New materials on life and work of Spiridon Drozhzhin. Issues of studying a folk poet

Abstract

The article analyzes the 1920 project of publishing a new collection of poems by Spiridon Drozhzhin, Russian peasant poet of the late 19th — early 20th centuries, who still attracts little attention of researchers. As the analysis establishes, the manuscript from the Memorial Museum of Spiridon Drozhzhin in the urbantype settlement Novozavidovsky contains a list of poems with commentaries of a contextual, textual and bibliographic nature, which allow to supplement the existing information about Drozhzhin’s life and work, including names of the recipients of his love lyrics. The source is introduced into scientific circulation for the first time, thereby clarifying some key points related to the studying of “folk poets” in Russian literature. A detailed list of texts included in the manuscript is given in the article. Clarification of dedications and datings restores important points in the poet's biography. Comparison of text variants for some of Drozhzhin’s poems, created in different years, raises the issue of qualification of these changes. In contrast to conformism, as we usually qualify the reconciliatory positions of “intellectual” literature, it is proposed to call this phenomenon a tendency to compromise, which reflected the public behavior of the masses due to the low level of intellectual development and the inability to comprehend the true causes of the phenomena.

Keywords

• spiridon drozhzhin
• folk poet
• textology
• commentary
• textual variants