Article

Name: On the Analysis of a Poem by Viktor Sosnora “Parting of an Animal Barking with Fear of an Owl...” (1966)

Authors: Igor E. Loshchilov

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

Abstract:

The article is devoted to the analysis of Viktor Sosnora “The separation of the animal bark from the fear of an owl...”, written in 1966 and published in the USSR in 1977. The role and meaning of the concept words ‘separation’, ‘memory’, ‘prison’, ‘death’ in the poem are shown. The author’s graphic design of the poem vaguely resembles the sonnet canon, and the size (multi-foot amphibrach with a single impregnation of dactyl) reminds of imitations of ancient versification (hexameter, elegiac distich). None of the signs of the sonnet and the hexameter are reproduced sequentially, but each of them is manifested in the poem at least once. A lyrical plot related to travels to the world of dreams and the world of death has been recreated. In the first part of the poem, the lyric hero visits the kingdom of ancient Hypnos. In the second part, he addresses himself in the present, and his voice sounds as if from the domain of Thanatos. The ending of the poem expresses gratitude to the Creator in a sophisticated and saturated form with literary reminiscences and allusions. Shown are the echoes of the memory of the works of Russian poetry of the 18th – 20th centuries, both related to the textbook classics (G. Derzhavin, A. Pushkin, M. Lermontov, A. Blok, B. Pasternak) and unknown (F. Kozelsky, V. Krasov).

Keywords: Victor Sosnora, poetics, lyric plot, literary allusions, literary reminiscences

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