Article

Name: “What use is there in Mozart living on?..”: Mozart and Salieri in modernist aesthetic practices

Authors: S. Yu. Kornienko

Novosibirsk State Pedagogical University, Novosibirsk, Russian Federation

In the section Study of literature

Abstract: The paper is devoted to the reception of the image of Mozart and Salieri in literary criticism and writing practices of the early 20th century. The moment of the cultural crisis (the end of symbolism domination as the leading modernist paradigm) intensified the struggle for “one’s own Pushkin,” Pushkin’s aesthetic legacy and Pushkin’s unique place in culture. At the time of reconfiguration of aesthetic fields (at the very beginning of the 1910s), the discussion around Pushkin’s name is important in terms of defining the pantheon of modernist classics. For example, in the fierce public dispute between V. Bryusov and K. Balmont, which broke out in 1913, there are clear references to Pushkin’s “little tragedy” − “Mozart and Salieri” − read by literary rivals, equally claiming to be “classic of symbolism,” in the auto-design key. The gaps between general knowledge, literary-theoretical reflection, and poetic creativity are revealed. The proteic (polyphonic) nature of the Pushkin text allows representatives of competing literary groups to read often opposite meanings into it. The article defines the source of V. Brusov’s Salierian reputation, its auto-interpretation character. Such a source is Bryusov’s journalism, in particular, the article “The right to work” − with an apology for his approach to creativity, which goes back to the image of the Pushkin master. The younger poets, constructing the posthumous Bryusov myth on the Salierian platform, were in many ways sensitive to his promise. Due to their aesthetic and axiological complexity, the articles by V. Khodasevich and M. Tsvetaeva dedicated to Bryusov (“Bryusov” (1924) and “Hero of labor” (1925)) stand out against the background of the Bryusov’s mortemology of the Russian diaspora. Vladislav Khodasevich will see the “Salierian” beginning in Bryusov’s “algebraism,” sober calculation and hard work. Marina Tsvetaeva examines the image of Bryusov in a similar way. Tsvetaeva refuses Pushkin’s inheritance not only to Bryusov but also to his opponent Balmont. Tsvetaeva considers the basis of the inheritance to be the ability “to sing Russian songs” and “the sameness of our love that brings us together.” According to Tsvetaeva, it is these qualities that are possessed by the poet of the next symbolist generation, Alexander Blok.

Keywords: literary field, “Mozart and Salieri,” “Pushkin’s myth,” Marina Tsvetaeva, Vladislav Khodasevich, Valery Bryusov, Boris Eikhenbaum

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