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Abstract:

The article analyzes space, time, figurative system and rhythmic organization of the poem “Mikhailo Lomonosov” by N.I. Gagen-Thorn. It was written in Stalin’s camps (in the late 1940s — early 1950s). The life, academic and literary experience of Gagen-Thorn largely determined the formal and figurative structure of the poem. The circumstances of writing of this work make it a fact of camp, or secret (hidden), literature. The author’s professional interests include culture, folklore and ethnography of the peoples of the Volga region and the Russian North. The poem traces the history of Lomonosov’s life from the time he left the Arkhangelsk village to the most important scientific experiments carried out already within the walls of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. The way the author experienced the “running,” open space of the Russian North while being in captivity, is associated with a feeling of spiritual freedom and victory over external circumstances. Individual songs are devoted to the description of Moscow and St. Petersburg. Lomonosov’s circle and the history of Russia are shown through the eyes of a poet who, being an ethnographer, studied the folklore of Pomorie and the everyday realities of this region professionally. The scale of the scientist’s personality is figuratively embodied through the limitless flight of his thought. To enlarge and strengthen the power of his hero, the author uses the technique of mythologizing the image. His work contains folklore and biblical motifs, one can trace the influence of folk songs and classical poetry of the 18th–19th centuries. Gagen-Thorn’s writing skills were formed under the influence of the symbolist poet Andrei Bely, therefore the new rhythmic and strophic forms she found in the poem referring to the experiments of Russian modernists in the field of non-syllabic-tonic metrics.