Alarming Echo of the Myth (Orpheus Text in Russian Poetry of the 1920s)

http://dx.doi.org/10.20339/PhS.5-16.063

Chagin, Alexei I.,

Doctor of Philology, chief scientific fellow of the Gorky Institute of World Literature (RAS)

Scientific interests: the author of the books “The Hero and the Time (Of a Lyrical Hero in Modern Poetry). M., 1985; “The Lyre That Split (Russia and Exile: destiny of Russian poetry in the 1920—1930th). M., 1998; “Ways and Faces. Of Russian literature of the XXth century”. M., 2008; and, besides, more than a hundred of articles (some of them are translated into English, French, Finnish, Corean, Georgian) dealing with the problems of Russian liter-ature of the XXth century, Russian poetry, literature of Russian exile, interac-tion of national literatures.

E-mail: aichagin@mail.ru

In the article the tendency of addressing the theme of Orpheus, evolution of Orpheus text in Russian Poetry of the 1920s are being examined on the material of poetical works by V. Khodasevich, O. Mandelstam, B. Poplavsky. It is shown here how Russian poetry on this way of creative activity reflected the redoubled features of catastrophic consciousness of a man at the boundary of epochs, at the moment of downfall of traditional, centuries-old foundations of life — and created, as a result, very significant modifications of the classical image.

Key words: Russian Poetry, myth, Orpheus, the divided literature, features of a catastrophic consciousness