Yury Verkhovsky’s Soviet Sonnet: The Winged Horse Symbol, Pavel Bazhov and the Industrial City of Sverdlovsk in the 1940s

Abstract

The sonnet of Yury Verkhovsky of the 1940s is an example of a specific and organic combination of the poetics of the beginning of the 20th century and the ideological-thematic and motivational-imagery dominant of the official Soviet literature of the Great Patriotic War. The article considers the sonnet “Klinok ural’skiy – voskhishchen’e glaz…” [The Ural blade is the admiration…] (1943) as the most representative poem and other poems by Verkhovsky, especially the collection of poems “Budet Tak” [It Will Be So] (Sverdlovsk: Sverdlgiz Publ. 1943). The article also traces the connection of Verkhovsky’s poetry with the heritage of the Urals writer Pavel Bazhov and with the Urals culture of his time. The article argues that in his later poetry, the poet accepted Soviet reality. The poetics of Verkhovsky’s later works is enriched with new images and motives that bring him closer to the poetics of socialist realism, but have a significant “Urals” component. According to the hypothesis, it was borrowed from Bazhov’s tales and personal conversations. In this sense, the sonnet “The Ural blade is the admiration…” (dedicated to Bazhov) and the central metaphor on which the sonnet is built – “winged horse – winged master” acquire special significance. In this sonnet, Bazhov’s creative work is compared with the image of a winged horse on the blade of the Zlatoust master Ivan Bushuev. Referring the reader both to the tradition of classical Russian literature and to Russian modernism, this image also correlates with Bazhov’s image in the tale “Ivanko-Krylatko” (Ivan the Winged), complicating the multitier metaphor. In one sonnet, Verkhovsky united and combined tradition and contemporary modernity, and pre- and post-revolutionary Russian cultures.

Keywords

• urals poetry, urals poets, poetic creative activity, poetic genres, poetic texts, sonnets, poems, literature of the urals, urals writers, literary creative activity, literary motives, literary ties, tales, the winged horse symbol.