Bella Akhmadulina as a Cultural Myth Character

Abstract

The article discusses the mythologization of Bella Akhmadulina’s biography and personality on the material of memoirs and literary texts, some of which are being introduced into literary criticism for the first time (1963 photos of Akhmadulina are also published for the first time). The study is aimed at identifying the constants, the dynamics of Akhmadulina’s biographical myth, and its functioning in culture. As its theoretical foundation, the study employs the methods of historico-cultural approach to biography (G. O. Vinokura, I. N. Rozanova, etc.), the theoretical works by Yu. N. Tynyanov, the principles of interpretation of biography by Yu. M. Lotman, the methods of receptive aesthetics and narratology, and the sociological approaches to literature. The study focuses on the prototypical models of biography mythologization, stable mythemes and symbols, as well as interpretations of the poet’s personality determined by memoirists’ positions in the literary field, genre conventions, and ideological and taste preferences. The nature of the material makes it necessary to study the development of the Akhmadulina myth outside, “after” the biography: the writers carry out creative reception and continue the mythologization of the image of the poet in their own work. The biographical myth, as the analysis has shown, accelerates the development in culture in contact with new media. The analysis undertaken in the work has lead to the conclusion about the decisive role of the author’s poetic word in the myth about the poet, has revealed the key symbols of the myth about Akhmadulina, and its heterogeneous representations. It has been found that genre, style, and even ideological and aesthetic boundaries become permeable to recurring mythologemes and symbolism: fictional and non-fictional, artistic and scientific, memoir and pamphlet texts reproduce recurrent images-symbols and plots. As a result, the myth about the poet can be considered as a text of culture, informative for the study of two opposite aspects of myth- creation: it characterizes not only the “protagonist”, but also the era that gives birth to this character, and reveals its demands, and the sought-after cultural mythology.

Keywords

• akhmadulina
• biographical myth
• literary reputation
• reception
• memoirs