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Boris Pasternak’s early work, in particular, in the first two books of poems, Bliznets v tuchakh (Twin in the Clouds, 1914) and Poverkh bar’erov (Over the Barriers, 1916/1917), demonstrates the “traces” of Igor Severyanin’s (Igor Lotarev) style and imagery. However, in 1928, Pasternak significantly rewrote his early poems for a new book. The poet frees several poems from Severyanin’s influence but does not eliminate the elements of his older contemporary’s poetics and stylistic features. The present article shows the evolution of reminiscences from Severyanin’s texts in early and late editions of Pasternak’s Vokzal (Station, 1913, 1928). In the 1928 edition of Vokzal, Pasternak abandons some of Severyanin’s techniques presented in the 1913 edition in favor of “simplification.” Therefore, he moves away from the “artsy” vocabulary and Latin alphabet and, at the same time, adds colloquial words. Nevertheless, despite the emphasized transition to a new period in his work, Pasternak seems to retain some of his former style’s particular signs.

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The Orbita multimedia and poetry collective, based in Riga, Latvia, has succeeded in making poetry written in Russian an integral part of the Latvian cultural and literary scene, despite the burden borne by Russian language and culture in this society as a result of still unsettled and contested histories of Russian and Soviet imperial domination and cultural imperialism. The article explains this achievement as resulting from the Orbita collective’s practices of “performative translation,” which make translation a highly visible and central element of various forms of artistic activity, including multimedia installations, book publishing, video poetry, public performance, proper, and more. In traditional cultural configurations, translation is thought to transfer the essential features or the spirit of a text from one literary language to another in a manner that makes possible the translation’s readers’ sense of unmediated contact with the original. Such a conception of translation supports the monolingual paradigm – the cultural ideology of separate and distinct national languages – and the political actualities to which it corresponds. Orbita’s practices of performative translation, in contrast, create a multilingual heterotopia in which the actuality of translation as mediation is rendered visible, the boundedness and distinctiveness of national literary languages is undermined, and the social necessity and ubiquity of acts of translation is brought to the fore.

Discursive collage in verses by Natalya Romanova As an object, the last three books of N. Romanova’s poems are considered: “Atrocity” («Зверство»), “Cannibalism” («Людоедство» –both 2015), “Textbook of literature for morons” («Учебник литературы для придурков», 2019). Her works can be attributed to the St. Petersburg branch of the counterculture. Performative, transgres-sive “trash poetry” of Romanova is a speech gesture of illocutionary nature. Her “offensive art” violates the norms of decency, common sense, tolerance, and poetic canon. The texts are built as a collage of fragments of discursive practices: fake news, ideological clichés, allusions to the classics, youth jargon of hipsters, vulgarisms and obscene vocabulary. Romanova’s poetry demonstrates the devastation of cultural signs, the grotesque idiocy of the overwhelming mass of consumer society.

The paper explores the representation of television and the television screen in the later poetry of Viktor Krivulin (1944–2001), a prominent figure in independent Russian literature. The analysis is framed within the concept of the underground culture, which highlights a creative individual’s media engagement, as well as media selection based on credibility, message relevance, and replicability. It is hypothesized that this experience significantly influenced Krivulin’s depiction of television. The study evaluates the utility of Lacan’s methodology, as interpreted in Kittler’s media theory,for analyzing Krivulin’s poems. The world he portrays is consistently one of historical devastation, where television often serves to obscure reality. However, the nature of news changes in the post-Soviet era: it is no longer cultural updates, but news from the world of media, with a peculiar self-destructive language. Not only television shapes news presentation; it also influences modes of existence in front of and behind the screen, which could be compared to pre-mortem and post-mortem states following the collapse of the culture’s symbolic body. In Krivulin’s work from the 1990s, the portrayal of television as a broadcasting medium undergoes several transformations, influenced by shifts in artistic objectives and changes in television stylistics during this period. The paper delineates a timeline of these shifts and identifies a common trajectory in this evolution. Initially perceived as an innovative force building new social and political connections between generations, television later transitioned into a part of everyday life during a period of significant change and the disruption of previous social connections between people and their former media provisions. Eventually, television began to be viewed as a distinct form of information delivery, akin to theater and dreaming, heralding a positive narrative of historical memory. At all stages, television is contrasted with radio broadcasting as the notification of a catastrophic disaster. В статье рассматривается образ телевизора и телевизионного экрана в поздней поэзии Виктора Кривулина (1944–2001), одного из самых ярких поэтов независимой русской литературы. Рамкой рассмотрения стало понятие второй (катакомбной, андеграундной) культуры, подразумевающее прежде всего медийную активность творческого человека, выбор медиа в зависимости от достоверности, актуальности сообщения и возможности тиражирования. Выдвигается гипотеза, что этот опыт решительно повлиял на возникновение в творчестве Кривулина образа телевидения. Показана продуктивность методологии Жака Лакана, воспринятой в теории медиа Фридриха Киттлера, для анализа стихотворений Кривулина. Мир, который изображает Кривулин — это всегда мир исторической разрухи, где телевидение скорее маскирует ситуацию. Но в постсоветское время меняется понимание того, что такое новости: это уже не новости культуры, а новости из мира медиа, со своеобразным саморазрушающимся языком. Телевидение при этом регламентирует как способ подачи новостей, так и режимы существования перед экраном и за экраном, которые могут быть сопоставлены с режимами предсмертного и посмертного существования после разрушения символического тела культуры. В творчестве Кривулина 1990-х образ телевизора как вещания неоднократно трансформировался, в зависимости и от изменения художественной задачи, и от перемен стилистики самого телевидения в эти годы. В статье выстраивается хронология таких перемен и их общий вектор, проходящий через все творчество Кривулина. Сначала телевидение воспринималось как новация, иначе строящая отношения между политической культурой поколений. Потом телевидение превратилось в часть быта, в период больших перемен и разрушения и прежних связей между людьми, и прежнего их медийного обеспечения. Наконец, телевидение начинает восприниматься как особый стиль информирования, сопоставимый с театром и сновидением, и утверждается программа исторической памяти как положительного действия. При этом на всех этапах телевидение противопоставляется радиовещанию как извещению катастрофического бедствия.

The article provides a detailed commentary on the first-ever publication in Russian of an entry from the diary of Georgian poet Galaktion Tabidze, dated October 31, 1930. This entry refers to Osip Mandelstam, Boris Pasternak, and the Georgian poetic group “The Blue Horns.” It reveals that Pasternak’s journey to Georgia in 1931 was conceived as early as the preceding year, 1930. Additionally, Tabidze’s diary entry contains crucial information about Mandelstam's attitude toward Pasternak in the late 1920s to early 1930s. Mandelstam perceived the invitation extended by Georgian poets to Pasternak to Tiflis as a personal offense. Finally, from this entry, one can understand why members of the “Blue Horns” group, particularly Titsian Tabidze, did not maintain contact with Mandelstam when he visited Georgia for the third time in his life in the autumn of 1930.

The book by Vladimir Feshchenko, a Russian researcher of the language of poetry and a publisher of avant-garde literature, is devoted to Russian and American poetry of the language experiment in the 20th and early 21st century. Using examples from Andrei Bely, Russian futurists, Alexander Vvedensky, Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, E.E. Cummings to the American poets of “language writing” and modern Russian-speaking young poets, the similarity of the philosophical and linguistic foundations of the language experiment, the convergence and differences of literatures, the personal interaction of authors from both countries are considered in the book. The analysis of a number of American and Russian poems from the point of view of the language of poetry is given. V. Feshchenko's book is of interest to researchers of Russian and American poetry, the avant-garde, the language of poetry, and the interaction of literatures.

This article analyzes the soundtrack of the popular Soviet holiday film Ironiia sud'by: ili s legkim parom! (Irony of Fate: or Enjoy your Bath!, 1976, dir. El'dar Riazanov), the inclusion of Modernist poetry (by Boris Pasternak and Marina Tsvetaeva) and poetry from the 1960s (by Yevgeny Evtushenko and Bella Akhmadulina) set to song in particular. The article aims to explore the apparent incongruity between "difficult" poetry and popular film. After introducing the film and its musical context in guitar poetry culture, I explore the mechanism I term "folklorization," by which this incongruity is not palpable. Drawing on theoretical insights into Russian Golden Age poetic culture, I argue that the film's soundtrack acts as an al'bom of twentiethcentury Russian poetry and that the late Soviet context of the film echoes the nineteenth-century salon in the pragmatic orientation of poetry. The article then provides two case studies of the poets featured on the soundtrack - Marina Tsvetaeva and Bella Akhmadulina - as illustrations of the mechanisms by which the soundtrack functions. In the case of Tsvetaeva's diptych and most notably "Khochu u zerkala, gde mut'" ("I want to find out from the murky mirror") from the Podruga ("Girlfriend") cycle, I examine how the inclusion of these poems in the film erases the poet's biographical queer identity and subsumes the poem-texts' resistance to patriarchal modes of writing into traditional gender roles. An analysis of Akhmadulina's "Po ulitse moei kotoryi god" ("Along my street every year") showcases the paradoxical nature of late Soviet intelligentsia's sense of community as well as its hermeticism. The conclusion extrapolates on the insights developed from these case studies, bringing them into the larger context of the late Soviet intelligentsia's self-conception and its broader sociocultural implications, considering the role of irony and double-coding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study focuses on a new translation of selected poems of Vladimir Majakovskij into Czech and analyses it – after a brief summary of the characteristic features of Majakovskij's poetry and his poetics. The new Czech translation, prepared almost 70 years after the last one, seeks, among other things, to challenge the image of Majakovskij as a servile follower of communist ideology and the bard of the Russian revolution, which persists in the Czech literary community and which has been reinforced by the controversial personality of the earlier 'canonical' Czech translator of Majakovskij, Jiří Taufer. The study seeks to identify the main points of departure of the new Czech translation and confronts it with the previous translation by Taufer, paying attention to its several problematic aspects. It is argued that the main ambition of the new Czech translation was to present Majakovskij unbiasedly as one of the most original figures in modern Russian/Soviet and world literature, while at the same time trying to rehabilitate Majakovskij in the eyes of Czech readers. The paper concludes by offering a new perspective on Majakovskij's later, 'revolutionary' poems, which, despite their often highly political content, have lost none of Majakovskij's typical qualities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes twelve poems by Federico García Lorca that Marina Cvetaeva received from the Russian Hispanist F. Kel’in and translated in 1941. Out of them, five poems were translated into Russian, five into French (these texts were identified and republished only in 2020), and two poems remained untranslated. In this paper, we analyse Cvetaeva’s translation process as a reception of texts and compare poetic images from García Lorca’s original poems with Marina Cvetaeva’s images in translations and her work. It is a well-known fact that Cvetaeva wrote to Kel’in saying she liked Lorca and that the poems were well chosen for her. This statement became the starting point of the work. We demonstrate the typological proximity and similarities of imagery between García Lorca’s poems and Cvetaeva’s work and trace possible echoes of Cvetaeva’s poetry in translations from the Spanish poet. In searching for translation solutions, Cvetaeva activates her vocabulary, as well as metrical, rhetorical, and compositional techniques, and introduces allusions to the works of other Russian authors into the texts.

This article delves into Tommaso Landolfi’s evolving translation strategies in regard to Russian poetry, with a particular focus on the influence exerted on him by two Italian slavists and translators, Renato Poggioli and Angelo Maria Ripellino. During the initial phase of Landolfi’s activity, the profound influence of Renato Poggioli becomes evident. This is exemplified by Landolfi’s translations from the 1930s and 1940s, as well as the rigid prescriptions expressed in his reviews of books translated by others. Subsequently, Landolfi undergoes a phase of re-evaluation, as evidenced by his review of Ripellino’s ‘literal’ translations and, most notably, by his first volume of translations of Pushkin (Einaudi 1960). In this book, Landolfi explores a wide range of strategies, particularly regarding the metrical organisation of the texts, without adhering to one specific approach. Ultimately, in his last two books of translations, Landolfi successfully amalgamates the contrasting models of Poggioli and Ripellino, culminating in the development of his own distinctive strategy.

The translator's note addresses formal and thematic difficulties encountered in the process of translating Nikolai Nekrasov's "V derevne" into English. Characteristically for the poet generally, varieties of speech (including socially-determined and -determining register as well as folkloric elements) are central to the poem and notoriously difficult to translate into a different cultural context. Formal features like rhyme and meter typical of Nekrasov and nineteenth-century Russian poetry more generally are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The folkloric elements in Nikolai Nekrasov's "V derevne" ("In the Village," 1854) go beyond metric and stylistic affinities, and include, among others, the crows that flock as if from around the world; the well, the name Kasyanovna; and the final image of the black net. The paper will describe the dynamics of these elements' interaction within the text, suggesting that in the poem, the lyric author's engagement with the two genres of folk poetry, namely, the epic and the lament (plach, prichitanie), brings about a transformative experience for the lyric hero. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article introduces the cluster dedicated to Nikolai Nekrasov's 1854 poem "V derevne" ("In the Village"). It reflects on Nekrasov's relevance for contemporary readers and identifies the conflicting pull of commitment and alienation in his poetry as an important source of renewed scholarly interest in his work. The introduction announces the special issue's dual purpose of modeling an open scholarly exchange and making a new dimension of Nekrasov's work accessible for undergraduate teaching. The article also offers its own close reading, which focuses on the material objects that populate the poem. The author interprets these objects as crucial nexus points where materialism and social critique are reconceived and complicated through the figurative and symbolic labor which characterizes the lyric. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article is devoted to a poetry collection, The Roses, by Georgy Ivanov. The purpose is to analyze the meaning of its title. The genesis of the image of the rose is revealed. Having considered the evolution of the rose as a poetic concept in Russian poetry of the 18th-20th centuries, we found that the concept of the rose and cross was borrowed from medieval Europe, the poetic rhyme 'rose and frost' and the pair 'rose and nightingale,' which came from Eastern poetry, were very popular in Russian literature. The last two semantic complexes are actualized in the poetry of Georgy Ivanov. The transformation of the original meanings was caused by the change in the political situation in Russia after the October Revolution (1917). Emigration transformed Ivanov's poetic world, splitting it into two parts: the beautiful past, preserved only in memory but becoming more and more ghostly, and the present, which the poet did not want to accept. Therefore, Ivanov's texts actualize the tragic connotations originally inherent in the rose as a poetic symbol but are traditionally balanced by the meanings associated with the images of youth, beauty, blossoming, and love. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article delves into Tommaso Landolfi's evolving translation strategies in regard to Russian poetry, with a particular focus on the influence exerted on him by two Italian slavists and translators, Renato Poggioli and Angelo Maria Ripellino. During the initial phase of Landolfi's activity, the profound influence of Renato Poggioli becomes evident. This is exemplified by Landolfi's translations from the 1930s and 1940s, as well as the rigid prescriptions expressed in his reviews of books translated by others. Subsequently, Landolfi undergoes a phase of re-evaluation, as evidenced by his review of Ripellino's 'literal' translations and, most notably, by his first volume of translations of Pushkin (Einaudi 1960). In this book, Landolfi explores a wide range of strategies, particularly regarding the metrical organisation of the texts, without adhering to one specific approach. Ultimately, in his last two books of translations, Landolfi successfully amalgamates the contrasting models of Poggioli and Ripellino, culminating in the development of his own distinctive strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Russian poetry of the “age of timelessness” shows significant interest in the Muslim East poetic art images. Among the authors of fine de siècle we observe a tendency towards transformation and added complexity of the semantics of Sufi images-symbols, among which the ornithonym “nightingale” and the phytonym “rose” come to the fore in terms of frequency of use. In the works of M. Lokhvitskaya, D. Merezhkovsky, S.Nadson, A. Fet, K. Fofanov and others, the nightingale and the rose are given an oriental context. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate how oriental images are interpreted and function in Russian poetic texts of the late 19th century. The result of the study is the provisions on the semantic content and poetic embodiment of central Sufi images in poems of the 1880s–1890s.

Olga Sedakova is acknowledged as one of the key figures in contemporary Russian poetry--and one whose work is notably difficult to interpret. Her multivocal poetry at once demonstrates abstraction and specificity, lucidity and obscurity, and detachment and engagement. It can be argued that the source of this quality is the poet's metarealistic vision: a multi-faceted way of seeing things without a discrepancy between reality and its counterparts. Based on the material of the 1986 poetic cycle "The Chinese Journey," this article examines the way Sedakova envisions multiple worlds from various points of view, resulting in a splintering of her position between self and other; between past, present and future; between Russia and China; and between Christianity and Taoism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Russian poetry of the 19–21st centuries, from the perspective of the relationship of ‘cultural-stereotypical (traditional) – author’s individual’. The analysis of 725 fragments from the Russian poetic works of the 19–21st centuries reveals the ways of word formation and the composition of diminutive dendronyms, as well as the composition of folk poetic, general poetic and individual author’s images of comparative tropes representing these diminutives as subjects of comparison: girl; love attraction, longing; to cry (tears), to grieve, to yearn; fertility; separation; bitter, unhappy fate, orphanhood; gold, silver; emerald; smoke; clothing; fire; pattern, mesh product; infantas by Velasquez, ermine coat; calico; fidelity. The reference-denotative features of the corresponding realia, motivating the choice of figurative associations are determined: a thin trunk, flexible branches, serrated, heart-shaped leaves, flowering trees, fruit trees. The techniques that help make stereotypical images of comparison in the Russian poetic language individualized are established: the inclusion in the composition of an extended anthropomorphic metaphor; updating by means of occasional epithets, lexical variation of the components of the trope. The stable semantic connotations of diminutive dendronyms are singled out: ‘shy’, ‘timid’, ‘meek’, ‘slender’, ‘tall’, ‘gentle’, ‘curls’, ‘braids’, ‘thin figure’, ‘beauty’, ‘breasts’, ‘captivate’, ‘innocence’, as well as the ways of their representation in poetic contexts: extended metaphors ‘autumnal withering of a tree – withering of female beauty’; memories of the lyrical hero about close people; parallelism of the images of a tree and a human condition; conventional epithets (weeping, bitter); features of the situation of a literary text. The results of the study allow us to improve the understanding of how comparative tropes with diminutive dendronyms develop dynamically in the Russian poetic language.

The article analyzes a fragment of the metaphorical system in the language of Russian poetry from the 19th to 21st centuries. Specifically, the analysis focuses on personifying metaphors related to the semantic class of ‘Language and speech’ and the lexical-semantic group Information search and receipt’. The study aims to determine the functioning of these lexical units in Russian poetry, identify the semantic classes of the objects of personification they are combined with, and establish their role in the organisation of the poetic text and connection with the poet's worldview. The research uses the Poetic Subcorpus of the Russian National Corpus as its material and employs corpus, semantic field, and structural-functional analysis methods. The results show a higher frequency of words with the meaning ‘Information receipt than Information search’ as personifiers, with varying distribution over the comparison of ‘question-answer’ images. The analyzed figurative language introduces dialogism into the text, particularly through question-answer constructions with imperative and address, direct and indirect speech, creating unity and increasing dialogicity. The role of such constructions in organizing the internal dialogue and formulating the poet's worldview attitudes is revealed.

This paper examines thematic features of the “universal” poetic meters that are disproportionately popular in a tradition. Focusing on the example of 19th-century Russian iambic tetrameter, we propose a method for diachronic analysis of semantic structure of a meter based on the combination of topic modelling and network analysis. We represent each poem as topic probabilities and use most probable topics appearing within one poem to build up the connections of a network. This representation allows us to detect a chronological process of semantic expansion of the meter: its usage spreads to various thematic domains contributing to its perception as “universal”. At the same time, we show that the expansion of iambic tetrameter does not lead to the collapse of semantic traditions of other meters and their associations with certain genres. Testing the amount of shared connections between meters against randomized data demonstrates that the increase in number of topics within a meter is mostly driven by the sample size, rather than by the direct borrowing from other meters. The stability of thematic connections inside each meter displays the conservative nature of poetic meters and surprisingly strong retention of association between meter and semantics.

The article, which is the result of work on the self-titled anthology, examines one of the least studied areas of Russian poetic geography. The author explores the path from indirect reception through other European literatures to original lyrical travelogues and compares the image of Portugal in Soviet and émigré poetry. The main Portuguese loci and heroes of Russian poems, such as Lisbon, the Azores, L. de Camões, V. da Gama, F. Magellan, are analyzed.

The second half of the 2010s to the beginning of the 2020s in the Russian context are associated with the active intervention of the state in the sphere of private life. In a situation of gender inequality, the male body is subjected to particularly strict regulation. The new normative masculinity is perceived by a significant part of society as illegitimate. In the public sphere, the conflict between the state and society often takes the form of a performance, in which the naked male body turns out to be a medium of the utterance – rebellious and "anarchic". In contemporary Russian poetry, resistance to the pressure of power is associated with the emergence of "non-normative" models of masculinity, in the design of which bodily representations also play an important role. Victim masculinity implies unbalanced, conflicted behavior, constant readiness for a political challenge. Transgressive masculinity connects the specifics of "masculinity" with striving for all possible boundaries and provocative violation of cultural and aesthetic prohibitions. Phenomenological masculinity puts the "masculine" into question, considering it as something looked-for, and not given a priori , and the "anarchic" meaning of this model is associated with the rejection of the very idea of a behavioral "pattern". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Foreign Literature Studies is the property of Foreign Literature Studies and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Tradução em Revista is the property of Faculdades Catolicas - Pontificia Universidade Catolica do Rio de Janeiro and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article describes Maxim Gorky’s role in the creation of “The Poet’s Library” series. The writer was the organizer and inspirational figure behind the project, but his attitude towards it changed from 1931 to 1936. Various creative, scientific, organizational and political factors influenced the development of the series. Gorky’s personal relationships with the following Leningrad writers — Konstantin Fedin, Ilya Gruzdev, Vissarion Sayanov, Mikhail Slonimsky and Yury Tynyanov — significantly influenced the destiny of the series. In a similar way, Gorky’s relationship with Lev Kamenev, the director of the Academia publishing house, also influenced the series development. Gorky expounded the initial concept of the series in his article “On the Poet’s Library,” which differed significantly from the books of the series published by the Publishing House of Leningrad Writers. In 1934, this created a conflict with the editorial office, which put into question the existence of the series. The innovative approach to the preparation of literary texts and historical and cultural commentary allowed “The Poet’s Library” series to be published throughout the period of over 90 years. The books of the series became the exemplar of mass-scientific publication, and its editorial office became the school of Soviet textual criticism. The article is based on the huge corpus of research on this topic from the 20th and 21st centuries. Furthermore, the article uses materials from the correspondence between Gorky and staff of the publishing house, the Maxim Gorky Archives in Moscow, the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art (RGALI) and the Central State Archive of Literature and Art of St. Petersburg (TsGALI).

The article presents an analysis of the poem «July», included in the poetic book of Boris Pasternak “When It Clears Up” (1956–1959). The main purpose of this study is to identify the techniques and principles of the poetics of the enigmatic text, vividly implemented in it. The enigmatic text is a certain kind of language game undertaken in a fiction text, which is based on the technique of “estrangement”. Its task is to organize a special perception of an object or phenomenon, to create its “vision”, and not “recognition” (B. Shklovsky) and to present it in a fiction text as something strange, as if seen for the first time. The article establishes that, in terms of plot and composition, Pasternak’s poem has two parts and is organized with the help of morphological elements of such an enigmatic genre as riddle. The lyrical work is constructed as an allegorical text, in which July, the central object of artistic description, is simultaneously an object of initial concealment and subsequent discovery. The publication demonstrates that the plot of the lyrical work is constructed in such a way that in its first part Pasternak, describing July, actually hides the object of the description; the poet implements a creative strategy of evading its direct nomination, and, as a result, creates an artistic image that is far from simple recognition. The second part of the poem under analysis contains a clue, and the object of the lyrical description is directly named. Structural-semiotic, typological and functional approaches are used to analyze the poetic text. In the process of analysis, the main principles of enigmatic poetics are revealed, on which the author relied when creating the poem “July”. The principle of representation is expressed in Pasternak’s work by replacing the phenomenon being defined (July) with other objects (ghost, brownie, specter, etc.). The principle of personification of an abstract concept contributes to giving the images-substitutes sensually perceived traits and properties (“a ghost wanders”, “a brownie sneaks to the bed, tears the tablecloth off the table”, etc.). Substitutive nomination as a technique also takes part in the organization of Pasternak’s poem and, within the framework of the poetics of an enigmatic text, is designed to lead the reader along a false path that cannot lead to the solution. In addition, the article establishes that typologically the architectonics of the poem “July” is a kind of projection of a number of plot and compositional elements of the ancient tragedy, which, in turn, often contained enigma, as O. M. Freudenberg noted in her works. The poetics of the enigmatic text is not accidental in Pasternak’s work and has a systemic character, being an external, aesthetic expression of his deep worldview, in the center of which is the idea of existence in the form of a riddle, or an enigmatic text.

The article analyzes the poem by Viktor Sosnora (1936–2019) “Karacharovo” (1959). The poet entered the world of literature with a book of poems on Old Russia (“Horsemen”). He knew well not only written monuments, but also folklore, was well-read in folklore studies. At the same time, Sosnora felt himself the heir to Russian futurism. The main characters of the poem – the epic hero Ilya Muromets and the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky–are hidden through the figure of silence. Their images are revealed by the analysis of the reminiscent plan of the poem. Forming it, Sosnora “re-fantasizes” the events described in the works of different epochs, “updating” them for the modern reader. Besides, turning to cultural (Karacharovo is the native village of Ilya Muromets) and the reminiscent (a reference to the well-known lines of Mayakovsky) memory, Sosnora builds the past and the future in a historical perspective. The parallel between the bogatyr and the poet, Karacharovo and Baghdadi, most likely goes back to Viktor Shklovsky’s book “On Mayakovsky” (1940), and through it to the forgotten, but known to Shklovsky review of Roman Gul on Mayakovsky’s poems (1923) published in the Berlin newspaper “Nakanune”. If for Mayakovsky the epic time is in the past, for Sosnora it has not yet come; Ilya Muromets has yet to be born in Karacharovo. The tavern motif introduces the memory of the poetry and the fate of Sergei Yesenin into the associative field of the poem. Turning to the Оld Russian writings and folklore, the young Sosnora solved the problem of deep, not superficial, inheritance of the traditions of the Russian futurism (Vladimir Mayakovsky, Velimir Khlebnikov, Nikolai Aseev). The article also considers the rhythmics and composition of the poem in detail. It reveals the specificity of the tactician “Karacharovo” based in the main part of the poem on paean III (4 stanzas), and in the last stanza sounding anapestic. A rich system of alliterations and other methods of organizing the poem, such as original graphics, hyphenation, open and closed syllables in rhyme positions, is described. “Implicit” semantic parallels with other poems of “Horsemen” (“Rogneda”, “Kaliki”) are noted. “Reticence”, “figure of silence”, “reservation”, and “hints” become a means of involving into the creative process of the reader, who, the same as the author, has the right to “re-fantasize” the poetic text.

The analysis of the epistemological and axiological aspects of Yu.P. Kuznetsov's poetry in general and when implementing the biblical intertext in it in particular is presented. The purpose of the work is to study the peculiarities of the realization of the theme of cognition in the works of Yu.P. Kuznetsov in the context of spiritual search and religious exploration of the world. The main goal is to determine, considering the specifics of the type of thinking of the lyrical hero, a set of artistic images of biblical nature, which the author uses while discussing the theme. The scientific novelty of the work lies in the consistent consideration of images and motives of biblical nature related to the problems of gnoseology. Special attention is paid to the consideration of Old Testament images-symbols dating back to the myth of the fall. The main directions of the development of the author's poetic thought regarding the issues of the consistency of scientific knowledge and the idea of progress and related problems of the interaction of rationalistic and intuitive-religious types of thinking are analyzed. It is established that the author prefers a non-rationalistic method of cognition of truth based on the concept of co-creation of man and God, which leads to the sacralization of the creative process and the image of the artist (in the broad sense of the word) as a mediator of the will of God. Kuznetsov uses the religious symbol in order to show the universality and necessity of the intuitively religious approach to cognition that does not depend on specific historical conditions. The poet's interpretation of the biblical image is close to the canon and folk tradition.

Urban motifs in Russian poetry have not yet become the subject of comprehensive investigation in terms of the evolution of poetic conceptualization of the world, the frequency, semantics and syntagmatics of the key lexemes — 'gorod' and 'grad'. Meanwhile, the analy­sis of the poetic, ethnic and linguistic picture of the world, closely connected with diachronic lexicology, phraseology and grammar, allows important conclusions concerning the history of the national semiosphere and conceptosphere based on the analysis of the works of outstanding representatives of culture and literature of a nation. In the article, the author analyzes the usage, frequency, valency potential, and the system of poetic senses of the lexemes 'gorod' and 'grad' using the poems of reformers of the Russian language and litera­ture of the 18th century — Kantemir, Trediakovsky, Lomonosov, Sumarokov, and, in com­pa­rative terms, against a wider temporal perspective, the preceding and subsequent texts of Rus­sian poetry. The lexeme 'grad' was often used in Classicist and Romantic poetry. From the 1830s onwards, it was used less frequently in its full version 'gorod'. The poets employed the lexemes 'grad' and 'gorod' to form tropes and figures of speech, striving to expand the tradi­tio­nal syntagmatics, especially in epithets. Lyrical texts retained sacred meanings and biblical allusions (sacred city, temple, heavenly garden, holy ‘vertograd’) in the development of urbanistic and battle themes.

The article outlines the main ideas of a research project aimed to create scholarly papers and databases reflecting the formation of the Russian rhetorical tradition. Up to now, literary norms of the Russian language have been studied either in relation to syntactic structures severed from the living practice of versification, or in terms of rhetorical techniques typical of individual literary schools. The main goal of the project is not only fixing, describing and interpreting the techniques for enhancing speech embellishment and expressiveness as such and identifying the main trends in the field of composition and quantitative data about the use of tropes and figures of speech by the poets of the 18th century, but also analyzing the theoretical recommendations of the first Russian treatises on the art of eloquence, based on the rich tradition of ancient and modern European rhetorical manuals, in their correspondence with the real poetic practice of the Russian poets. The sources of the study include “De arte Rhetorica. Libri X” by F. Prokopovich, guides to eloquence by M. V. Lomonosov, some other rhetorical works of the 18th century, as well as poetic works by F. Prokopovich, A. D. Kantemir, and M. V. Lomonosov. The methods used in the course of the project research and within the framework of the interpretation of the material of this article make it possible to ensure close interaction between the linguistic, linguopoetical, linguo-stylistic and critical literary approaches to the analysis of a literary text. In the 18th century, in the era of the formation of the Russian national language and Russian literature, rhetorical culture was the only current normative basis for the formation of new general literary rules and the genre-stylistic system, and the process of trope and figure of speech unfolding in artistic text was carried out along with the expansion of the potential of the lexical and the grammatical subsystems of the language. The creation of a database that demonstrates the specific features of “rhetorical portraits” of the most famous poets and rhetoricians of the era of the Russian baroque and classicism – Feofan Prokopovich, Antioch Kantemir, Mikhail Lomonosov, Vasily Trediakovsky, Aleksandr Sumarokov – may become an important result of the project.

The article deals with the lyrical works of Lydia Khaindrova, a poetess whose poetic activity was in full swing in the first half of the twentieth century in Harbin and Shanghai. The urgency of the study lies in identifying the specific features of the poetics of Khaindrova’s collections, which can help clarify the ideas about the literature of the eastern branch of the Russian emigration. The cultural-historical, phenomenological, typological and comparative approaches serve as the methodological basis of the study. The purpose of the article is to present Khaindrova’s lyrical works in their unity with Russian culture and, in particular, with the Silver Age, from which emigrants, despite the circumstances, were not cut off either during the era of the revolution or in subsequent years. The article presents the responses to Khaindrova’s lyrical works and creative activity from “Poem Without an Object” by Valery Pereleshin, a famous oriental emigrant who ended his days in Brazil. In addition, the study notes the special links of Khaindrova’s poetry with Anna Akhmatova’s works (up to imitative elements) and analyzes individual poetic parallels. The poetic and human affinity of Khaindrova with Larissa Andersen is also indicated – the mentions in the “Poem” by Pereleshin, the letters, and Andersen’s review of the poem “Topolikha”. The study considers the lyrical cosmos of Khaindrova – the main motifs and images that fill her poetic collections: apocalyptic motifs, the clash of “flowers of evil” and “gospel thunderstorms”, floristic images, garden as a metaphor of fate, the metaphor of love and in some cases loneliness, etc. The author demonstrates the romantic orientation of the poetess: many motifs of her lyrical works are borrowed from the romantics (thunderstorms, mountains, road, way up, fall), but at the same time, there is no sharp opposition in her works, no distinct antitheses, no strong emotions of denials. Khaindrova does not make experiments in poetry, does not taste various meters and rhythms, and does not shock the reader with frightening images – her poetry is quiet, calm and unsophisticated.

This paper contains a review the collection of articles, published after the Second International Scholarly-Literary Readings dedicated to the 100th anniversary of one of the most significant figures of unofficial Russian-language poetry in Belarus, the poet V. Blazhenny (1921–1999). The book comprises 11 research articles, translations of his poetry and three appendixes, including archival and illustrative materials to the articles. The scientific level of the collection demonstrates that a separate field of literary criticism devoted to the study of the creative heritage of the Belarusian poet has been established. The authors of the articles successfully develop such areas as motif studies, comparative studies, versification studies and translation reception, relying on archival documents and the cultural and literary context of the time.

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The paper considers the poetry of four Czech authors – František Gellner, Viktor Dyk, Karel Toman, and Fráňa Šrámek – in their Russian-language translations. Based on known published translations made by 17 Russian translators throughout the 20th century, it describes their metrical and stanzaic forms in comparison with the original Czech poems. The description and comparative analysis serve to consider a number of questions, including which of the Czech forms appear most attractive to Russian translators, which formal elements are typically preserved and which are significantly altered in the translations, and how Russian readers’ overall perception of the four Czech poets and their oeuvres is shaped through the choices made by translators, in terms of versification.

Book Review

The article is dedicated to the subject of the crucifixion in Russian lyric poetry of 19th–21st centuries. It studies five poems that present different images of Calvary. Analyzing A.S. Pushkin’s “Worldly power” we discover a lexical connection of the poem to prayers and liturgical texts. The poem “When rowan leaves are dank and rusting…” by A.A. Blok requires consideration from two angles: among his other Christological poems and in the light of a general among symbologists tendency of eroticizing Christian images. We demonstrate that the subject of co-crucifixion is natural for Blok, that it was slowly emerging in his lyric poetry of the 1900s. The article analyzes O.E. Mandelstam’s poem “The implacable words…” in the context of his lyric poetry of the 1910s, as well as in comparison to the later variation of the image (“Like chiaroscuro’s martyr Rembrandt…”). The research reveals “maternal projection” of the subject of Calvary on the example of the poem “Mother” by V.V. Nabokov, passages from A.A. Akhmatova’s poem "Requiem” and I.A. Brodsky's poem “Still-life.” El.A Shvarts’s poem “Rembrandt’s etching — Christ and the thieves” represents ekphrastic versions of the biblical story.

This article investigates the poetry and public life of Alina A. Vitukhnovskaia against the backdrop of her position as a political dissident in Russia. In opposition to most contemporary Russian poets, she considers her writing to be actively “political,” that is directly interfering with governmental politics. The first part of the article introduces methodological concepts in order to consider the relation between Vitukhnovskaia’s poetry and her political activity: distinguishing between the poetic subject, the media-persona (the presentation of the author and the person Alina Vitukhnovskaia to the public), and the political habitus. The subsequent sections investigate her poetic work, her public appearance, and her political activities in relation to these concepts. Vitukhnovskaia’s poetic subject appears to be characterized by provocation with regard to both aesthetic forms and social themes. Formal provocation is carried out by means of disturbing paronomasia, whereas social and thematic provocation involves the negation of traditional, often nationalist, attitudes and the presentation of negative ideological or philosophical terms (nothingness, emptiness, ugliness, evil). While the former has a philosophical appeal (existentialism), the latter is related to the tradition of the demoniacal, such as goth subculture and necro-aesthetics. Vitukhnovskaia turns surrealism upside-down: making artistic ‘reality’ seem less surreal than the reality of the world. The construction of the poetic subject with provocative elements helps Vitukhnovskaia establish a media-persona. This is considered with regard to self-portraits in the book “The Black Icon of Russian Literature” (2017). The combination of aesthetic (beauty), sexuality (domina), and power is interpreted as a provocative dimension of this media-persona. The last part analyzes the political program of Vitukhnovskaia’s application for the 2018 presidential elections as a collection of demands that contain provocative challenges: for instance, the armament of Russian citizens and nuclear disarmament of the state. This incongruity of political demands is a provocation that correlates with an aspiration to unlimited power. Provocation is also considered the main feature of Vitukhnovskaja’s political practice, which she subordinates to the presentation of her media-persona.

This article explores forms of performativity in the poetry of Oksana Vasyakina. Vasyakina considers poetry as part of poetic activism related to the assertion of women’s rights in a patriarchal society. Poetic expression – direct and provocative – responds with aggression to aggression, appropriating a position of power. Violence can only be defeated by finding one’s own voice, for which there is no place in a totally masculine culture. Therefore, Vasyakina’s most important idea is the idea of acquiring authentic speech as a long process that involves both overcoming social stereotypes and overcoming oneself, grounding her poetry in a performativity that is simultaneously pragmatic, thematic, and poetological.

The article is the first attempt to consider the content, style, language of the poems by one of the contemporary poets – Ilya Nikolaevich Vorobyov (Ilya Kisychev). It is noted that the work of I. Kisychev unfolds in a broad historical and literary context, continuing the traditions of Great Russian poetry. I. Kisychev’ poems implementation form and their representation to the viewer is inherent in a synthetic character: the author performs his poems in the form of songs with a guitar and also as songs of the multi-instrumental acoustic rock group “Kisychev Band”. The figurative and expressive means as tropes and figures, which form the basis of I. Kisychev’s poems style, are analysed by the author. It is noted, that despite the importance of tropic means for the poet’s aesthetics, the phenomena of syntactic stylistics prevail, forming the author’s original textual space in which various meanings are conveyed to the reader both directly and implicitly.

This article describes changes in the use of profanity in contemporary Russian poetry and its implications for translation into English. While Russian poetry now more closely resembles English-language poetry in embracing the profanity typical of conversational speech, the highly taboo nature of Russian profanity is still relevant, including gender-specific taboos. Using examples from a range of female and male poets from the 2000s and 2010s (including Dina Gatina, Elena Fanailova, Dmitri Prigov, Andrei Rodionov, Alexander Skidan, Oksana Vasyakina, Lida Yusupova and others), the article explores the ambivalent status of profane language today, whereby the same phrase for different speakers can be considered entirely unremarkable or profoundly taboo. In addition to the exigencies of poetic form, this is the most relevant factor (and vexing problem) for Russian-to-English translation. Special attention is also paid to specifically queer uses of profanity, with the suggestion that profanity is perhaps best translated in a maximally expressive sociolect-specific way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The article examines the definitions of poetry in the Russian literature of the 1990–2010. The object of analysis is the conceptualization of poetry and the ways of association of social and cultural meanings with it. In contrast to the existing tradition of poetological research, the author of the article does not focus on poetry as such, but on the ideas about it, which he considers changeable and historical. It has been found that all the definitions considered are united by the idea of a profound changes in the understanding of the place of poetry in culture, in the ideas about the lyrical subject, and in the ways of organization a poetic text. The depth of this change allows one to talk about the formation of a new paradigm of poetry and about the revision of ideas about poetry and its typical features. Naturally, on the level of artistic self-reflection, on the level of poetics, and on the level of the pragmatics of the text, the role of the semantic, existential, and value-based boundary is actualized. It seems feasible to correlate the systemic redefinition of poetry as cultural practice in this sense with the con- cepts of transgressiveness and liminality. It is only natural that the concept of “boundaries” turns out to be the most frequent element in all the definitions of poetry considered. The idea of a boundary acts as a sign of crisis of modernity, in which “transition” turns out to be a way to overcome social and cultural stagnation, as well as the inertia of literary development. Transgression as a “gesture that is directed to the limit” (M. Foucault) or “overco- ming the insurmountable limit” (M. Blanchot) turns out to be an instrument of self-criticism of poetry and a way to overcome both the modernist absolutization of the “new” and the postmodern crisis of novelty. Transgression as something that exists outside the linear orientation can be interpreted as an attempt to build a system of equivalent alternatives to literary development. Poetry is interpreted by its modern theorists as a “borderline” practice, experiencing anthropological, existential, and linguistic limits. Such a view, as the author of the article believes, is because in culture there is a request for a revision of the very foundations of writing, for new literature and a new model of “literariness”.

The final verses (12–15) of Psalm 143 (144) are read differently in Greek and Jewish versions: the first is about the temporary well-being of sinners, while the second is about the bliss of the righteous. In the Church tradition, the Greek version, which included all the Patristic interpretations adopted by the Orthodox and Catholics, was considered canonical. The Jewish version in Russia was known from foreign translations until 1822. The first biblical paraphrases in Russian poetry of the 18th century were the paraphrases of Psalm 143, made in 1743 by Lomonosov, Trediakovsky and Sumarokov according to the Greek-Slavic version. This article discusses some later paraphrases of Psalm 143, the authors of which also had to make a choice between two versions of the original text. The example of Lomonosov was followed by N. P. Nikolev, G. A. Pakatsky and V. K. Kuchelbecker, as well as E. V. Karneev. The Jewish version was used by A. M. Kotelnitsky and N. M. Shatrov. The paraphrase of F. N. Glinka was regardless of the discrepancy between two versions of Psalm 143. The most interesting are the poems of Kuchelbecker and Shatrov. The article also clarifies the circumstances of the creation of some paraphrases and notes cases of their textual dependence on the “Psalter in the Russian Language” published by the Russian Bible Society and “Commentary on the Psalter” compiled by Archbishop Irenaeus (Klementievsky).

The paper dwells upon the language and discourse processes in contemporary Russian and American poetry which focuses on “reformatting” the communicative situation coordinates under the influence of ordinary speech and the new media. The research suggests a linguo-pragmatic analysis of three Russian-American poetic vectors that characterize different strategies of subjectification, such as Gennady Aygi — Michael Palmer, Arkadii Dragomoshchenko — Barrett Watten, and Rachel Blau DuPlessis — Nika Skandiaka. These poetic practices manifest themselves in constructing a new communicative situation based on a referential shift along the lines of interiorization — exteriorization. Elaborating on this shift, we explore the interaction between inner speech, ordinary and poetic language, as well as the links between a poetic text and external (media)context. The unusual usage of pragmatic markers forms a new “poetic interface” and indicates the “transcoding” of the poetic subject in the coordinates of the actual communicative situation. Aygi and Palmer create different modes of poetic interface as a zone of active interaction between the addresser and the addressee, as well as inner speech, ordinary, and poetic language. In Dragomoshchenko’s and Watten’s poems, the “transcoding” of the subject manifests itself in various deictic shifts that mark complex relations of the subject with reality and language. The use of “graphic deixis” in DuPlessis’ and Skanidaka’s texts is informed by the impact of the Internet as a need to update the poetic statement in a new media-communicative situation.

The article examines the visual-verbal image of the poet A. Pushkin in the mythopoetic interpretation of the poet M. Tsvetaeva, presented in the essay ‘My Pushkin’. The scope of research includes the author’s vision of the poet Pushkin as a text referent of Tsvetaeva’s essay; the object of analysis encompasses the figurative and expressive ways of representing this text referent, presented from the linguosemiotic point of view. The aim of the article is to identify the image of Pushkin as a semiotic text referent of the mythopoetic world of Tsvetaeva, which receives linguistic expression in the structure of the author’s aphoristic formulas in the essay ‘My Pushkin’. To achieve this aim, the article consistently uses and interprets such notions as mythopoetics of the author of the text, game semiosis, typology of semiotic signs, text referent, visual-verbal image, author’s aphoristic formula. The research problem embraces the study of the game semiosis in Tsvetaeva’s autobiographical prose, which is characterized by a subjective analytical approach to understanding the role of the poet-creator, whose language ‘interprets the world’ on the basis of evaluative value-based categories. The article offers a textual analysis of the visual-verbal image of the poet Pushkin using the evaluative semiotic language of Tsvetaeva, in which the iconic and indexing signs of children’s perception are reformed into the encompassing symbolic conclusions of the adult poet. By way of conclusion, the authors of the article emphasise that the distinguishing features of the visual-verbal image of Pushkin, presented in the essay, are shaped by the specific character of spatial semiosis, the essence of which is revealed via linguosemiotic analysis of the author’s aphoristic maxims, characterized by both bright iconicity and clear indexicality. The research results can be used as a specific algorithm to analyze authored discourses as special semiotic systems.

The article deals with the symbol of the HOUSE as a language culture unit, which considerably influences the nature of artistic creativity. It shows that the structure of the content of Shakhrin’s lyrics of the song “From the War” is formed by the author on the basis of creative variation of the invariant semantics of the HOUSE symbol that fixes cultural and subcultural ideas about the world. The purpose of the study is to discover the forms of the influence of the symbol of the HOUSE on the generated text. The research was carried out at the intersection of linguopoetics, cultural linguistics, discursive linguistics and linguistics of creativity. The author proceeds from the fact that Russian rock poetry is oriented not only towards aesthetic, but also towards creative and cognitive tasks of the world understanding and its reflection in the lyrics. To achieve these goals, the authors of the texts of the Russian rock culture use the mechanisms of speech generation that go beyond the limits of models based on rules, in particular, on associative valency. Russian rock poetry as a symbolic practice puts the author in the situation of cognitive and nominative deficit, in which the word as a carrier of conceptual meaning does not allow revealing the depth of ideas about the world and endowing the world events with existential meaning. A philological analysis of the lyrics of Shakhrin’s song “From the War” shows that they are built around the contradictions inherent in the semantics of the symbol of the HOME. At the same time, the narrative character of the semantics of the symbol predetermines the narrative character of the lyrics. The reference to the central symbol of the text involves other units of the culture code in it. The actualization of the symbolic code gives the text the transpersonal character of a parable and a myth. This facilitates the correlation of the aesthetic and ideological components of the text content. The symbol provides creative freedom, removing the limitations of the logic of relations between objects. This, in particular, allows the author to introduce irrational, mystical lines into the text. The multidimensional nature of the semantics of the symbol creates the effect of the three dimensional narrative due to the combination of different points of view (the author, the main and secondary characters), allows the author to project various plans for the perception of space, time, and properties of objects onto each other, specifically in a synesthetic key. The results of the study complement the ideas about the creative activity of Shakhrin and can be used both for comparative theoretical analysis and in the practice of teaching philological text analysis at a university.