Article

Name: East in the Creative Mind of B. Volkov

Authors: E. N. Proskurina

Institute of Philology SB RAS, Novosibirsk, Russian Federation

In the section Russian Literature of Siberia and the Far East: Plots and Destinies

Abstract: The article is devoted to the images and motives of the East in the poetry of the author of the Eastern emigration Boris Volkov (1894, Ekaterinburg – 1954, San Francisco). The work of this poet, writer, publicist is still unknown to the domestic reader, although during his lifetime he had a fairly wide publication geography: from Harbin to San Francisco. However, his works were never reprinted, and the manuscript of the novel “The Kingdom of the Golden Buddhas” is considered lost. The analysis involved Volkov’s book of poems “In the dust of foreign roads”, published in Berlin in 1934. Of its four parts, the oriental flavor is especially distinct in the first. Individual works of this part constituted the object of study of this article. The autobiographical substrate of Volkov’s poetry is revealed, the intersection of motives and imagery with the poetic world of Gumilyov is shown. The influence of the Eastern world, its philosophical teachings on the creative worldview of Volkov is investigated. In his poetic thinking, traces of Sufism, Islam, and the philosophy of Lao Tzu are palpable. Exotic images of China and Mongolia weave an intricate pattern in the first cycles of the book, integrating into the depicted biographical circumstances and expanding their semantic palette. “Alien” is trying hard to become “ours” at the level of a philosophical attitude to the world and the fate of the poet himself. He is close to the poetic attitude of the inhabitants of the East to life and death, based on ancient traditions and customs. The poems reflect the confusion of the experiences of the lyrical hero, warrior and wanderer, who has found a place in life as a result of an action-packed duel with fate.

Keywords: Boris Volkov, the book of poems “In the dust of foreign roads”, literature of the Eastern emigration, poetic autobiography, Eastern philosophy, cultural end literary transfer

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