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

example of a consciously constructed Russian book of poems. It is important, however,
to be aware of the huge popularity of the cycle at the turn of the century. Beginning with
Bal’mont’s В безбрежности and Bryusov’s Chefs d’oeuvre in 1895, the period that
some claim as the origin of “genuine” lyric cycles, almost all major volumes of lyric
poetry are composed of cyclic groupings. Thus, the cycle plays a major role in the
organization of the early twentieth-century book of poems.
In order to explain the prominent role of the cycle at the turn of the century, Z.G.
Mints looks to the mythopoetic nature of the younger generation of symbolists. She
claims that in some cases the cycle has become "the functional equivalent of a 'poemamyth'"
(своебразный функциональный заместитель «поэмы-мифы»). Its potential for
generating plot mimics the myth’s narrative dynamic. 13
Vroon echoes this notion of
myth creation, arguing that symbolist cycles are often expressions of historiographic
models that allow current events to take on epic proportions. 14
Vroon argues that such
cycles are non-narrative, 15 but he appears to equate narrative with a chronological
representation of events. I explore a more expansive narrative tendency in the book of
poems, perhaps best captured in the Russian term “последовательность”—a progressive
movement over the course of the cycle or book of poems. Vroon clearly identifies this
progressive element in Blok’s and Voloshin’s “non-narrative” historiographic cycles.
13 Z.G. Mints, "O nekotorykh «neomifologicheskikh» tekstakh v tvorchestve russkikh simvolistov," in
Tvorchestvo A.A. Bloka i russkaia kul'tura XX veka: Blokovskii sbornik III. (Tartu: Uchenye zapiski
Tartusokogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta, 1979), vol. 459, 77.
14 Ronald Vroon, "Cycle and History: Maksimilian Vološin's 'Puti Rossi'," Scando-Slavica 31 (1985): 59-
61.
15 Ronald Vroon, "Cycle and History: The Case of Aleksandr Blok's Rodina," Slavic and East European
Journal 28, no. 3 (Fall 1984): 340-1.
5