pushkins lyric intelligence sep 2008

[...]... understand this conceptual vocabulary by reading the poems not as ideological statements but as lyric opportunities for the indirect dramatization of ideas, for creating a lyric speaker who thinks aloud, and, through an allusive set of terms, alerts the reader to the larger conceptual framework behind the lyric expression In so doing, it is possible to arrive at a far richer understanding of Pushkin’s... literary system that to some degree rewarded anonymity None of these books concentrates on the lyric poetry, but all accord significant attention to a number of key poems and provide valuable interpretations and pointers for a more comprehensive study of his lyric The moment is timely therefore for attending to Pushkin’s lyric poems in their own right rather than following the historical practice of using them... or ideal realm, and to dispense with the consolation of philosophical poetry 12 Introduction Pushkin’s Lyric Intelligence examines a key set of interlocking topics by approaching Pushkin not as the great icon of a national literary history In this book, he is seen as a writer who worked out his lyric and intellectual identity over the course of a career during which he negotiated complex cross-currents... questions of his age Like the great poets from whom he learned, including André Chénier, Byron, and Wordsworth, Pushkin was able to create argumentative poems that are dramatically and lyrically viable The Pushkinian lyric in Russian is memorable for its intimate tone and its employment of a spontaneous speaker to express a process of thought as it unfolds in the course of a poem Many poems present... craft In fact, over the course of his career classicism as a doctrine about art developed in new directions from the rule-based pedagogical theory of his youth The first three chapters of Pushkin’s Lyric Intelligence will look at Pushkin’s changing classicisms in the light of contemporary theories of art and mind As a theory of expressivity and invention, classicism in the 1830s took a new view of poetic... invention and imagination mark his lyric thinking about nature Throughout his works, early and late, Pushkin is most comfortable holding up a mirror to nature But two of his greatest poems, ‘Autumn’ (‘Osen’ ’, 1833) and ‘I visit once again ’, can be seen to represent rare departures where he holds up the lamp of imagination and subjectivity Close reading of these lyrics reveals how differently the... Revue d’histoire littéraire de la France Slavic and East European Journal Tipografiia Imperatorskogo Vremennik Pushkinskoi komissii Zhurnal ministerstva narodnogo prosveshcheniia This page intentionally left blank Introduction The subject of this book is Alexander Pushkin’s thinking through lyric It seeks to show how Pushkin wrote poems about fundamental aspects of his creative and intellectual identity... M S Borovkova-Maikova (ed.), Arzamas i arzamasskie protokoly (Leningrad: Izd-vo Pisatelei, 1933), 82–4 12 See V E Vatsuro, ‘V predverii pushkinskoi epokhi’, in Arzamas Sbornik, i 5–27 13 See Fedor Fedorov, ‘Zhukovskii v poeticheskom soznanii Pushkina: god 1818’, in Pushkinskie chteniia v Tartu (Tartu: Tartuskii universitet, 2000), 25–32 14 See T J Binyon, Pushkin: A Biography (London: HarperCollins,... Bakhtinian readings of Evgenii Onegin and his dramas have significantly increased our understanding of Pushkin’s dialogism and use of inner voicing This innovative method has been less applicable to the lyric Iurii Lotman’s contributions remain highly significant in the areas of textual criticism, biography, and cultural history Arguably, his greatest impact has been in the application of semiotic analysis,... of pleasure, confessions in a relationship, flashes of insight, and their intention seems to require no clarification of meaning unless it is of a biographical kind With important exceptions, few of his lyrics pay obvious attention to the poetic act itself Together with clarity of diction, a conversational quality in tone, and unobtrusive form, there is a lack of self-conscious reflection that lends simplicity .