THE BOOK OF POEMS IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY ... - TopReferat

посвящена одному кругу чувств и мыслей, которому я был предан в течение
первых двенадцати лет сознательной жизни. 7
Boris Pasternak’s 1922 book, Сестра моя—жизнь, has also been described as a
novel. Tynianov compares it to a “diary in verse with precise place-names and dates.” 8
Read as an integral whole, its poems, complete works of art in and of themselves, provide
a narrative account of a specific love affair and journey. This specific story, Katherine
O’Connor argues, is universalized by its poetic form, turning the seemingly simple
narrative into a metapoetic statement. 9
Extremely influential for both Pasternak’s
contemporaries and later poets, Сестра моя—жизнь provides an important model for
the twentieth-century Russian book of poems.
In my dissertation I will not focus on this emergence of the book of poems.
Instead, I will analyze three twentieth-century examples, all of which appeared after the
importance of a book’s organization had been explicitly and widely discussed. 10
My first
two chapters deal with texts from the first half of the century: Vladislav Khodasevich’s
Путем зерна (1920; 1921; 1927) and Zinaida Gippius’s Сияния (1938). The third
chapter addresses a more recent work: Elena Shvarts's Труды и дни Лавинии, Монахини
7 Aleksandr Blok, Sobranie sochinenii v 8 tomakh, vol. 1 (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1960),
559.
8 Katherine Tiernan O'Connor, "Boris Pasternak's My Sister—Life: The Book Behind the Verse," Slavic
Review 37, no. 3 (September 1978), 399.
9 See Katherine Tiernan O'Connor's excellent book, Boris Pasternak's My Sister—Life: The Illusion of
Narrative (Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1988).
10
By 1915 Briusov's Urbi et Orbi pronouncement had become common currency in literary discussions. In
his review of Blok’s “Стихи о России” Georgii Ivanov writes: Когда читаешь «Стихи о России»,
вспоминается слова В-ия Брюсова о книгах, которые нельзя перелистывать, а надо читать, «как
роман». V. Enisherlov, Shtrikhi sud'by (Moscow: Sovremennik, 1980), 174. Fyodor Sologub, who had
paid little attention to the organization of his early books, giving his wife and Briusov free reign in
selecting and ordering the poems, shows a heightened attention to the composition of later works, perhaps
swayed by the carefully constructed works of other symbolists. In the introduction to Лазурные горы, the
first volume of his 1913 collected works, he writes: Стихотворения, собранные в этой книге, написаны
в 1884-1898 годах; но далеко не все стихотворения тех лет помещены здесь. Выбор обусловлен
желанием сохранить некоторую общность настроения. Стихи расположены в порядке, который для
внимательного читателя покажется не случайным. Хронологический указатель напечатан в конце
этой книги. Fyodor Sologub, Sobranie sochinenii, v. 1 (Saint Petersburg: Sirin, 1913), v. 1, opening pages
(unnumbered).
3