Article

Name: Silhouettes of Harbin Poets in V. Pereleshin’s “Poem without Subject”: Nikolay Peterets

Authors: Elena V. Kapinos

Institute of Philology of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk, Russian Federation

Abstract: “Poem without Subject” by V. Pereleshin may be seen as an encyclopedia of literary life in 1920s – 1940s Russian Harbin and Shanghai, in which V. Pereleshin reconstructs by memory biographies and portraits of poets and writers who were part of the Harbin literary association “Young Churaevka” and “Friday”. Poet and journalist Nikolay Vladimirovich Peterets was the head of the Shanghai association “Friday”, his biography is briefly outlined in the final of “The Fifth Song” of the “Poem...”, in the memoirs of Pereleshin “Two half-stations” (Peterets is also mentioned in the memoirs of other Harbiners, for instance, in the book “Roads and Fates” by N. Ilyina). The piece on the death of Peterets displays characteristic features of Pereleshin’s poetics and creates an expressive image of the literary environment that was created by poets of the eastern branch of the Russian emigration. The portraits of emigrant poets and writers are contrasted in the “Poem...” with the portraits of Soviet artists. Pereleshin portrays the Harbiners as the true heirs of the Russian classics, perishing yet immortal. Soviet poets, including even Pasternak, are left out of the Russian classical tradition. In terms of style, Pereleshin’s work derives from such models as Pushkin’s “Eugene Onegin,” Akhmatova’s “Poem without a Hero,” and M. Kuzmin’s poem “The Trout Breaks the Ice.” Yet Pereleshin does not directly follow the models, but parodies them, making it clear that parody was a characteristic way of thinking for the members of the Shanghai literary circle “Friday”.

Keywords: emigrant poetry, literature of the Russian emigration in China, V. Pereleshin, “Poem without Subject”, Nikolai Peterets, Shanghai literary circle “Friday”

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