The Garden of Eden — the Estate Garden — the Dacha Garden in the Russian Literary Tradition

The paper deals with the evolution in Russian poetry of the 20th and early 21st centuries of motif complexes associated with the garden. The Garden of Eden acts as the prototype of the garden in Russian poetry. In poetical texts under study special attention is paid to gardeners and orchardists who follow in the footsteps of the Creator of the Garden of Eden. Mythologized images dating back to Anton Chekhov's play “The Cherry Orchard” (1903) and Alexander Blok's poem “The Nightingale Garden” (1915) are important for the literary tradition. The pleasure of nature's melodies, dreams of love, lyrical meditations, and philosophical reflections are all harmoniously connected with the inner space of the garden. The garden is connected by a gate, a gate or a door with the surrounding world, which is often hostile to its protagonists. The paper also dwells upon the works by Sergei Gorodetsky, Alexander Prokofyev, Bella Akhmadulina, Alexander Kushner and others. The lyrical hero of Gorodetsky's poem “My Garden” (1926) constructs his own poetic garden in reference to contemporary poets close to him. Prokofiev, in his poem “A Day Equal to a Millennium, Heavy Arms Spread...” (1931) writes of the death of both the manor house and the Nightingale`s garden inseparable from it. The Blokian tradition is resumed in Kushner's work. Akhmadulina's work is strongly influenced by her own experience of dacha life in Tarusa, which became a home for writers and artists in the 1950s and 1970s.