Nikolai Zabolotsky: Enigma and Cultural Paradigm

ISBN-13: 9780810114210 / Angielski / Twarda / 2000 / 316 str.

Sarah Pratt

Opis

What is the relation of Soviet culture to Russian culture? How does a Soviet poet differ from a Russian poet? Sarah Pratt traces these interwoven questions in the work of Nikolai Zabolotsky, a figure ranking just behind Pasternak, Mandelstam, and Akhmatova in modern Russian poetry and the first major poet to come to light in the Soviet period. The book identifies a "Soviet" impulse, marked by a veneer of Marxist ideology and political acceptability, and a "Russian" impulse that reflects prerevolutionary mores and the cultural bedrock of Russian Orthodoxy. Because of this apparent split, and because Zabolotsky's career was punctuated by a term in a prison camp that emphasized the differences between his early and late works, the poet has often come across as enigmatic and politically suspect. Pratt, however, demonstrates an underlying continuity in Zabolotsky's work, which embodies the mixture of brash iconoclasm and indelibly embedded tradition that shaped the culture of his homeland for most of the twentieth century.

The book focuses on selected moments that both reflect basic impulses within Russian culture and define major aspects of Zabolotsky's individual poetic identity. While recognizing the apparent contradictions in Zabolotsky's life and works, Pratt delineates four cultural constants that inform his poetic vision: a sense of "half-peasant" identity; a worldview steeped in Russian Orthodoxy; a strong bond to Russian and western European literary tradition; and an unflinching recognition of Soviet reality. Presenting close readings of poems and numerous relevant documents, the book examines Zabolotsky's contribution to the avant-garde Oberiu group; his responses to Symbolism,Acmeism, and contemporary painting; his complex relationship to Russian Orthodoxy; and his awareness of the inescapable political dimensions of his time. In the end, Pratt argues it was precisely the contradictions that made Zabolotsky seem to be an enigma that, in fact, made him a cultural paradigm.