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Abstract:

The article is devoted to the correspondence between A.A. Blok and L.D. Mendeleeva- Blok. The subject of analysis is the event-driven verbalized actions that we call “erotic gestures.” According to our hypothesis, they determine the nature of love correspondence and act as patterns that design the life relationships of first lovers and then spouses. The paper considers the dynamics of changes in the speech behavior of the characters of the “novel in letters” at two stages — before and after the wedding. Based on the material of the first stage, the paper analyzes the problem of finding a common language that unites the “sacred” mode of the groom’s letters and the “profane” mode of the bride’s letters. Particular attention is paid to the semantics of the signature “Yours,” initiated by Mendeleeva and picked up by Blok at the decisive moment of a love relationship. The article concludes that this substantive pronoun with the meaning of possessiveness, being an indication of a gesture of passionate surrender to a loved one, is archetypal for “erotodeixis”; the use of such a signature can be traced also in other epoch-making correspondences (between Vyach. Ivanov and L.D. Zinovieva-Annibal, V. Bryusov and N. Petrovskaya, M. Voloshin and M. Sabashnikova). An analysis of the changes in the epistolary discourse of Blok and Mendeleeva-Blok at the second stage of correspondence demonstrates that the letters before and after the wedding differ in content and terms of “erotodeixis.” The relationship of sweet “comradery” established after the wedding and the disappointment in the dream of a happy marriage that has gone into the subtext are most clearly manifested in the signatures of the letters. The previously accepted form “Yours” disappears, but the formula “The Lord be with you!” remains to the end. The passionate energy of eros, which determines the beginning of the “novel in letters,” is transformed into the all-forgiving gestures of philia. Thus, the corpus of correspondence considered in the proposed perspective reflects the complex, contradictory relationship between Block and his wife, which fits into life-creating theories and practices of Russian modernism.

Keywords: A. Block, L. Mendeleeva-Block, correspondence, epistolary discourse, “erotic gestures,” “erotodeixis,” life creation, Russian modernism.