Choral antic lyrics was linked with the rituals of sacrifice to Dionysus,
Apollo and other deities. In the early twentieth century in Russian modernist
lyric poetry the crisis of excessive individualism leads to the self-negation
of the «ego» of the poet and of the lyrical hero in favor of the group identity
performed by a symbolic way of self-immolation and to the increasing significance
of the choral and role-playing lyric genres. The set of metaphors of selfimmolation
realized mainly in the lyrical works and modernist metatexts originated
in different sources: the ethics of Russian intelligentia, the tradition of the
poetical rhetoric of passion and creativity as fire's sacrifice, the suggestion of
mythopoetic image of the Phoenix, under the influence of modern and romantic German thinkers, musicians, poets and especially under the impression of «baptism
of fire» by Russian Old Believers, their mass suicides motivated by the
hope for salvation from the Antichrist and his servants, also reinterpreted by
Russian modernists as a sacrifice. Since the early 1900s, this metaphor received
neo-mythological justification in the essays and philosophical lyrics of
V. Ivanov as the part of the neo-Dionysian rite which was fused from the aesthetics
of Nietzsche and from the conception of Russian thinker V. Solovyov of
the so-called «theurgical» imperative mission of poet as priest. The ritual aspects
of theurgy must be implemented in an updated antique «mystery», rite for
the elite. Russian symbolists’ attempts to create a mystery on the stage and in
their communities was unsuccessful. Ivanov’s poetry constructed a lyrical «dyad
» of Dionysus poet substituting an impossible mystery as identity of the roles
of priest and sacrificial victim, author and lyric character. It was especially important
for his love lyrics and rite lyrics recreating various types of ritual. The
antic choral lyrics of the dithyrambses plays a special role in Ivanov's lyrics.
The symbolism of the metaphorical burning of the lyrical character in the poetry
of A. Blok was a symbolical sacrifice of «ego» to the Eternal Feminine or a result
of a self-destructive passion. Themes and metaphors of total or partial selfimmolation
are significant in 1910s in the lyrics of modernist and vanguard
poets such as A. Belyi, N. Burliuk, R. Ivnev, P. Karpov, N. Klyuev, V. Khlebnikov,
To the end of 1910's the metaphor of the poet's life as self-immolation
becomes a «locus communis» of the symbolist aesthetics and critics. During the
Russian revolution and civil war the significance of this sacrifice pattern was
increased.
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