Article

Name: GENRE OF BALLADS IN THE LYRICS OF ARSENIY NESMELOV

Authors: А. А. Khadynskaya

Surgut State University

In the section Literary Life of the Plot

Abstract: The article considers the traditions of the ballad genre in the author’s interpretation of Arseniy Nesmelov (1889–1945), one of the major representatives of the eastern branch of Russian literary emigration. The ballad form is closely connected in A. Nesmelov’s lyrics with the battle theme and reflects the events of the Civil War, in which the poet himself was a participant on the White Guard side. The autobiographical situation, when reinterpreting it within the framework of the ballad tradition, acquires existential traits that relate the lyrics of Arseniy Nesmelov to the work of the mature Georgiy Ivanov. The ballad in the collection of the Harbin period, “Bloody Reflection” (1928), is most vividly represented. In the texts analyzed there is a clear similarity to the Soviet ballad (M. Svetlov, E. Bagritsky, N. Tikhonov) at the level of poetics and refraction of the classical Russian ballad tradition (V. A. Zhukovsky, A. S. Pushkin, M. Yu. Lermontov): the heroes of “red” and “white” ballads are very similar in their life settings, but are on opposite sides of the barricades. The theme of death becomes dominant in the poetry and this is largely dictated by the emigrant fate, homelessness, need and isolation from the native cultural soil. Allusions to Lermontov’s “Borodino” create a polemical context when the lyrical hero realizes that he has lost his homeland forever, and does not quite understand what he is fighting for on the battlefields. In the poems “Scouts”, “Armored car” lyrical hero draws pictures of the senseless death of heroes, driven into a corner in a difficult confrontation of the Civil War. The hero of the ballad “In Nizhneudinsk” was Kolchak himself, with whom, according to the plot, the lyrical hero meets before the execution of the Admiral. A large allusive plan unfolds before the readers in the ballads of Arseniy Nesmelov, connected to the “ornithological theme” (crow and kite as traditional birds of death): folklore texts, Pushkin’s ballads, F. Tyutchev’s, A. Blok’s poems, etc. In the ballad “To My Judges”, Nesmelov predicts his own doom, photographically representing the trial of himself in the dungeons of the NKVD. The plot echoes the evangelical trial of Christ, with excruciation and torture, as well as with a famous poem by G. R. Derzhavin “To the Lords and Judges”. A wide literary context inscribes Nesmelov’s lyrics in the tradition of the Russian battle ballad, but at the same time reveals the tragedy of the emigrant worldview, since the mortal theme becomes dominant.

Keywords: arseniy nesmelov, eastern branch of russian literary emigration, ballad genre, soviet ballad, acmeistical traditions, literary allusions

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