Филологический класс (Dec 2022)
Vladimir Mayakovsky as “a Singing Ilya Muromets”: “Karacharovo” by Viktor Sosnora
Abstract
The article analyzes the poem by Viktor Sosnora (1936–2019) “Karacharovo” (1959). The poet entered the world of literature with a book of poems on Old Russia (“Horsemen”). He knew well not only written monuments, but also folklore, was well-read in folklore studies. At the same time, Sosnora felt himself the heir to Russian futurism. The main characters of the poem – the epic hero Ilya Muromets and the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky–are hidden through the figure of silence. Their images are revealed by the analysis of the reminiscent plan of the poem. Forming it, Sosnora “re-fantasizes” the events described in the works of different epochs, “updating” them for the modern reader. Besides, turning to cultural (Karacharovo is the native village of Ilya Muromets) and the reminiscent (a reference to the well-known lines of Mayakovsky) memory, Sosnora builds the past and the future in a historical perspective. The parallel between the bogatyr and the poet, Karacharovo and Baghdadi, most likely goes back to Viktor Shklovsky’s book “On Mayakovsky” (1940), and through it to the forgotten, but known to Shklovsky review of Roman Gul on Mayakovsky’s poems (1923) published in the Berlin newspaper “Nakanune”. If for Mayakovsky the epic time is in the past, for Sosnora it has not yet come; Ilya Muromets has yet to be born in Karacharovo. The tavern motif introduces the memory of the poetry and the fate of Sergei Yesenin into the associative field of the poem. Turning to the Оld Russian writings and folklore, the young Sosnora solved the problem of deep, not superficial, inheritance of the traditions of the Russian futurism (Vladimir Mayakovsky, Velimir Khlebnikov, Nikolai Aseev). The article also considers the rhythmics and composition of the poem in detail. It reveals the specificity of the tactician “Karacharovo” based in the main part of the poem on paean III (4 stanzas), and in the last stanza sounding anapestic. A rich system of alliterations and other methods of organizing the poem, such as original graphics, hyphenation, open and closed syllables in rhyme positions, is described. “Implicit” semantic parallels with other poems of “Horsemen” (“Rogneda”, “Kaliki”) are noted. “Reticence”, “figure of silence”, “reservation”, and “hints” become a means of involving into the creative process of the reader, who, the same as the author, has the right to “re-fantasize” the poetic text.
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