Vladislav Khodasevich Research Articles

DREAM MOTIF IN VLADISLAV KHODASEVICH’S POETRY COLLECTION “EUROPEAN NIGHT”

The article describes the semantic content and poetics of the dream motif present in Vladislav Khodasevich’s collection “European Night”, and we form our own concept of “inspiration”. It is shown that the dream leitmotif characterises the psychological state of the lyrical hero associated with the arrival or absence of creative inspiration. The semantics of the motif is implemented antinomically. On the one hand, the dream-inspiration saves the lyrical hero from the mundane routine. On the other hand, ordinary earthly life in some poems appears to the lyrical subject as a dream-obsession. The story of this dream-obsession gets a particularly tragic sound in the context of the collection. The expanded metaphor “European Night” in the author’s incarnation reinforces two intentions – obsession dream and salvation dream are opposed. In the lyrical space of Vladislav Khodasevich’s “European Night”, dream becomes a metaphor for a special borderline state, instilled and even “imposed” from the outside on the creator hero. According to the poet’s artistic philosophy, inspiration, being the result of the mobilisation of all word artist’s abilities, is an “otherworldly” being sent from above, leading to greater creative productivity. The “dream” motif in the contradictory context of the above-mentioned poems of “European Night” indicates the salvation function of inspiration, which allows the creator to get rid of the “earthly dream”, to spiritually “see through” and to lead people.

Soviet savage, stinking cod and Muse – Vladislav Khodasevich’s vision of Saint Petersburg

The aim of this article is to analyze and interpret Vladislav Khodasevich’s poem Petersburg (Петербург, 1925), in which the poet evokes the image of the city during the war communism period from the distance of emigration. The poet presents the city in many dimensions: as a place of struggle for physical survival in an era of crisis caused by the Russian Civil War; as a space where high culture clashed with the barbarism of Bolshevism; and in an autobiographical key – as a time in which his own creative forces flourished. The cityscape is based on a series of antinomies: past – present, tradition – innovation, spirituality – materiality, sacrum – profanum, the real world – the surreal world, the culture of old Russia – the primitivism of new times. This allows us to look at the poem simultaneously from several perspectives: historical-literary (cultural life in St. Petersburg during the Civil War), biographical (the poet’s stay in the city in the years 1920–1922), intertextual (assignment of the poem to the Petersburg text) and metatextual/self-referential (Khodasevich’s aesthetic views).

Полемика о путях развития русской литературы в эмигрантской критике 20–30-х гг. XX в.

The paper is devoted to the polemics on the ways of development of Russian literature in emigration, in which Mark Slonim, Zinaida Gippius, Alfred Bem, Vladislav Khodasevich, and Georgii Adamovich all took part. The article considers the critical views of Khodasevich and Adamovich in relation to the position of Slonim, whose article “Living Literature and Dead Critics” made these polemics central to the emigrant critical literature of the 1920–1930s. Slonim thought that emigrant literature was only a branch of the common trunk of Russian literature that remained in Soviet Russia. According to Khodasevich, any literary tradition representing Russian literature in emigration never developed, and the array of different works of individual authors could not form the unity called emigrant literature. Adamovich, even though he denied the possible development of Russian literature, believed that the problem could be solved by the artistic expression of an individual’s self in simple forms of language devoid of any beauty.

블라디슬라프 호다세비치의 시집 『무거운 리라』에 나타난 음악의 모티프

This article analyzes the musical motifs of Vladislav Khodasevich’s fourth poetry book The Heavy Lyre (1922) and reveals what role those motifs play in the collection’s composition and signification. The music-related poems that bookend the collection are clues that hint at the relationship between earthly sounds and heavenly music. In the collection’s first poem, “Music,” a heavenly ‘symphony’ is suggested as something that can be felt indirectly in daily life in the form of humor. Likewise, in “Elegy,” closer to the middle of the collection, the sounds of life and the music of the soul are settled in a hierarchy, and the sounds of life are both the result of uncertain senses and a condition of existence from which the poet cannot escape. In the final poem of the collection, “Ballad,” sounds of life recede into the background for the arrival of music. So while “Music” addresses the relationship between daily life and music, the conflict between the two is deepened in the middle of the collection, and then “Ballad” presents daily life as a niche in which music can emerge. An analysis of such roles in The Heavy Lyre will serve as the basis for studying the structure of the poet’s monumental collected works, Collection of Poems (1927).

THE VISUALITY OF THE COVER OF THE ALMANAC IN THE POETRY OF VALERY ARTAMONOV

Valery Artamonov, one of the brightest Russian poets of the 1990s, focused on the traditions of the «beatniks» in his poems, combining their positions and the heritage of the Russian avant-garde. He rejected the rules of so-called neo-avant-garde and metametaphorism, for the statement of a new poetics, directly associated with magazine regimes of literature. Such a program required a turn to the dynamics of magazine design. The article considers one of the most enigmatic and obscure poems of the poet, «Falconry», and reconstructs its literary sources, the poetry of Vladislav Khodasevich and Mikhail Zenkevich, and visual source, cover design of the popular Soviet almanac «Hunting Spaces». This poem is proved to have reproduced not only the impressions of reading, but also changes in the media function of the almanac. For this author, the functional shifts of the press and media in the 1920s and 1990s was a major source of creative innovation.

Mapping Exile: Khodasevich’s ‘European Night’, 1922–1927

Using Vladislav Khodasevich’s 1927 collection ‘European Night’ (‘Evropeiskaia noch’’) as a case study, this article argues for the notion of travel as a new approach to the field of émigré literature. Khodasevich’s poems in ‘European Night’, marked with the dates and place of composition, and implicitly iterative of the contours of a Europe with which his original émigré audience was intimately familiar, represent both an autobiographical narrative and a cartographic attempt to sketch a conceptual map of European exile. Using four visualizations of the coordinates of Khodasevich’s travel, composition, place, and publication to investigate the poet’s experience and literary output in Europe during these years, I argue that the force of geography on literary production (literature in space) was especially active between 1922 and 1927. This article therefore makes the case for an atlas of the Russian emigration.

Vladislav Khodasevich: Necropolis, translated by Sarah Vitali

Vladislav Khodasevich: <i>Necropolis</i>, translated by Sarah Vitali

Pushkin's Patrimony and the Rhetoric of "Russianness" in Vladislav Khodasevich's Poem "Not by my mother, but by a Tula peasant woman…"

Pushkin's Patrimony and the Rhetoric of "Russianness" in Vladislav Khodasevich's Poem "Not by my mother, but by a Tula peasant woman…"

Владислав Ходасевич в «Столбцах» Заболоцкого

The essay describes the influence of Vladislav Khodasevich’s poems on Nikolai Zabolotsky’s literary work. Once under his own name but mostly under the nom de plume “Gulliver”, Khodasevich repeatedly addressed Zabolotsky’s poetry in a derogatory or dismissive tone, noting, nevertheless, its striking difference from general literary production. The authors establish that Khodasevich’s fallacy was based solely on his acquaintance with the poet’s publications in the “thick Soviet magazines”. Zabolotsky’s “Pillars”, published in February of 1929, did not reach Paris. That also explains a comfortable silence of the émigré critics regarding this most striking debut in the history of Russian verse. If Khodasevich had an opportunity to get acquainted with the book in its entirety, he would have recognized in Zabolotsky the echoes of his own poems. Besides the “Pillars” the reflections on Khodasevich’s poetry could be found in Zabolotsky’s other poems of the late 1920s and early 1930s.

Sanctus Amor (1908) Нины Петровской как жизнетворческий манифест

Sanctus Amor is the only intravital storybook by Nina Petrovskaya, dedicated to Sergey Auslender. The title of the book, borrowed from the poem by Andrey Bely, initiates a literary polylogue addressed to several lovers of Petrovskaya: to Bely, as he once was her teacher of heavenly love; to Valery Bryusov, as he was Petrovskaya’s beloved one at the time of publication; to Auslender as the addressee of dedication and a new contender for being Petrovskaya’s favorite. Sanctus Amor represents the ideal of the Saintly Love, the manifesto which Petrovskaya followed rigorously in real life. Her letters to Bryusov and Vladislav Khodasevich reveal multiple congruences with the novels of Sanctus Amor, which demonstrate the inextricable character of life and literature in Petrovskaya’s worldview. The paper is devoted to the analysis of Sanctus Amor in the aspect of life-creating practices and its meaning in the literary dialogue with Auslender. Sanctus Amor is a complicated prescriptive symbolic message designed to proclaim its own, and to program another’s, concept of love.

Le corps, la chair et l'âme dans l'oeuvre poétique de Vladislav Khodassevitch

Even in Putëm zerna [Grain’s Way] (where in moments of mystical fullness the world appears transfigured), Khodasevich’s poetic work is dominated by a dualistic worldview, which ultimately relates to the mystical idealism of the Russian Symbolists inspired by Vladimir Solovyov. Such an attitude to the world is realized first of all in the dualism Body (“Me”) / Soul (Spirit), where the body is perceived as an “envelope”, from which the soul can get free only with great difficulty. In Tjažëlaja lira [The Heavy Lyre], the dualism “Me” (Body) / Soul grows up, and the poet’s mystical aspiration turns into painful effort towards the attainment of transcendence. The physical intensity of this effort is so strong that it becomes practically pathological. Since the body symbolises the imprisonment in the world that the poet rejects, the interior dichotomy Body/Soul exacerbates with the poet’s perception of the dualism earthly World/another World. The “inert” material that is transcended by the poet‑«Orpheus» in «Ballada», the final poem of Tjažëlaja lira, gives place in Evropejskaja noč’ [European Night] to the world that is crashed by materiality, while the expressionist vision of the “German cycle” is dominated by violence and a degrading sexuality. The rejection of Body and the disgust for Flesh is contrasted in Khodasevich’s poetic work with the image of a foetus and its life in the mother’s womb. The poet associates this image with the “native, original world” of the Soul and the original Life. This image is not very stable, but it is radically positive. Such a sacralization of the image of a foetus and Motherhood can be correlated with the image of the Virgin, who embodies for Khodasevich the fusion of earthly and divine. Même dans Putëm zerna (où en des moments de plénitude mystique, le monde apparaît transfiguré), l’œuvre poétique de Khodassevitch est dominée par une vision du monde dualiste, qui s’inscrit dans l’idéalisme mystique symboliste « soloviévien ». Ce rapport au monde se cristallise d’abord dans le dualisme corps (« moi »)/âme (esprit), où le corps du poète est perçu comme une « enveloppe », dont l’âme ne parvient à se libérer que difficilement. Dans Tjažëlaja lira, le dualisme « moi » (corps)/âme s’accentue, et l’aspiration mystique du poète se réduit de plus en plus à un douloureux effort de transcendance, d’une intensité physique, proprement pathologique. Le corps étant la concrétisation de l’enfermement dans un monde que le poète rejette, la dichotomie intérieure corps/âme s’intensifie à mesure que s’exacerbe la perception du dualisme monde/au delà. La matière « inerte » que le poète « Orphée » transcendait dans la «Ballada» finale de Tjažëlaja lira, fait ainsi place, dans Evropejskaja noč’, à un univers écrasé par la matérialité et dominé, dans la vision expressionniste du « cycle allemand », par la violence et une sexualité dégradante. À ce rejet du corps et cette répulsion pour la chair s’oppose, dans l’univers khodassévitchien, une image corporelle, plus fugace, mais radicalement positive, celle de la vie utérine et du fœtus dans le sein maternel, que le poète associe au « monde natal, originel » de l’âme et à la Vie élémentaire. Cette sacralisation de l’image du fœtus et de la maternité peut être mise en corrélation avec la figure de la Vierge, mère par excellence et incarnation, pour le poète, de la fusion du terrestre et du divin. Дуалистическое мировоззрение, свойственное символистскому мистическому идеализму, навеянному Владимиром Соловьёвым, превалирует в поэзии Ходасевича. Оно присутствует и в cборнике «Путём зерна», где в моменты мистической полноты мир представляется преображенным. Такое отношение к миру в первую очередь выражается в дуализме «тело («я») / душа (дух)», где тело воспринимается как «оболочка», от которой душа может освободиться лишь с трудом. В «Тяжёлой лире» дуализм «“Я” (тело) / душа» усугубляется. Мистический порыв поэта всё больше превращается в болезненное стремление к трансцендентности. Физическая интенсивность этого стремления настолько велика, что доходит практически до патологии. Поскольку телесная оболочка воплощает заключение в отвергаемый поэтом мир, внутренняя дихотомия «тело / душа» усиливается по мере того, как обостряется восприятие поэтом дуализма «мир земной / мир иной». «Косная» материя, трансцендируемая поэтом‑«Орфеем» в «Балладе», заключительном стихотворении «Тяжёлой лиры», уступает место миру, полностью задавленному вещами, в «Европейской ночи». В экспрессионистском же вúдении немецкого цикла доминируют физическое насилие и унижающая сексуальность. Отторжению тела и отвращению к плоти противопоставлен в творчестве Ходасевича образ тела, не столь устойчивый, но совершенно положительный. Речь идет о зарождающейся жизни в материнской утробе, ассоциируемой поэтом с «родным, первоначальным миром» души и первозданной Жизнью. Такая сакрализация утробной жизни и материнства может быть соотнесена с образом Богородицы, воплощающей у Ходасевича слияние земного с божественным.

Биографические черты Владислава Ходасевича в хронике «Гулливера»

The main source of information about Vladislav Khodasevich’s life is his memoirs, which he published as separate essays on the pages of émigré outlets. The article discusses several cases when biographical information appears in the chronicle of Soviet literature, which the critic published together with Nina Berberova in the newspaper “Vozrozhdenie” (1927 – 1939) under the common pseudonym Gulliver. In addition to documentary evidence of work on the chronicle, as well as the existence of an ideological community of pseudonymous notes and authorized publications, Khodasevich’s authorship can be established when biographical details of the chronicler’s life are interwoven in the notes. Until now, such cases have been considered as supporting material for the attribution of certain chronicle issues. The article highlights notes that are of independent value for studying both Khodasevich’s work and his biography, which allows us to significantly correct the traditional approach to such a material. The most interesting and voluminous examples from the entire corps of “Literary Chronicle” are used for research. The thematic scatter is quite large: from the reception of plans for 1935 on the redevelopment of Moscow streets to references to Khodasevich’s unpublished poetic legacy

Отзвуки символизма в эстетике Владислава Ходасевича

Будучи младшим современником символистов, Ходасевич находился под сильным влиянием их эстетики, но сам в поэзии и литературной критике шел другим путем. Это дало ему возможность достаточно объективно усмотретькак позитивные, так и негативные стороны русского символизма. Под влия-нием символистских идей он утверждал идею о религиозно-мифологическом происхождении искусства, отмечал два течения в поэзии – бытийственное и бытовое. Основой искусства, отличающей его от религии, Ходасевич счи-тал художественность, красоту. Много внимания уделял диалектике формы и содержания, полагая, что содержание окончательно складывается в процес-се формообразования, а форма составляет часть содержания. Творческий ме-тод включает два главных компонента: экстаз (восторг) и ремесло (прием). Главная функция искусства – проникновение в неведомое, иную реальность путем преображения действительности. Произведение искусства – много-смысленно, допускает различные толкования, а труд воспринимающего субъ-екта почти равен труду художника. Заслугой символистов Ходасевич считал их стремление превратить искусство в «жизненно-творческий метод», объ-единяющий искусство и жизнь, жреческую функцию искусства. К недостат -кам символизма относил пронизывающее его декадентство, преувеличенный эстетизм, стремление к изысканности.

«Путем зерна» как формула революции: Ходасевич, Некрасов, крестьянские поэты и аграрная топика русской лирики

The article discusses the poetic formula of Vladislav Khodasevich’s "Putiom zerna" ("Grain’s Way"). It is argued that the phrase goes back to the New Testament and is associated with Biblical ideas of timeless values. The aim of the article is to show that the formula putiom zerna (grain’s way) is also tied to the Russian poetic revolutionary myth, in which the agrarian imagery was consistently endowed with the social and revolutionary connotations. Khodasevich’s poem and his collection bearing the same title are a convenient starting point for elucidating this poetical myth. The article considers its development in the lyrics by Alexander Pushkin and Nikolay Nekrasov, as well as its transformation in the poetry of the Symbolists. Special emphasis is laid on the lyrics of the Peasant Poets and their responses to the Revolution of 1917. In the light of the article’s topic, the poems of the Peasant Poets feature the myth with very high intensity. We’re thus justifi ed in comparing the images of Khodasevich with those of Yesenin, Klyuev and Oreshin.

Русские эмигранты и европейская ночь (Владимир Вейдле и Владислав Ходасевич)

The article discusses the life, fate, and relationship of two thinkers – a philoso­pher, art critic, cultural historian Vladimir Weidle and poet, essayist Vladislav Khodasevich. Based on their works, the article analyzes the signs of a “sunset phenomenon”: lowering the spiritual and cultural level of society and establish­ing the unlimited power of ideocracy. The author shares the opinion of M. Al­danov that the state of culture is determined by a decrease in the difference in&nbsp;mental growth between the “mass” and the “elite”, which is achieved in two ways: either by increasing the level of “masses” or by lowering the level of&nbsp;“elite”. Europe of the XXth&nbsp;century. definitely chose the second way. This sce­nario was seen in the activities of the leader of the October coup in Russia and Weidle, and Khodasevich. According to Weidle, the best guarantee of success for the revolution was the extermination of the ruling and cultural stratum, and Lenin received this guarantee from the people. Khodasevich is even sharper. He&nbsp;also did not endure aesthetically Lenin. Modernism and formalists sang Hosanna Lenin. And his attitude to these areas was sharply negative. The article examines Khodasevich’s claims to a formal school, his identification of the con­nection between formalism and “social order” in literature, which then led to&nbsp;the&nbsp;literature of “socialist realism”. The author concludes this article with an&nbsp;archival publication – a letter from Weidle Khodasevich

Редукция поэтического текста в критическом эссе В. Набокова «Владислав Ходасевич. Собрание стихов»

The highlighting of Nabokov’s interpretational strategies in other literary texts is a relevant problem for Russian and European Nabokov studies. The goal of the article is to scrutinize the methods of reduction of a poetic text used by Nabokov in his early essay Vladislav Khodasevich. Collected Verse. The approach developed by receptive poetics allows author to describe Nabokov’s practices of reading and writing as an experience of creative game with literature of his contemporaries and predecessors. The narrative analysis is productive to characterize the point of view, to highlight the role of narrator in the structure of Nabokov's essay and his own literary work and the techniques for the transformation of Khodasevich’s poems into the prose. There are different methods of literary text reduction in Nabokov’s essay: creation of meta-plot not immanent in the original poems; selective sampling of literary contexts common for both authors; ignoring of artistic issue of ethics of beauty important for V. Khodasevich. For Nabokov, the reduction and transfer of his own techniques into the space of Khodasevich’s text is a way of approbation of patterns of artistic reality in texts of the poet, which conceptualizes the problem of boundaries of artistic talent, important for Nabokov himself.

The Allegiance of Vladislav Felitisianovich

The purpose of this presentation is to examine how Vladislav Khodasevich establishes his cosmopolitan position on the future of Russian Emigre literature in his final work Nekropol (1939). I aim to focus particularly on how his internal display of Jewishness in Nekropol serves as a critical mode to understand his cosmopolitan views towards art creation. Khodasevich, in his homage to his closest literary companions Samuil Kissin (Muni) and Mikhail Gershenzon, firmly demonstrates how Khodasevich’s cosmopolitan, rigorous views towards art creation were established through his Inorodtsy as a Polish Jew in Moscow, the use of Muni’s tragic death as a form of art creation through his use of trauma, and his tribute to universally-loved Gershenzon in instiling Khodasevich the necessity of artistic philosophies and public involvement in literary survival. With the combination of the factors above, Khodasevich’s views on artistic creation are completed during his emigre years, having his positive, rigorous approach to the future of Russian Emigre literature beyond its Oblomovism-like state during 1930s France. By allowing his readers an under-the-depth understanding of factors that developed Khodasevich’s cosmopolitan stances in Nekropol, Khodasevich’s tribute demonstrates the importance of linking the world of historical fields within Slavic studies, allowing a multidimensional understanding of both Jewish history and Russian literature in both Silver Age and under emigration.

The concept of personality of Vasily Shukshin in the biography novel by Aleksey Varlamov "Shukshin"

The article discusses the concept of personality of Vasily Shukshin in the biography novel by Aleksey Varlamov in the context of the tradition of this genre in Russian literature, formed in creative work of Boris Zaytsev, Vladislav Khodasevich, Nina Berberova etc. The aim of the study is to analyse the characteristic of the typological principles of the genre in the artistic world of the modern writer and literary critic Aleksey Varlamov. The subject of study is the representation of the conceptual components of Vasily Shukshin's personality in the biography novel genre. The main attention is paid to the theme of Vasily Shukshin's dramatic fate, the motives of the writer's opposition to that time's power. The author's version of the "reading" of Vasily Shukshin's personality, which is slightly different from the textbook one, is analysed. As a result of the study, the conclusions about the specifi cs of the development of the biography novel genre in the works of Aleksey Varlamov, about the author's method of artistic research of the writer's biography in the system of "code of fate" of a Russian, the main motives of his life.

Political/Poetic

Skidan begins by considering the epic Lay of Igor’s Campaign, often read as the first work of Russian literature, and its political aspect, among its many other traits. The article then turns to poetry by Vladislav Khodasevich from the years just after the Revolution, and ends with a nuanced discussion of Paul Celan’s poem “In Eins.”

Vladislav Khodasevich in the Emigration: Literature and the Search for Identity

Vladislav Khodasevich's literary activity in emigration (1922–39) may be described as a search for a new identity. Khodasevich's departure abroad induced a powerful self‐image crisis and resulted in the trauma of emigration, which silenced him as a poet. In his attempt to move past this creative crisis, he turned to the biographies of Gavrila Derzhavin and Aleksandr Pushkin. In writing the biographical narratives of the two great poets, Khodasevich projected episodes of his own biography onto the two classic writers and identified with them in his attempt to conquer his own creative crisis. Nevertheless, the trauma of emigration turned out to be the stronger element, and neither of his attempts to identify with the two classical authors was successful: having completed Derzhavin's biography, Khodasevich began to identify instead with the tragi‐comic poet Lebiadkin, a character from Dostoevsky's The Possessed, about whose verses Khodasevich wrote an article. Then, having finished several chapters of Pushkin's biography, he conceived of a literary mystification, which he completed several years later–“The Life of Vasilii Travnikov.” This mystification reflected Khodasevich's traumatic identity: Khodasevich attributed his own world view and several episodes from his own life to its main character. This article examines in detail the mechanisms Khodasevich used to search for a new identity in the emigration, a search that in Khodasevich's case was not crowned with success.