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Abstract: The aim of the article is to study the poem “The Japanese Temple” (from the collection “Time Off”) by the famous ethnographer, writer, translator and stylizer of oriental poetry Mikhail Shcherbakov. The study has revealed the influence of Ivan Bunin’s book of lyrics and essays “The Temple of the Sun” and the opening poem of the same title on the composition of the entire Shcherbakov’s collection “Time Off” and especially on the text under analysis. “The Japanese Temple” seems to smoothly balance between the form of an eastern tanka and the Italian tercets used by Bunin. Perhaps, the “gates” of “The Temple of the Sun” from Bunin’s poem influenced the choice of the title of the eastern emigrants’ collection of poems and prose “The Gates”, where “The Japanese Temple” was published in 1934. And Shcherbakov, submitting the poem to this publication, had Bunin’s text in mind. The article highlights the significance of M. Urvantsev’s illustrations for “Time Off”: as in Bunin’s “The Temple of the Sun”, where, in addition to drawings depicting antiquities, two floral ornaments are presented in front of the poems “The Temple of the Sun” and “The Shadow of a Bird”, so in “Time Off” first letters stylized into pictures to begin Shcherbakov’s texts are used – they are small vignettes that respond to the text. In his collection of poems, Shcherbakov uses the technique of ekphrasis, trying to show “art within art”, “to wrap” eastern architecture and painting into a new form – language, images, rhymes and rhythm. The scope of the study in the article covers the lyrics of the poets of the “eastern” emigration, in particular, Mikhail Shcherbakov’s collection of poems “Time Off” and the poem “The Japanese Temple”. The literature of the eastern branch looked toward the western emigrant culture and the Russian context, but it also influenced them itself. The dependence of the poetry and prose of the eastern line on the topos chosen by the writers enriched the literature of the twentieth century with new shades (even fresh exotic motifs), and at the same time, this connection of traditions demonstrates how the Silver Age embraced both the emigrant West and the emigrant East with its influence.

About the author(s) :

Natalia V. Prashcheruk  

Ural Federal University named after the first President of Russia B. N. Yeltsin (Ekaterinburg, Russia) 

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4407-5293

Publication Timeline:

Date of receipt: 26.09.2023; date of publication: 31.10.2023

References:

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