Article

Name: Victor Sosnora’s Poem “Buffoons” (1959): Text and Contexts

Authors: Tatiana I. Kovaleva, 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 the text and reconstruction of the most im-portant contexts of Victor Sosnora’s poem “Buffoons” (1959) from the poetic book “Riders”. The poet comprehend the art of buffoons in the context of the avant-garde myth about the future (N. F. Fedorov). It сan amuse, heal and be a metaphor for the coming resurrection. The meanings of the poem “revive” in the context of previous works. It is considered as an illustration of a scene of buffoon games absent in the Old Russian work “The Russian Primary Chronicl” on which “Riders” is based and “revived” in the 20th century. In the context of folklore texts, in particular “Guest Terenty”, buffoons with sacred knowledge are healers and physicians. That is, the image of buffoons, not accepted by the church since the first centuries of its existence, is perceived differently in popular culture. The European plot of the Juggler of Our Lady endows the art of buffoons in the poem with the meaning of serving the Higher powers. The work of Russian literature “The Buffoon Pamphalon” by N. S. Leskova gives the sacrificial service of the buffoon with his craft to his neighbor as a service to God. The complementarity of different meanings, including opposite, is an important feature of Sosnora’s poetics and worldview is characterized by a kind of “artistic enantiosemy”. Besides, the article describes in detail the com-position, rhythm, alliteration and assonance that create the unique pattern of the poem.

Keywords: V. Sosnora’s poem “Buffoons”, book and folklore contexts, contexts of Russian classical and European literature, rhythmic structure of the poem

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