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Abstract:

The article examines certain phenomena of French poetry of the 1880s–1930s, more or less related to the concepts of “neoclassics” and “classics”: the work of Jean Moréas, the “Ecole romane” and the three-volume “Anthology of Neoclassical Poetry” created under their influence (1932–1936), the writings of the poets united around the magazine “La Nou- velle Revue Française”, including Paul Valery, André Gide, Paul Claudel, etc. The author of the paper proposes analysis of the multidimensional self-reflection of these poets in relation to the terms “classical” and “neoclassical”, as well as other definitions, the most interesting of which was “modern / modernist classics.” The self-awareness of the poets as related to “classics” was based, first of all, on the idea of a special music of verse, which was expressed in the appeal to archaic poetic metres, as well as to the Alexandrian verse, traditional for French prosody. With all the variety of topics, the “classical” and “neoclassical” trends were accompanied by an increased reflection of the poets on the “classic” as a national feature of French culture, which was relevant in a difficult for France historical period, presented in the article. The concept of “neoclassics” received various interpretations, but among them the meaning of “appeal to tradition” dominated. This retrospective meaning is opposed by the trends, characteristic of the so-called “modern classics”, i. e. P. Valéry, A. Gide, J. Schlum- berger, P. Claudel et al., addressed to the future and to the coming transformations of verse and poetry in general.

Кeywords: French poetry of the 1880s–1930s, Jean Moréas, Paul Valéry, Jean Schlumberger, “La Nouvelle Revue Française”, Symbolism, classics, neoclassics.