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Abstract:

The article examines the Odessa period of the life and work of the symbolist poet, literary theorist, and translator Vladimir Piast (1886–1940). He stayed in Odessa, in “southern exile,” from 1933 and virtually until the end of his life. The focus is on the complex of Piast’s family archival heritage of this period associated with his family: his wife Klavdia Morozova-Stoyanova (1890–1973), and his adopted daughters, Tatyana Stoyanova-Voogdt (1922–2010) and Natalia Stoyanova-Poltoratskaya (1925–2000). They preserved and introduced many unknown works and documents of Piast’s life into scientific circulation. The article is the first to publish ego-documents from the personal archive of the Poltoratsky family, now transferred to the Odessa Literary Museum. In particular, we present Piast’s letter to Stalin (1936), which combines an appeal to the leader with an expression of devotion to the highest ideals of the future classless society as a “paradise” for artists and a personal life-poetic credo with the prognosis of “aesthetic futurology.” Behind the exclusivity of the document, one can see the typological features of the fundamental opposition “artist and power,” characteristic of the entire era.

Keywords: Vladimir Piast, Klavdiya Morozova-Stoyanova, Tatyana Stoyanova-Voogdt, Natalya Stoyanova-Poltoratskaya, Odessa period, “aesthetic futurology.”