Известия Уральского федерального университета. Серия 2: Гуманитарные науки (Mar 2016)
The “Ural Scale” in the Poetry of Alexander Vavilov
Abstract
The article deals with the current situation in Ural poetry, characterizing the main generations of poets that make up its characterological specific features. The author describes the aesthetic complex, which, according to the categories of place and time, defines the main features of Ural poetry, i.e. quite often concealed but still present sociality, the absence of inferiority complex resulting from the poets’ not coming from the capital, which is due to the fact that they are aware of the existence of Sverdlovsk / Yekaterinburg on the poetic map as a newly perceived place; the influence of “university” poetry. Hence, on the one hand, its social acuteness, certain gaucherie and rigidity, always “flavoured” with literariness, philological and poetical competence. On the other hand, open intertextuality has little in common with poetry writing in the postmodern sense, but it is very much like Boris Pasternak’s poets’ voices calling to each other from an “aerial pathway”. The writing of Alexander Vavilov, a representative of the youngest generation of poets, is studied in the vast social-cultural context on the one hand, and on the other, — in the frame of his individual poetic world. The article shows that his poetic world is a paradoxical integrity of realist and art nouveau poetry, even having features of an avant-garde and absurdist character. Appeal to different poetic movements is typical of his poetry: the poetry of the Sixtiers (both Russian and Ural schools), Ural and Saint Petersburg rock-poetry, chanson by Vl. Novikov, Russian classics, Russian modernism, and the avant-garde of the 20th century, especially the conceptualists and ironicists of the 1990s. Vavilov easily joins the poetic tradition of Boris Ryzhy with Ural rock. The author concludes that A. Vavilov’s writing provides an outstanding result for Ural poetry. In it, the harsh working style and aggressive worldview coexist with bare lyricism and a straightforward talk to destiny.
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