Journal archive

Abstract: The article presents an interpretation of the image of home in V. F. Khodasevich’s collection of poems “By the Way of Grain”. The author traces the archetypal nature and evolution of this symbol in relation to the image of the dying and resurrecting grain, which is the compositional center of artistic unity. It is proved that the semantic structure of the image of home in “By the Way of Grain” is largely saturated with connotations inherited from the myths of the Eastern Slavs, as well as some biblical allusions. The study shows that the semantic content of the motif of the lost destroyed house, which is the key image in the poems “Tears of Rachel”, “November 2”, “The Home”, is associated with the development of the symbolist tradition. Moreover, in the poems “November 2” and “The Home” Khodasevich conducts a creative dialogue with the poems of Alexander Pushkin “The Bronze Horseman” and “The House in Kolomna”. Eventually, he comes up with the idea of building a human habitat, harmonized and spiritualized by a woman, the keeper of the hearth (poems “Without Words”, “The Loaves of Bread”). In the poem “Without Words”, it is the silent heroine, the creator of a cozy homely atmosphere that prompts the lyrical subject with the idea of the power of God’s providence, returning him to saving faith in the Creator. In the poem “The Loaves of Bread” Khodasevich uses the ekphrasis technique in an original way, filling it with light humor. The poet somehow brings the “homely” and purely earthly event of baking bread into the plot of the European religious painting, referring the image of the beautiful “housewife”, depicted in the picture, to the world of God. It is no coincidence that the heroine bakes bread, surrounded by angels, who carefully help her, and the entire space of the house is permeated with bright mystical light. The hymn to the woman-hostess who keeps the hearth, created in the poem “The Loaves of Bread”, to a certain extent goes back to the poetic “wisdom” of Pushkin, expressed in “An Excerpt from Onegin’s Journey”. At the same time, in this work, Khodasevich offers his own version of the artistic embodiment of “Eternal Femininity”, which is controversial to the ideas of his contemporaries, first of all, Russian Symbolists.

About the author(s) :

Nataliya G. Koptelova

Kostroma State University (Kostroma, Russia)

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7145-223X

References:

Aihenvald, Yu. (1994). Siluety russkikh pisatelei [The Silhouettes of Russian writers]. Moscow, Respublika. 591 p.

Baiburin, A. K. (1983). Zhilishche v obryadakh i predstavleniyakh vostochnykh slavyan [Dwellings in Rituals and Representations of the Eastern Slavs]. Leningrad, Nauka, Leningradskoe otdelenie. 192 p.

Blok, A. A. (1997–2010). Polnoe sobranie sochinenii i pisem: v 20 t. [The Complete Works and Letters, in 20 vols.]. Vol. 1–8. Moscow, Nauka.

Bocharov, S. (1996). «Pamyatnik» Khodasevicha [“A Monument” by Khodasevich]. In Hodasevich, V. F. Sobranie sochinenii, in 4 vols. Vol. 1. Moscow, Soglasie, pp. 5–55.

Bogomolov, N. A. (1999). Retseptsiya pushkinskoi epokhi v lirike V. F. Khodasevicha [The Reception of Pushkin’s Era in the Lyrics of V. F. Khodasevich]. In Bogomolov, N. A. Russkaya literatura pervoi treti ХХ veka: Portrety. Problemy. Razyskaniya. Tomsk, Vodolei, pp. 359–375.

Bol’shakova, A. Yu. (2003) Teoriya arkhetipa na rubezhe XX ‒ XXI vv. [The Archetype Theory at the Turn of the XXth ‒ XXIst Centuries]. In Voprosy filologii. No. 1 (13), pp. 37‒47.

Bol’shakova, A. Yu. (2010). Arkhetip – kontsept – kul’tura [Archetype – Concept – Culture]. In Voprosy filosofii. No. 7, pp. 47–57.

Dal’, V. (1981–1982). Tolkovyi slovar’ zhivogo velikorusskogo yazyka: v 4 t. [An Explanatory Dictionary of the Living Great Russian Language, in 4 vols.] Moscow, Russkii yazyk.

Fedotov, O. (2018). «Epizody» Vladislava Hodasevicha [“Episodes” by Vladislav Khodasevich]. In Voprosy literatury. No. 1, pp. 149–179.

Feshhenko, O. A. (2005). Kontsept DOM v khudozhestvennoi kartine mira M. Cvetaevoi (na materiale prozaicheskikh proizvedenii) [The Concept of the HOUSE in the Artistic Picture of the World by M. Tsvetaeva (Based on Her Prose Works)]. Dis. … kand. filol. nauk. Novosibirsk. 216 p.

Gabdullina, S. R. (2004). Kontsept DOM / RODINA i ego slovesnoe voploshchenie v individual’nom stile M. I. Cvetaevoi i poezii russkogo zarubezh’ya pervoi volny (sopostavitel’nyi aspekt) [The Concept of DOM / RODINA (the HOUSE / the MOTHERLAND) and Its Verbal Embodiment in the Individual Style of M. I. Tsvetaeva and the Poetry of the Russian Emigration First Wave (a Comparative Aspect)]. Avtoref. dis. … kand. filol. nauk. Moscow. 24 p.

Khodasevich, V. (1915). Peterburgskie povesti Pushkina [Petersburg’s Tales of Pushkin]. In Apollon. No. 3, pp. 33–50. Khodasevich, V. F. (1996–1997). Sobranie sochinenii: v 4 t. [Collected Works, in 4 vols.]. Moscow, Soglasie.

Khodasevich, V. F. (2009). Sobranie sochinenii: v 8 t. [Collected Works, in 8 vols.]. Vol. T. 1: Polnoe sobranie stihotvorenii. Moscow, Russkii put’. 648 p.

Epshtein, M. N. (1987). Obraz khudozhestvennyi [The Artistic Image]. In Kozhevnikova, V. M., Nikolaev, P. A. (Eds.). Literaturnyi entsiklopedicheskii slovar’. Moscow, Sovetskaya entsiklopediya, pp. 252–254.

Jung, K. G. (2019). Ob arkhetipakh kollektivnogo bessoznatel’nogo [Concerning the Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious]. In Jung, K. G. Arkhetipy i kollektivnoe bessoznatel’noe. Moscow, AST, pp. 5–52.

Kihney, L. G., Galaeva, M. V. (2005). Lokus «doma» v liricheskoi sisteme Anny Ahmatovoi [The Locus of “the House” in the Lyric System of Anna Akhmatova]. In Vostok – Zapad: Prostranstvo russkoi literatury: materialy Mezhdunarodnoi nauchnoi konferentsii. Volgograd, Volgogradskoe nauchnoe izdatel’stvo, pp. 237–247.

Kir’yanova, E. N. (2012). Fenomen doma v rannei lirike Mariny Tsvetaevoi [The Phenomenon of the House in the Early Lyrics of Marina Tsvetaeva]. Dis. … kand. filol. nauk. Moscow. 218 p.

Koptelova, N. G. (2014). Obraz doma v lirike V. F. Khodasevicha (na materiale sbornika «Schastlivyi domik») [The Image of the House in the Lyrics of V. F. Khodasevich (Based on the Collection “A Happy House”)]. In Kostromskoi gumanitarnyi vestnik. No. 1 (7), pp. 8–14.

Losev, A. F. (1982). Moiry [Moiras]. In Tokarev, S. A (Ed.). Mify narodov mira: enciklopediya: v 2 t. Vol. 2: K–Ya. Moscow, Sovetskaya enciklopediya, p. 189.

Malmstad, Dzh., Hughes, R. (2009). Primechaniya [Notes (edit.)]. In Hodasevich, V. F. Sobranie sochinenii: v 8 t. Vol. 1: Polnoe sobranie stikhotvorenii. Moscow, Russkii put’, pp. 348–598.

Meletinsky, E. M. (1994). O literaturnykh arkhetipah [Concerning Literary Archetypes]. Moscow, Izdatel’stvo Rossiiskogo gosudarstvennogo gumanitarnogo universiteta. 136 p.

Mints, Z. G. (2000). Blok i russkii simvolizm [Blok and the Russian Symbolism]. In Mints, Z. G. Aleksandr Blok i russkie pisateli. Saint Petersburg, Iskusstvo-SPB, pp. 456–536.

Perzeke, A. B. (2009). Poetika katastrofy v poeme A. S. Pushkina «Mednyi vsadnik» [The Poetics of the Catastrophe in the Poem by Alexander Pushkin “The Bronze Horseman”]. In Prepodavatel’ ХХI vek. No. 4, pp. 323–330.

Pushkin, A. S. (1977–1979). Polnoe sobranie sochinenii: v 10 t. [Complete Works and Letters, in 10 vols.]. Leningrad, Nauka.

Radomskaya, T. I. (2007). Fenomen doma i poetika ego voploshcheniya v russkoi literature pervoi treti ХIХ veka: A. S. Griboedov, A. S. Pushkin, M. Yu. Lermontov [The Phenomenon of the House and the Poetics of Its Embodiment in the Russian Literature of the First Third of the 19th Century A. S. Griboyedov, A. S. Pushkin, M. Yu. Lermontov]. Dis. … d-ra filol. nauk. Moscow. 521 p.

Shtaerman, E. M. (1982). Saturn [Saturn]. In Tokarev, S. A. (Ed.). Mify narodov mira: enciklopediya: v 2 t. Vol. 2: K–Ya. Moscow, Sovetskaya enciklopediya, p. 417.

Shutova, E. V. (2010). Bytie arkhetipov «dom» i «bezdom’e» v russkoi literature [The Existence of the Archetypes “Home” and the “Homelessness” in the Russian Literature]. In Vestnik Kurganskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta. Seriya «Gumanitarnye nauki». Issue 6, pp. 77–81.

Surat, I. Z. (1994). Pushkinist Vladislav Khodasevich [Vladislav Khodasevich as a Specialist in Pushkin’s Creativity]. Moscow, Labirint. 111 p. Toporkov, A. L. (2002).

Pech’ [The Oven]. In Slavyanskaya mifologiya. Enciklopedicheskii slovar’. Moscow, Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniya, pp. 364–365.

Tressider, Dzh. (1999). Slovar’ simvolov [The Dictionary of Symbols]. Moscow, FAIR-PRESS. 448 p.

Tret’yakov, E. O. (2015). Filosofiya i poetika chetyrekh stikhii v tvorcheskoi sisteme N. V. Gogolya [The Philosophy and Poetics of the Four Elements in the Creative System of N. V. Gogol]. Tomsk, STT. 354 p.

Uspensky, P. (2014). Tvorchestvo V. F. Khodasevicha i russkaya literaturnaya traditsiya (1900 g. – 1917 g.) [The Creativity of V. F. Khodasevich and the Russian Literary Tradition (1900–1917)]. Tartu, Tartu University Press. 214 p.

Uspensky, P. F. (2020). Formula revolyutsii: Khodasevich, Nekrasov, krest’yanskie poety i agrarnaya topika russkoi liriki [The Formula of Revolution: Khodasevich, Nekrasov, Peasant Poets and an Agrarian Topic of the Russian Lyric Poetry]. In Russkaya literatura. No. 2, pp. 131–147.