The ballad genre and its transformation in A. Galich’s song “Queen of the Mainland”

Abstract

The research aims to trace the functioning of the ballad as a polycode genre in the song poetry of A. Galich. Comparative historical and hermeneutic methods were used, as well as approaches developed to study polycode text. The results show that narrative strategies are typical of resonant poetry precisely in combination with deeply personal experience of the main character of the song lyrics. This determines the productivity of the ballad form. It is shown that in the lyrics of “The Queen of the Mainland” A. Galich relies precisely on the romantic poetic tradition. However, he also introduces realistic elements, which generally correspond to the trends in the development and transformation of the genre that emerged in the 19th century. The double motivation of the fantastic, which is not typical of the traditional ballad, refers to a similar technique in magical prose. Other laws of the genre are also violated: the mystical is deprived of concretization, the text has obvious didactic features, the vocabulary varies from sublime to sharply reduced, and the everyday level of narration contrasts with the metaphysical layer of reasoning. It is concluded that the realistic component forms the epic content of the ballad, while the romantic component, associated with the irrational, brings A. Galich thoughts to the ontological level and gives the work an underlined lyricism.

Keywords

• song poetry
• lyrical hero
• romanticism
• realism
• synthesis
• tradition
• motive