The concept of “future” in modern Russian poetry (actual and historical aspects)

https://doi.org/10.20339/PhS.4-19.085

Novikov Vladimir I.,

Doctor of Philology, Professor,

Professor of the  Literary and Artistic Criticism Department

Lomonosov Moscow State University

e-mail: novikovy@yandex.ru

Almost all the significant Russian poets touched the theme of the future. Semantically the plan of the future is potentially present in any poem: its beginning is correlated with the past, the middle with the present, the final with the future. Already in 1820–1830s there were two lines in the poetic interpretation of the future as such: positive in Zhukovsky and Pushkin, skeptical — in Baratynsky and Lermontov. The aestheticization of the future is inherent in Russian poetic modernism and especially in the avant-garde. The era of socialist realism created a normative concept of “bright future”, which underwent a critical revision both in uncensored poetry and in the national language consciousness. For modern Russian poetry is characterized by the inclusion of the concept of the future in the overall system of the universe on a par with the past and the present.

Keywords: aestheticization, futurum poeticum, Russian poetry.