Epitaph Dedication to Gumilyov by His Fellow Acmeists: a Play of Obvious and Secret Meanings

Abstract

The issue of secret commemoration of N. S. Gumilyov by his associates is discussed in the article. Attention is paid to the role of the frame text — titles, dedications, dating of poems — in the formation of the crypto text, hiding information. The results of a comparative analysis of the texts by M.A. Zenkevich, V.I. Narbut and S.M. Gorodetsky — the so-called “small” acmeists, who implicitly and explicitly reacted to the death of N.S. Gumilyov. The question is raised about the opposition of the hidden epitaph “for the initiated”, presented in the cycle of translations from A. Chenier, performed by M.A. Zenkevich, and in the unpublished collection of V.I. Narbut “Executed Seraphim”, an explicit lampoon epitaph created by S.M. Gorodetsky. The novelty of the research is seen in the fact that the means of creating a “secret obituary”, the discourse of which was widespread during political repressions and executions is considers. The relevance of the study is due to the consideration of obituaries in the works of little-studied authors-acmeists. The authors dwell on the previously analyzed secret commemorations of N.S. Gumilyov in A.A. Akhmatova and O.E. Mandelstam, which in their content is closer to the enigmatic funeral, secret commemoration of loved ones. It is proved that Narbut and Zenkevich create a cryptonecrology, a hidden epitaph, closer to the genre of a funeral speech.

Keywords

• gumilev
• narbut
• zenkevich
• gorodetsky
• acmeism
• epitaph
• obituary
• cryptotext
• text frame