Article

Name: Siberia in the Poetic Imagination of Russian Modernism: Living and Animated Paintings by Marina Tsvetaeva

Authors: S. Yu. Kornienko

Novosibirsk State Pedagogical University (Novosibirsk, Russian Federation)

Abstract: The article is devoted to the experience of poetic visionarism and ekphrastic description in the narrative poem “Siberia” by Marina Tsvetaeva. Tsvetaeva’s poem is a text with a double status. On the one hand, this is a completed historical poem dedicated to the early history of Siberia and the Russian Empire (16 th – 17 th centuries). On the other hand, the poem is part of a large historical epic (“Poem of the Tsar’s Family”) dedicated to the collapse of the empire and the tragic fate of its rulers. The primary sources for Tsvetaeva’s poetic visionary work are the works of Siberian historians (K. Golodnikov, P. Slovtsov, I. Fisher and others), as well as the literary texts of her contemporaries (M. Voloshin). Marina Tsvetaeva has never been to Siberia, there were no meaningful encounters with Siberians in her personal biography, however her contribution to the Siberian text of Russian modernism can be considered as significant. The article explores the sources of several “living pictures” (poetic historical sketches of the morals of pre-Petrine Russia). In particular, the paper deals with the history of the Pokrovsko-Turin Monastery in Tsvetaeva’s poetic reflection. The historical sketch is significantly deepened by the appearance of the “Siberian elder” Grigory Rasputin within the 17 th century history. This figure, while still alive, was mythologized simultaneously on an hagiographic and a demonological basis. Tsvetaeva presents this exotic figure as a cultural revenge of pre-Petrine Rus. In such a historiosophical construction, an important role is played by the Siberian origins of Rasputin. Against the background of various “living pictures” of Tsvetaeva’s poem, one “revived” picture stands out. This is an ekphrastic image of “Menshikov in Berezovo”, referring both to V. Surikov’s painting and to M. Kuzmin’s famous poem “December freezes in a pink sky...”. Tsvetaeva’s image of Menshikov clearly takes on palimpsest features. A similar phenomenon (a multilayered work as a factor in the liberation of author’s consciousness from empirical reality) was examined by Yu. V. Shatin.

Keywords: Siberian text, ekphrasis, Marina Tsvetaeva, palimpsest, Rasputin

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