Article

Name: Will to die: the mortal theme in Boris Ryzhy’s poetry

Authors: N. A. Nepomniashchikh

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

In the section Study of literature

Abstract: Death-related images are typical for the descriptions of any losses whether it is a loss of a person or values, cultures, traditions, languages, homelands. The loss of the homeland in the works of the first wave of the Russian emigration is a demonstrative example of such description. In the second half of the 20th century, the death-related images and themes, as well as thanatological plots and motifs, are common in the «village prose». An author or a whole literary movement can have a unique set of the thanatological motifs and images (thesaurus of death). Even some «national » literatures, which are typologically alike, have such «thanatological set». Domination of the thanatological motifs and plots in a separate literature, a literary movement, or the works of a writer is due to «unliterary» reasons, to the events and facts which do not belong to the literature. Usually, the writers, in whose works the thanatological complex is a dominating one, comprehend the reality as «deep crisis», feel that their time «is out of joint», that relations between generations are ruined, traditions are lost. Such views are characteristic of both emigrant and «traditional» writers. Boris Ryzhy is no exception to this rule. His youth was at the time of the fall of the Soviet Union. He considered the changes as a destruction of the age; the present was shown as a crisis, a deadlock in his poetry. The main and repeating motifs of Boris Ryzhy’s poetry are thanatological ones. They are the aspiration for the death shown as a way to it, reflections on the death and waiting for its arrival, imaginary funerals and funeral attributes (coffins, graves, cemeteries, funeral orchestras and music), imaginary meetings with the dead, addressing the dead as though they were alive. There are also the motifs of loneliness and pain in the frightening world that one can leave only by escaping into the death, into the other world. Only after the death, it is possible to become a «great poet» to be honored with a memorial in a homeland. The idea that it is impossible to be recognized as a poet during life results in the motifs of «last will and testament», overcoming the death by poems, the immortality of the poetry despite the mortality of a poet. Thanatological motifs and the plot of speeding up towards the death are constantly repeated throughout Boris Ryzhy’s poetry. Even motifs, which are not usually related to the motif of death, such as light of a street lamp or a star, the motif of void, and some others, become the death-related motifs in his poems. The plot about «the poet born from death» becomes the metaplot of all his writings. It explains his irrepressible aspiration for death, persistent attempts to peep beyond the brink, to cross the border, the intonation of poetic «last will and testament» characteristic of many of his poems. The aspiration for death is realized through the universal mythological motifs of the way (usually any way, despite its announced destination, turns out to be leading to death), «crossing the border», and removal.

Keywords: boris ryzhy, thanatological motifs, motif of aspiration for death

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