“Levada” by Vladimir Narbut: An Experience of Deciphering a Complex Poem

Abstract

The article reveals Gogol’s subtexts and reminiscences in Vladimir Narbut’s poem “Levada” (an early edition is dated 1910, revised one is presumably the 1930s). The poet himself in 1913 was inclined to trace the lineage of his artistic method to Gogol and namely his novella “Viy.” Topoi and the thesaurus of the poem in many aspects go back to the stories “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka” and “Mirgorod,” but it also contains references to other Gogol’s texts, up to “Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends.” Gogol’s Ukraine appears in “Levada” as a desirable land of beauty, abundance and strength. It emerges as a constant through the everyday and often frightening and repulsive picture of the modern decline of the country.