Russian Poet Research Articles

The Creativity Phenomenon in the Media Strategies of XXI Century Poets

This research examines how modern poets use various creative media strategies as a means of promotion of their poetry as well as personal brands in the Internet and beyond. Promotional actions in their various forms used by XXI century Russian poets allow one to achieve new results both in offline and online events, so a cross-platform effect is at work here. The discourse analysis method, the content analysis method and the participant observation method were used to obtain analytical data. Such actions of art PR as gamification, hype, charity event, closed fan club and many others can increase the public capital of a modern poet through the interactive involvement of a potential reader.. The work is of practical importance for poets of the 21st century who want to increase the level of recognition of their personal brand and achieve higher quantitative and qualitative indicators of their target audience.

A review of Adrian Wanner. 2020. The Bilingual Muse: Self-Translation among Russian Poets. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

A review of Adrian Wanner. 2020. The Bilingual Muse: Self-Translation among Russian Poets. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

The Metaphors of Rain in Lithuanian and Russian Poetry

The current article, which is one of the further researches on the metaphors of natural phenomena in Lithuanian and Russian poetry, discusses the metaphors of rain (based on the works of 45 Lithuanian and 57 Russian poets). They reflect the following aspects of the phenomenon: acoustic, dynamic, temporal, visual, temperature, as well as its intensity, destructive consequences, belonging to a certain season and others. The metaphorical expressions are divided into seven semantic groups: 1) anthropomorphic, 2) zoomorphic, 3) biomorphic (plant), 4) associated with inanimate nature objects and phenomena, 5) ‘material’ (subject), 6) related to abstract concepts, and 7) others. In both languages, the anthropomorphic and subject groups of metaphors have turned out to be the largest, while the smallest groups are zoomorphic, biomorphic (plant) and abstract metaphors. The comparison of the metaphorical expressions that define rain in Lithuanian and Russian poetry showed that there are common metaphorical models, however, there are also differences that are related to the prevalence of certain models, as well as their presence/absence in one of the two languages. Thus, among zoomorphic metaphors, the models rain-bird (with a common wing image), rain-horse and rain-small creature are common, while their difference consists in the fact that the models are used to characterize various properties of rain. For instance, a popular Lithuanian verb metaphor the rain blooms, as well as the comparison of rain with flowers (a biomorphic (plant) group of metaphors), are absent in Russian poetry.The richness and diversity of rain metaphors in Lithuanian and Russian poetry illustrate the authors’ ability to use a number of images that have already existed in the language and their creativity to utilize absolutely new comparisons that are usually fit for the existing metaphorical models.

“Against the Background of Pushkin”: S.I. Vavilov’s Speech at a Meeting at the Poet’s Monument in June 1949

The article introduces a previously unpublished speech of the outstanding Russian scientist-physicist, President of the USSR Academy of Sciences, academician Sergey Ivanovich Vavilov, which was delivered by him at the anniversary meeting held on June 5, 1949, at the monument to Alexander Pushkin in Moscow in connection with the celebration of the 150th anniversary of the great Russian poet’s birth. S.I. Vavilov was a great connoisseur of Pushkin’s poetry and literature about him. In the second half of the 1940s, Vavilov actively participated in projects to prepare the anniversary celebrations dedicated to Alexander Pushkin and perpetuate the memory of the poet. Analysis of S.I. Vavilov’s speech, which, unlike his other “Pushkin speeches”, was not intended for the press, shows that in evaluating the great poet’s work, along with the use of cliches, traditional for the epoch, the scientist also took certain liberties. In particular, he did not utter the ritual words praising Stalin, the Communist Party and the Soviet State. The poet Ya.P. Polonsky quoted by Vavilov was not among the classics recognized by Soviet literary criticism, and the selected quote from him could be interpreted as a hint of condemnation of the surrounding Stalinist reality. Numerous fragments of the scientist’s personal diaries indicate his critical attitude towards the latter, in particular.

К железному веку прогресса (образ экономической жизни в русской поэзии XVIII–XIX вв.)

The author presents the attitude of Russian poets of the XVIII–XIX centuries to different aspects of economic life based on their works. The poetry of the XVIII century was rigidly differentiated by genre, and it was not supposed to reflect the specifics of economic relations in general. The only exceptions were satirical works whose authors criticized, primarily from the moral side, certain aspects of everyday life, and in particular, the practice of tax collectors. Nevertheless, poets did not do without comments about the socio-economic division of society into separate groups, the significance of certain power decisions for the development of the country’s economy, and, of course, the role of money and trade in the development of society as a whole and in human lives. Some poems contain curious references to international trade, the development of which, especially in the reign of Catherine II, led some poets to hail progress and even characterize this time as a ‘Golden Age’. It is shown how the assessment of the epoch changes during the first half of the XIX century, and how the ‘Golden Age’ is transformed in common opinion into the ‘Iron Age’. The role of economic and socialist theories in the life of society is increasing. A poet of the XIX century descends from the position of an external observer watching the sinful earth and he is horrified to find himself at the mercy of money and related interests, which produce a highly negative effect on morality, subordinating all human aspirations to monetary relations and, therefore, coarsening the soul. We consider the disputes about the progress between the lyric poets and our quite straightforward Westerners. Alexander Blok sums up a certain result of the social orientation towards purely economic relations and the technological progress associated with it in the poem “Retribution”.

Cold War literary modernists in a dialogue under oppression

Abstract The article deals with selected aspects of the cultural appropriation of post-Stalinist Soviet poetry by Anglo-American poets and translators. The article focuses on Yevgeny Yevtushenko and Andrei Voznesensky, two eminent representatives of Russian lyric poetry of the “Thaw.” English translations of Yevtushenko’s and Voznesensky’s poems are discussed in relation to Cold War issues and imagery, such as the themes of the Second World War, the Holocaust, and the rediscovery of America. The article demonstrates that the Soviet-Russian authors and their Anglo-American translators appealed to their governments and audiences over the moral and aesthetic barriers imposed by the Cold War. The opportunity for independent, liberal, romantic, or leftist English-speaking authors to collaborate with the post-Stalinist Russian poets of the Thaw was made possible by the latters’ willingness to break the cultural isolation of the Soviet Union after Stalin’s death.

PATRIOTIC AND HEROIC MOTIVES IN THE POETRY OF ALEXANDR TVARDOVSKY AND KEYSAR AMINPUR

Connections and interrelations come up in the global literary process directly and indirectly. The present article is devoted to the literary parallels in the creative work of the famous Russian poet, a participant of the Second World War, chief editor of the literary magazine «Nowy Mir» Alexandr Tvardovsky and the popular Iran poet Keysar Aminpur. War and peace problems – are persistent in any national literature throughout the centuries. These problems have reflected in the life, fate and creative work of the Russian poet. They are also predominant in the poetry of K. Aminpur. Longing for home, dreams about piece in the world during ongoing military actions– are common concepts in the poetry of Tvardovsky and Aminpur, where people striving for peace have been drawn into the conflict. Patriotic and heroic motives in the poetry of the Russian and the Iran poets, ways of reflection in style, language and composition of the poems are different due to literary process particularities in the USSR and Iran in the last quarter of the XX-th century. At the same time, there are common points allowing us to compare poetry of A. Tvardovsky and K. Aminpur. Motives of patriotism and heroics are being analyzed from the prospective of nature. Homeland and smaller motherland landscape concepts are inseparable in the poetry of the both poets.

А. С. Пушкин в творчестве Р. Гамзатова

The work aims to identify the role that A. S. Pushkin plays and the place that he takes in R. Gamzatov’s creative work, specifics of his relation to the great Russian poet, as well as to determine the degree and nature of influence and recreation of Pushkin’s image in creative work of the national poet of Dagestan. As a result of the study, it was found that Pushkin’s traditions and motifs are represented not only in R. Gamzatov’s literary work but also in his public activity. They manifest themselves in direct parallels to Pushkin’s poetic traditions and also in the form of quotes, expressions and associations related to the poet’s personality and writings. Scientific novelty of the research lies in the fact that it is the first work attempting to consider Pushkin’s traditions and implementation of his image in R. Gamzatov’s creative work in a comprehensive manner. For the first time, materials from R. Gamzatov’s epistolary (the 1948 letter from Moscow), publicistic (speeches), poetic (poems “The Monument”, “To Irakly Andronikov”) heritage, making for the most prominent illustrations of creative connection between him and A. S. Pushkin, are introduced into scientific use.

L.I. Strakhovsky: Between Symbolism and Acmeism (Based on Foreign Publications)

The article is devoted to L.I. Strakhovsky (alias Leonid Chatsky; 1898—1963), a Russian writer and poet of the first wave of emigration, and his poetry and prose reflected in foreign publications of his works in Russian. Returning to our culture the name of this author, now half-forgotten in his homeland, and introducing this name into literary studies, the article tries to reveal the thematic and stylistic diversity of L.I. Strakhovsky’s poetry and prose. The research’s object is foreign publications of L.I. Strakhovsky’s artistic works in separate books, almanacs and periodicals published in Belgium, Germany, Canada and identified through collection catalogues of leading Russian libraries (the Russian State library, the Alexander Solzhenitsyn House of Russia Abroad) and library resources that display foreign Russian-language publications by L.I. Strakhovsky. The article highlights and analyzes the main stylistic (symbolism, acmeism, “junior acmeism”) and thematic (autobiographical, English, mystical) components of L.I. Strakhovsky’s works, reveals the components’ individual features, the originality of their constancy and mutual influence. The main of these features is that L.I. Strakhovsky’s works can be stylistically periodized on the basis of the author’s increased propensity to cyclize his works though without creative evolution in the usual sense and with the stable nature of his working throughout his life. To review the publications and analyze the nature of L.I. Strakhovsky’s works, the article draws on the context of Russian and emigrant literature of his era, creatively associated with L.I. Strakhovsky and its main figures, and notes his literary and cultural influence.

Опыт апробации песенных материалов, переведенных с русского на английский язык, в преподавании иностранного языка в школе на начальном и среднем этапах обучения

The development of methods of foreign language teaching using song materials is one of the most pressing problems of foreign language teaching in modern practice. The purpose of this article is to describe the experience of using song materials of Russian composers and poets translated into English in the practice of foreign language teaching in primary and secondary schools. The research objectives are to identify and experimentally describe the translated song materials and test the author's methodology for its use. The aim of the study is also to find out peculiarities of psychological and emotional features of the perception of educational material by students via personal perception of song lyrics. Methods of theoretical analysis and comparison, as well as conducting an experiment to test the author's methods of foreign language teaching, which allow to solve the tasks and achieve the goals of the study, has been used. As a result of the research, new data were obtained on the use of song materials in foreign language teaching. Also, a teaching methodology, based on the principle of combining structural, pragmatic, cultural, prosodic and communicative aspects of teaching a foreign language, was formed.

Визуальные аспекты лирического стихотворения

Статья посвящена проблеме визуального в лирике. Визуальное при этом рассматривается как свойство поэтики вербального текста. В статье выделяются основные категории, необходимые для анализа визуального в лирическом стихотворении – в первую очередь, это зрение лирического субъекта. Главной целью статьи является анализ основных аспектов репрезентации визуального в лирическом стихотворении. Это образ, сюжет, композиционно-речевые формы и аллюзии на жанры визуальных искусств. Материалом является преимущественно лирика российских поэтов ХХ века.

Aleksey Khomyakov’s unknown essay on the Austrian Slavs (1845) and his poetry: the interplay of historiosophical ideas and poetic prophetism

The paper introduces a conceptually important, but previously unknown essay by the Russian poet, theologian and philosopher Aleksey Khomyakov. This essay, “The Slavic and Orthodox Christian Population of Austria,” was discovered in two versions: an original, previously unpublished manuscript and a later anonymous 1845 text. The author reveals an aesthetic function that certain structural elements perform in Khomyakov’s essay, encouraging the interaction between historiosophical ideas and literary creativity. The essay is emphatically philosophical in its style, as its very composition embraces the classic Hegelian triad of “Being—Nothing—Becoming.” This notion overlaps with Khomyakov’s historiosophical idea of the European Slavdom that flourished in the first millennium B.C., and that then lost its sovereignty being under German rule, and finally enjoyed a renaissance in the 19th century. The paper also shows that the distinctive feature of Khomyakov’s poetry is its prophetism. The contrastive analysis was carried out to identify the affinity between the thematic-figurative patterns of Khomyakov’s early poetry (up to 1845) and his essay on the Austrian Slavs, which revealed how the poetic thought had been accumulating and what aspect it had taken on within a philosophical and historical discourse. The author of the article puts forward the hypothesis that the difference in depicting Peter the Great in the two versions of Khomyakov’s essay can be attributed to his dispute with Konstantin Aksakov’s poem “To Peter.” This polemic between two fellow-Slavophils was driven by their diverging approaches to the problem of the ethical dilemma of ends and means.

<i>Mir Bozhiy</i> magazine and Russian culture in the late 19th – early 20th century

Mir Bozhiy (God’s World) magazine is justly attributed to the lead periodicals of the p lutionary Russia. It came out in 1892-1906. During that relatively short period, it managed to win well-deserved respect and popularity among its readers. The circulation of 18 thousand issues in its best years is a perfect proof. No other classical fat magazine had such a wide circulation. At first, Mir Bozhiy was considered a specialized edition for young audience. That was the reason for its religious name referring at a young soul exploring the world of the God. However, very soon it turned into a magazine for wider public and readers of different ages. Already one year after it was first published, its cover had the subtitle complimented with a note «for self-education». Mir Bozhiy became a magazine for family reading replacing books, schoolbooks and encyclopaedias.Its readers had all reasons to love the magazine. Published works of literature — poems, stories, and novels stood out with their high literary level; and scientific reviews represented thorough analytical studies that contained brave and original conclusion. Contributors of the content included the authors who made Russian poetry and literature shine such as Dmitriy Merezhkovskiy, Ivan Bunin, Dmitriy Mamin-Sibiryak, Alexander Kuprin and others.Exceptional articles came out from the philosophers Sergey Bulgakov, Nikolay Berdyayev, the economist Mikhail Tuhan-Baranovskiy, publishers Pavel Milyukov and Nikolay Iordanskiy, historian Vasily Klyuchevskiy. Articles about music and arts were also frequent in the magazine.Remarkable publications of the magazine became possible thanks to the high professionalism of its staff members who had literary talents and deep scientific knowledge. One of them, Angel Bogdanovich, was not only an outstanding editor but also an excellent publisher. The real masters of literary translation were Lidia Tuhan-Baranovskaya and Maria Kuprina-Iordanskaya, her first husband was the writer Alexander Kuprin, the head of the magazine’s fiction department. Finally, the magazine’s chief editor Fyodor Batyushkov who was the descendant of the famous Russian poet significantly contributed to the success of the magazine.Though, in 1906 due to the political situation, the «harmful magazine» as considered by the censors was closed, publications of the Mir Bozhiy continued influencing the development of Russian literature, science and culture for a long time.

“I WISH I COULD FLY TO THE SKY AND BRING CHILDREN SOME BREAD”: MYTHOPOETICS OF YULIA NOVOSELOVA

Works of contemporary Ural poet Yulia Novoselova (1973) are considered in regards to the way she constructs the poetic world of rhymes and in the light of "female poetry". The collection of poems “The spell of realism” (2018) has provided a ground for further study. The study has revealed that specific nature of Yulia Novoselova's individuality is determined primarily by her creative interpretation of such archetypal images as water and wood. Traditional complex of archetype meanings is actualized in Yulia Novoselova's works: here water is interpreted as life and death, renewal, purification, rebirth; tree acts as connection of earth and sky, living and dead, light and darkness. However, the images of wood and water in Yulia’s lyrics are often associated with "female" focus in the lyrical subject. It is the water the heroine associates her identity with. The article outlines the dialogue of the poet with Russian folklore: she addresses to folklore intonation-rhythmic, lexical expressiveness, and to the genre models of lamentation, callings (so-called zaklichki). In the course of poem study, we reveal the connection of Yulia Novoselova's lyrics with myths and folklore as well as with the works of Russian poets starting from Alexander S. Pushkin to Vera Pavlova. As a result, it is concluded that the 1990-2010-ies lyrics of Yulia Novoselova fits into the “female poetry” of the “second wave” (I.V. Kukulin), which is characterized by a combination of opposite complexes: weakness, vulnerability and strength, energy. However, the poet's craving for archaic nature (myth, folklore, dialectal words, obsolete words) and the tendency to loosen the syllabic-tonic system of versification make Yulia Novoselova unique among female poets of 1990-2000-ies.

«Climbing The Alps»: Symbolic Toponymy
 as aFactor of the Cycles Formationin I.A. Bunin’s Oeuvre

The article analyzes the unassembled cycle of I.A. Bunin’sthree texts with the same title «In the Alps». The poem and the chronologically first short story with the same title were written at the beginning of the writer’s literary career. At that time Bunin learned from outstanding predecessors in order to find his own poetic voice and place in the field of literature. The result of the searches showed the invention of a unique genre – the genre of prosaic miniature. Then, half a century after publication of the first texts «In the Alps»,the third short story with the same titleappeared. The meaning of the toponym «The Alps» in the title of the short stories is
 explained by appealing to Bunin’s memoirs and self-describing notes. The concept «The Alps» in his literary works is initiated, on the one hand, by the writer’s first trip to Switzerland, and, on the other hand, by the parallel reception of the so-called
 «Swiss myth» in the works of European and Russian romantic poets and writers: G. G. Byron and V.A. Zhukovsky. While the motifs and imagery system of Bunin’s «alpine » cycle is inherited from his predecessors, the innovations of his literary method
 are demonstrated in the narrative organization of the texts.

Reconstruction of the «Armenian» Text
 in the Russian Poetry of the XX Century (Computer Research Experience)

The article describes a study on the reconstruction of the so-called «Armenian » text in Russian poetry. Russian folklore and ancient Russian literature have already mentioned Armenian literary portrait that was finally formed in Russian literature
 only in the ХХ century, after the tragic events in the history of Armenia in 1915. Through applying the software complex «Hypertext search for companion-words in
 author's texts» to the representative corpus of the Russian language poems on the Armenian theme (65 works of different poets), lexemes marking the minimal themes
 of the «Armenian» text have been identified. These lexemes act as dominant components of the «Armenian» lexical combinations presented in the poems of Russian poets («Ararat», «Yerevan», «mountain», «sky», «ground», «blood», «heart», «soul»,
 «flame», «eternal») and optional ones («hostile», «to rot», «myopic», «book», «child», «Komitas», etc.). The common lexical combinations will allow the authors to establish intertextual links, which form the basis of the «Armenian» text in Russian
 poetry. However, in most cases poems have no intertextual links that could signal the influence of one text on another. The coincidence of vocabulary in the texts is usually
 explained by geographical and historical realities, as well as a poetic tradition.

Letters from Konstantin Golubov to Nikolay Ogarev: an attempt of linguostylistic analysis

This article is part of a general study of the book collection of the former Fedoseevsky Holy Trinity and Saviour Monastery, located in Voinovo (currently Poland, formerly East Prussia). The author of the article presents a description of the content and style characterization of the open letters addressed from the Old-Believers publisher and writer Konstantin Golubov to a collaborator of the printing house Free Russian Press in London, the famous Russian poet, historian and political activist N. P. Ogarev. The letters were published in the third book of the religious-philosophical journal “Truth” (1868), which was published by Golubev in his own Slavic Press in Johannisburg (currently Pisz).

Ироническая оценка советской действительности в творческой биографии Oлега Григорьева

This text is an attempt to acquaint the reader with the writer’s biography of Oleg Grigoryev, a Russian poet and a representative of “the literary underground”. His works can be classified as urban folklore. Most of his poems are full of harsh irony, which may shock with its dark humour. Grigoryev often resorts to the poetics of the absurd, which may lead a keen reader to the conclusion that he is close to the creative actions of the poetic group of the Oberiuty with Daniil Kharms and Alexander Vvedenski as their main representatives. In this light, Grigoryev’s poetry can be interpreted as a reflection of the dark Soviet reality in which he lived and with which he struggled. Such an attitude surely did not help him in succeeding within the official Russian literature.

Poets of the Sixties as Translators of Ossetian Poetry

The results of a comparative analysis of multilingual texts - the original and the translation - of poetic works by Ossetian authors (M. Tsirikhova, A. Tsarukaev, R. Asaev, G. Dzugaev, H.-M. Dzuzzati, D. Darchieva, T. Tettsoeva) in the light of the translation interpretation by famous Russian poets of the sixties (E. Evtushenko, B. Akhmadulina, R. Kazakova, B. Okudzhava, Yu. Morits) are presented. In the course of comparative analysis, it was found that some translators resorted to adapted rethinking of the lines of a foreign language text (Yu. Morits, B. Akhmadulina). It was shown that for this purpose, in some places, translators violated the formal organization of the verse, expanded the original text by adding stanzas (R. Kazakov) or, conversely, narrowed the verse of the original (B. Okudzhava, B. Akhmadulina), but changes in the structure of the original did not affect the adequate perception of the text to recipients. The features of the implementation of the original pragmatic potential in translation are commented. It is noted that translators not only find lexical means characterized by semantic affinity with the words of the original, but also embody the aesthetic component of the literary text (R. Kazakova, Yu. Moritz) and others. It is stated that some poets deliberately resorted to rethinking the artistic reality captured by the author: in the language of translation, a new work is actually created based on the poem in the original (E. Evtushenko, B. Akhmadulina).

La poesia concreta e visiva quali esempi culturali lusofoni del dissenso

The following work aims to study two Lusitanian cultures of dissent: the Brazilian concrete poetry of Haroldo de Campos (focusing on his trans-creations of some Russian poets) and the Portuguese Experimental poetry of Ana Hatherly (through a selection of her visual poetries). So, the culture of dissent will specifically concern the style used by the two poetic groups. This style represented a real innovation in the Portuguese and Brazilian cultures in the second half of the XXth century, marked by hard political contexts. Furthermore, the dissent will be visible in some typical poetries and in some Russian poets analysed by the Brazilian concrete poets.