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Abstract:

This article is the first essay on the individual poetics of Igor-Severyanin. The author of the article presents a detailed description of the metrical and stanza repertoire of his first book, “Thunder Boiling Cup” (1913), which differs by its variety of verse forms, unique even for the Silver Age. The frequency of particular meters is considered against the background of the summary data on the corresponding period of the history of Russian verse, obtained by M.L. Gasparov. As an unique innovation of Severyanin-versewriter the author of the article considers poet’s active use of caesurized syllabo-tonic measures, first of all iambus. Unlike the majority of his predecessors (first of all, Russian symbolists), Severyanin caesurizes not only the long measures, but also the four- and five-step iambus. He regularly resorts to the accretion of one and two syllables in the caesura, as well as in two or even three caesuras in a line, which creates a special, immediately recognizable, Severyanin’s rhythmic pattern of the verse. The monographic description of the poetic poetics of “Thunder boiling cup” is followed by an overview of the most important features of the poetry in the poet’s subsequent books, in which the author of the article notes, on the one hand, poet’s constant desire to introduce new forms of meter, rhyme and stanza, and, on the other hand, a gradual reduction of the variety exhibited in the first book. The final section examines Severyanin’s stanza characteristics in comparison with his views on verse, as recorded in his previously unpublished theoretical work, “The Theory of Versification” (1933), and the stanza innovations of Severyanin himself analyzed in it are specifically described.