A SYMBOLIST IN WARTIME SVERDLOVSK: YURY N. VERKHOVSKY’S LATE WORKS IN THE LIGHT OF THE IDEAS OF VYACH. I. IVANOV AND A. N. VESELOVSKY

Abstract

The article is devoted to Yury N. Verkhovsky’s scientific and poetic works of the period of the Great Patriotic war evacuation to Sverdlovsk (1941–1944). Its goal is to explore the options for transforming the Russian symbolism ideas in Soviet official literature. The material for the study includes poetry (the collection of poems Budet Tak [It Will Be So], 1943; poems published in the press), articles, reports, reviews by Verkhovsky and a memoirs and reviews of his contemporaries. Some excerpts from Verkhovsky’s works published in the newspapers Uralsky Rabochiy [The Ural Worker] and Literatyrny Ural [Literary Ural] are analyzed and re-published for the first time. Based on a comparative and hermeneutic analysis of this material, it is shown that the ideas of the presence and development of a special poetic language, and of a special “plastic force” that filling and driving a work, and of a continuity in literature (genre, motif), which were perceived him from the poet and philologist Aleksander N. Veselovsky, were consistently developed in his articles and reports and formed an original theory of the classification of types of poetic creativity (“the singer”, “the plastic artist”, “the sage”) and found practical application on the Ural literary material. Taking an active part in the literary life of the Urals, Verkhovsky saw there the formation of a renewed Russian/Soviet classics, successive in relation to the “Golden age” of Russian literature and ancient classical examples. A special place is given to the personality and work of the Ural writer Pavel P. Bazhov in the reception of Verkhovsky. A hypothesis is made about the closeness of Bazhov, from the point of view of Verkhovsky’s concept, to symbolism. An analysis of the corpus of Verkhovsky’s wartime lyrics shows how his aesthetic and poetological views, supplemented by ideas which were perceived him during the years of apprenticeship with Ivanov, were embodied in the themes, motifs, forms that he used, showing, thus, an example of an original combination of artistic and philosophical discoveries of the Silver Age with current themes and pathos of the Soviet press.