary mind,’ whose constant pursuit of a new ideal in each given period eventually brings him to a deadlock. This is a depiction of literature emerging at the ‘counter-current’ and confronted with the question of ‘Quo vadis?’ The author also demonstrates that the dramatic cycle of Little Tragedies [Malenkie tragedii] centres on the problem of an ideal influencing the development of literature and history. Pushkin views both categories as inseparable as communicating vessels – an approach similar to that expressed by Veselovsky in his Historical Poetics [Istoricheskaya poetika].

Wallace Stevens, Music Technology, and the Resonance of Poetry

Abstract Wallace Stevens titled his first poetry collection, Harmonium (1923), after a nineteenth-century musical instrument: the American reed organ. The title frames the book as a period piece, an emblem of a bygone age, but also as a musical instrument, a tool for producing new performances in the present. This tension, bound up in the history of the reed organ and the book that bears its name, can help us interpret a similar tension in contemporary poetry studies, where scholars of historical poetics seek to read poetic form against the media conditions of narrow historical moments, and proponents of New Formalism stress the importance of experiencing poetic sound and rhythm in real time. This essay, building on Stevens’s example, argues that the concept of acoustic resonance can help reconcile synchronic and diachronic methodologies and thereby generate sophisticated new ways to analyze poetic sound.

Michel Serres’s Sensorial Philosophy and the Importance of Skin in Francis Bacon’s Nudes

Prompted by the exhibition Francis Bacon: Man and Beast (January–April 2022), this article takes a cultural studies and historical poetics approach to the significance of skin in Bacon’s nudes. Drawing upon Michel Serres’s philosophy and the work of prominent figures within skin studies, this article argues that Bacon’s paintings intuitively embody the significance of skin as a dynamic site/sight of sensory, lived, experience shaped by socio-historical context. Bacon’s nudes are considered in relation to the dermalogical turn; the topological body; Didier Anzieu’s skin ego and skin as our ‘deepest surface’; and the importance of movement in Bacon’s imagery, which correlates with Serres’s notion that learning occurs through bodily motion. Serres recognises that cultural works – including painting and other creative practices – can convey complex multiplicities of knowledge synthesised into new and distinct forms.

Something out of nothing

Written from within Lyrik Kabinett, Munich, holding the second-largest poetry library in Europe, this essay provides a practice-based perspective on how the concept of ›literature as social practice‹ can find articulation in an institutional setting. Starting with a brief overview of poetry libraries internationally, the contribution subsequently focuses in on the artist’s book and poetry holdings at Lyrik Kabinett, our user and audience engagement, and on the way we initiate contemporary poetic responses to poetic histories. The concept of social practice is thereby also given a diachronic perspective, yet one that is attentive to the significance of decanonisation as much as of canonisation.

Полигенетическая природа поэтики К.Д. Бальмонта и культурные традиции древнего Китая

The article discusses the polygenetic nature of K.D. Balmont's poetics on the basis of underinvestigated materials related to ancient Chinese cultural traditions by using the principles of comparative studies, historical poetics, hermeneutics and the mythopoetic method. The object of the analysis is the “Chinese” cycle, consisting of five sonnets included in Balmont's collection of poems “Sonnets of the Sun, Honey and Moon. Song of the Worlds” (1917). Special attention is paid to the analysis of the mythological images, motives and plots in these poems, identifying their sources and revealing the poet's creative intention. It is taken into account that S.M. Georgievsky's book “Mythical beliefs and myths of the Chinese” (1892) had a significant influence on Balmont's perception of Chinese mythology and it is an important basis for the creation of these sonnets. It is claimed that the source of this cycle is the Chinese treatise “Huainan Tzu” (Philosophers from Huainan, no later than 139 BC), which is essentially a Taoist philosophical work. It is noted that Balmont's reference to “Huainan Tzu” testifies to his continuing attention to Taoism, which turned out to be one of the main sources of the poet's spiritual exploration. The theme of the Eternal Femininity in this cycle is considered as a point of contact between the Silver Age culture and ancient Chinese culture, primarily Solovyov's doctrine of Sophia and Lao Tzu's philosophy. It is concluded that, firstly, Balmont's sonnets can be perceived not only as an attempt to stylize ancient Chinese myths, as researchers often assume, but also as a phenomenon indicating the transformation of the semantics of the myth created by the poet and its deepening on the basis of mythological traditions of ancient China. Secondly, the use of common motifs in Eastern and European mythology and the combination of Chinese mythology with the European poetic form reflects the polygenetic nature of Balmont's poetics and the contamination of traditions.

Советское как «иное»: о балладных истоках садистского стишка

The article offers a new look at the genealogy of sadistic verselets — a genre of school humorous folklore of the 1970–80s, which is a dactylic quatrain or couplet where a tragic event occurs to a child character (‘a little boy’). It has been proven that the verselet is deeply rooted in the literary tradition and can be interpreted as a result of de-canonizing the ballad. From the point of view of historical poetics, we analyze the features of reproducing and transforming the ballad invariant, as well as the reality conceptualization principles determined by the same. We have found out that, on the one hand, ‘catastrophic’ motives are ‘exalted’ in the verselet (everyone is defenseless against the evil that inevitably and variously penetrates the world) and, on the other hand, they are discredited by means of the grotesque (which ensures the self-identity of the modern genre). In combination with ballad plots, the focus of works on Soviet material allows us to view official discourse as ‘alien’ — alternative and hostile to a human and, for this reason, ‘rejected’ in the act of laughter. Therefore, the contextual synonymy of everything ‘Soviet’, ‘adult’, and ‘parental’ turns into dispelling the myth of the ‘people’s state’, which not only does not protect people from danger, but also directly threatens their well-being.

Patience Agbabi, The Canterbury Tales , and Polyhistorical Form

Abstract: This essay engages the question of historical form via one of the more remarkable retellings of Chaucer, the British-Nigerian poet Patience Agbabi's 2014 book Telling Tales . Retaining Chaucer's governing conceit that the pilgrims share tales to pass the time while traveling from London to Canterbury, Agbabi layers onto this frame narrative a dazzling array of poetic and linguistic forms. The result is a work that flaunts its literary historical textures while resisting single period-based historicization. Rather than peeling back the layers of culture and history that inevitably accrue on artworks as they pass through time, Agbabi's book accentuates them, modeling a brand of historical poetics based not on recovery, but remediation.

An anagram of the "unknown poet" in K.K. Vaginov's novel "The Goat Song"

The article analyzes the hidden semantic associations, allusions and reminiscences associated with the artistic technique of anagramming the surname of the main character of K.K. Vaginov's novel "The Goat Song" (1928) — the "unknown poet" Agafonov. The subject of our research attention was the linguistic and cultural complex of associations as part of an incomplete anagram of the writer's surname (Vaginov) in the family "mask" of the autobiographical hero (Agafonov). Special attention is paid to the analysis of the phenomenological structure of this image, based on elementary semantic connections with the formally absent linguistic and cultural complex of the reconstructed context: the "Dionysian" component (the motif of the "unknown god" in the Pradionysian cults); the cultural and semantic stereotype of the Silver Age (in particular, the features of the symbolist "poet-theurgist" are obvious); the Nietzschean image "the artist of intoxication and sleep"; and finally, with the ancient Greek etymology of the word-concept ἀγάπη ( love, Christian meals of love) in the structure of the surname of the character in question – Agafonov. The anagramming technique is presented from the perspective of the artistic teleology of Vagin's work and is considered by us within the framework of the methodological guidelines of historical poetics (O.M. Freudenberg) and selectively applied methods of deconstructivist analysis. As part of the analysis of the phenomenological structure of the image of the "unknown poet", we sought, using a wide range of interpretative possibilities of the Vagin text, to demonstrate the hidden semantic structures associated with the anagram of the surname of the main character of the novel – the "unknown poet" Agafonov. The main result of the conducted research is the conclusion that the anagramming technique is presented by K. K. Vaginov in the perspective of the artistic teleology of the novel narrative, which is based on the principle of multifunctional interaction between the author and the character. A special research contribution to the development of the presented topic is an indication of specific structural and semantic complexes linking the surname of the hero of the Vaginovsky novel with a wide linguistic and cultural tradition – from antiquity (Plato's "Feast" dialogue) to the modern era ("The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music" by F. Nietzsche).

Historical poetics in Oleg Ermakov’s novel “Olaf’s Spring”

Historical poetics in Oleg Ermakov’s novel “Olaf’s Spring”

Transitioning Texts and Genre Reassignment: Trans Poetics as Trans Philosophy

Abstract: This paper explores trans poetics as a way of doing trans philosophy. I begin by giving an overview of the current state of trans philosophy. I then give examples of other literatures wherein poetics is taken to be philosophically robust. After giving a brief history of trans poetics, I turn to the poetics statements and poetry of three trans poets—D'Lo, Ching-In Chen, and micha cárdenas—featured in the 2013 anthology Troubling the Line . I show how poetry is often uniquely able to capture the ambiguity of the WTF of trans experience in ways that differ from philosophical argumentation. I conclude by suggesting that poetics might move us away from a potential politics of suffering in trans philosophy to a politics of liberation.

Три круга интертекстуальности: «усадебный миф» в романе М.Л. Степновой «Сад»

The article analyzes the landmark novel of Russian writer M.L. Stepnova, The Garden (2020), which has aroused the public’s and critic’s interest, continuing the “estate text” of Russian literature of the 19th–20th centuries. It is shown that the image of the garden in the work is both national (the whole tradition of the Russian “estate text”) and universal (the Bible, Voltaire, H.L. Borges, U. Eco, etc.). The key to an adequate reading of the postmodern novel with its “semantic insolubility,” narrative “nonselectio,” experiments on human identity, an invitation to the “alternative history,” etc. is an analysis of its intertextuality, generating original life-creating strategies. There are three concentric circles of intertextuality that diverge in the breadth of space-time coverage: character, author-narrative, and mythopoetic. If in character terms the protagonist of the work — the garden — directly participates in people’s lives, at the author-narrative level becomes an ideologeme, symbolizing with his death under the axes of hired workers the tragic fate of Russia at the turn of the 19th–20th centuries, then in the super-author’s mythopoetic sphere reveals the quality of practical immortality, indestructibility. The reason for the suicidal cutting down of the garden of the grown-up Princess Boryatinskaya is the excommunication of this heroine from fiction, primarily “estate,” with its powerful lifecreating potential. The scientific novelty of the research lies in the systematic analysis of the intertextual strategies of the iconic modern novel for the first time and the identification of their three-level structure. The article applies historical-literary and cultural approaches, methods of historical poetics, and structural-semiotic analysis and uses the modernist and postmodern thesaurus paradigms.

Mussolini’s Cesare

Abstract This article discusses the collaboration between Benito Mussolini and Giovacchino Forzano in the writing of three historical dramas, focusing on the third text of their collaboration, Cesare, which dates to 1939. Placing this partnership within the context of Fascism’s broader theatrical programming, the essay discusses the play as a model of Fascist theater, for its imparting of Fascist ideological tenets, propagandistic messages, and pedagogical aims. It focuses in particular on the ways in which the play uses the analogy between ancient Rome and Fascist Italy, and between Julius Caesar and Mussolini, embodying fascism’s poetics of history, contributing to the anthropological revolution, and overall demonstrating the ‘new fascist man’ through the character of Caesar/Mussolini.

Deep Imperial Time in Sinophone Poetics of History

This article examines three Sinophone cultural texts to suggest that Sinophone studies can draw from its affinities with historical and linguistic studies to question the conceptual boundary of “premodern” imperial China. Through case studies of Hou Hsiao-hsien from Taiwan and Saisai (Xi Xi) and Wong Bik-wan from Hong Kong, the article proposes “deep imperial time” as a Sinophone historical poetics and cultural strategy of deimperialization. Artists turn their Sinophone sensibilities into a historiographical method that intervenes in nation-centric history and performs a capacious form of localization. Marginality from the normative nation-state and interimperial positionality compel them to enact decentered visions of historical Chineseness and imagine anti-imperial solidarities with the margins of different imperial formations across history. The article concludes that Sinophone studies can contribute to the conceptual enlargement of decoloniality by incorporating subaltern experiences in contesting non-Western empires.

Aspects of Contemporary Opera Studies

The article explores the paradoxes of using literary sources in opera: literary works, myths and fairy tales, legends and traditions. Among these stories, the author focuses on the theme of the femme fatale, associated with the motif of seduction and the final catastrophe that ends her life story. The theme of the femme fatale is considered in the context of gender issues, the relationship between the male and female worlds. The research is based on the principles of historical poetics. The author analyses the origins of plot motifs, their development in time, the combination of motifs in connection with the system of characters, external and internal motives of their behavior, and, in general, the artistic structure of the work. The analysis of the plots in terms of the existence of common motifs in them and their place in the integral plot structure is based on the operas by composers of different ages. The article first examines the works of Jean-Baptiste Lully, Georg Friedrich Händel, Antonín Dvořák, Georges Bizet, Richard Wagner, and Alban Berg in terms of the common motifs and their place in the integral plot structure. This makes it possible to reveal non-linear connections between opera works belonging to different historical epochs, different genres, and national traditions.

The modernity artistic metanarrative and the 19th century novel structure

The article proposes the concept of "artistic metanarrative", similar to the well-known concept of Lyotard's metanarrative, but used to describe some mechanisms of the novel structure. The novel of the 19th century is considered as the central phenomenon of the modern culture, but due to the problematics of the moral norms conflict generated by the autonomous personality’s value representations of the new era of culture and the past moral principles, which remain active in the 19th century. For the novel hero, this is essentially a conflict of two cultures, - a moral conflict developing in his mind and behavior and more or less dramatically demanding the impossible from the hero to join the unjoinable. The subject of the analysis are the forms of the work scheme, where artistic reflection on the novel heterogeneous value vectors, relationships, narratives and cultural norms occurs in the perspective of some kind of ordering and some kind of value harmonization of the whole. In the categories of S. Broitman's historical poetics, this creative problem corresponds to the concept of "autonomous involvement", which determines the features of the poetics of artistic modality, but in the case of a "conflict of cultures" it acquires a special acuteness in the individual consciousness. Metanarrative reflection on the value relations operating in the artistic world of the novel occurs at the level of the organization of the text construction forms that creates a situation of self-generation of meaning in the field between the author and the reader. This meaning goes beyond the boundaries of the certain stories directly depicted in the novel and has no direct verbal expression. At the same time, at the metanarrative level of the novel's integrity, the practices of smoothing out the conflict by creating a composition of value relations, where opposites are relatively balanced, are quite obvious. The "conciliatory" nature of this relationship in the 19th Century novel does not guarantee the prospects of harmonious human existence, but makes one realize the problem in all its depth.