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Abstract:

V.F. Khodasevich’s “Dachnoe” (“Vacationing”, 1923) can rightly be called an anti-philistine poem: the vulgarity of the Russian emigrants’ country life, its features and attributes are reflected in the most sarcastic form. It has already been said about the connection of this text with “The Stranger” by A.A. Blok and “Everything was restless and harmoniously, as always...” by F.K. Sologub. For the first time an unpublished comic poem “At the Dacha” from a letter to B.A. Sadovsky is considered as the direct author’s pretext of “Dachnoe”. There are a lot of similarities in motifs and images between the two works. In particular, the dacha is shown as a space for simulating the course of life and the locus of frozen time. The stay of the inhabitants is not connected with any creative activity and is aimless in itself. Such implications are expressed through the poetics of repetitions and pleonasms. The heroes are also comparable: “the lascivious brides and grooms” from “Dachnoe” resemble the “student with the Bunin’s book” and the “three girls” from “At the Dacha”. It is assumed that the connection between the two texts is determined by the transition from the subject’s ironic attitude to the overt misanthropy, and this, in its turn, speaks of the feelings gradation as well as V.F. Khodasevich’s “tender hatred” multiplication.