“Echoing Pushkin”: Khodasevich and Pasternak on Mass and Elite Poetry

Abstract

The article deals with several issues: first of all, it is a question of building the creative strategy by two of the largest representatives of Russian poetry of the XX century. Khodasevich's aspiration is based on separating himself from mass literature, closing in on the elite poetic world, focused on the Russian "golden age" and, mainly, the poetry of Pushkin. Against this background - the opposite direction of the development of Pasternak, also focused on Pushkin, but aimed at the mass reader, starting from the first half of the 1920s and ending with the late work. The author asks how the focus on Pushkin could lead one poet to abandon poetry and silence, while the otheron the contrary, to full realization and world fame. The article also touches the question of Khodasevich's attitude to Pasternak's work and, more broadly, to futuristic poetry in the context of ideas about the destructiveness of mass and the high mission of elite poetry.

Keywords

• pasternak
• khodasevich
• pushkin
• mass poetry
• elite poetry
• literature of russian diaspora
• «school of harmonic precision»
• soviet critics