“Sing in Different Rhythms”: the form, content, and pragmatics of the poetic stylizations of “Iskra”
Year: 2023
Type: article
Abstract: The corpus of poetic parodies, satires, and stylizations of Iskra, based on precedent texts of the 1860s, is considered in the sociological (Benjamin, Bourdieu, Jampolsky, Rejtblat), semi- otic (Lotman, Toporov), cultural (Bakhtin) and semantic-pragmatic (Penskaya, Kulikova, Tselikova, Shabalina) aspects. Considering the stylizations of Dmitry Minaev, Viktor Burenin, Vasily Kurochkin, and Pyotr Veinberg, the author of the paper depicts the role-game strategies and tactics aimed at carnival rethinking of everyday and political reality. The analy- sis of the poem “My pseudonym” reveals that Iskra became a trademark, a brand, with its sig- nificance substantially exceeding that of a single name. Of particular illustrative value are the cases when a pseudonym was passed from one editor to another with no independent value. It is found that the satires and stylizations of “Iskra,” as well as most other democratic publi- cations, are characterized by a conscious secondary form, the use of mnemonic matrices; the neglect of the author’s name in favor of the “party” name; metonymic transfers, the pictures of provincial disorder, particular evidence of general misfortune; metaphorical transfers, car- nival rethinking (Bakhtin) of the canonical imperial history; the creation of an alternative lit- erary project. The combination of these properties turns the field of satirical weeklies into a “collective” Don Quixote, proteanly associated with book culture and yet neglecting condi- tional but false prescriptions. The parodies considered combine baroque with postmodernist aesthetics, making these texts open for further interpretations and commentaries.
Author: Alexey E. Kozlov
Language: English
Subfield: Education
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4378696633