Article

Name: THE POETICS OF YURY SOPOV (LYRICS AND «THE TALE OF LAST SUMMER»)

Authors: E. Yu. Kulikova

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

In the section Russian Literature of Siberia: Plots, Motives, Biographies

Abstract: The article is devoted to the work of Yury Sopov (Petr Ivanovich Sopov) – an Omsk poet who lived an extremely short life (1897–1919) and died during an explosion in the yard of A. V. Kolchak’s house. The poet’s life ended tragically and did not reveal to the reader his real talents. Sopov wrote a series of poems, a poetic «The tale of Last Summer», and his unfinished fragments of the poem about Arthur Rimbaud were also left. Historians, critics and researchers of Sopov’s work have different versions – and about its proximity to the White Guard movement, and about his possible interest to the positions of the Socialist-Revolutionaries, and about the «red» orientation of the poet’s ideals, but it is difficult to prove the first, the second, and the third, because Sopov, obviously, was not very interested in the events taking place. And even if in the poet’s texts the topical notes slip, there is no straightforwardness and distinctness of the choice: Sopov bothers, worries, hesitates. On the other hand, the main opinion of contemporaries is that the poet was apolitical, and in his work echoes of Russian modernism are heard outside of any public opinions and ideas. In the work Sopov’s literary orientation toward the works of Symbolists and Acmeists (K. Balmont, A. Blok, M. Kuzmin, and early N. Gumilev) is noted, traditional neoromantic images and motifs, which his poems and poem «The Tale of Last Summer» are filled with, are analyzed. The space of «The Tale of Last Summer» is close to M. Kuzmin’s novelistic-narrative world, when each part of the poem is a separate completed poem with its lyrical plot. The echoes of symbolists and acmeists in Sopov’s work indicate the classical orientation of his lyrics, it is not uniquely original but at the same time inscribed in the cultural paradigm of the Silver Age. Yury Sopov’s work, certainly experienced modern influences, could develop into a real talent, if the ridiculous early death did not overtake the poet. The poetic background of Russian modernism and the avant-garde, formed from the lyrics of such Siberian poets as Georgy Maslov, Yury Sopov, Vivian Itin, Vladimir Prussak, etc., allows us to see a picture of the art of the first half of the twentieth century wider and deeper. Studying the lyrics of little-known authors, the discovery of new names is one of the important tasks of the current literary criticism. The destinies of the forgotten (many of them – banned in Soviet times) poets appear now in a new tragic way and at the same time inspire further research and exploration.

Keywords: siberian poetry, romanticism, symbolism, russian modernism

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