in the poetry of Igor Severyanin
The paper considers Igor Severyanin’s approaches to the retransmission of Charles Baudelaire’s creative heritage in his lyrics. In the late 19th – early 20th century, there was a surge of
interest in the works of French symbolists and their predecessors, especially to the fate and
literary heritage of the author of “Flowers of evil.” Severyanin addressed Baudelaire’s poetry
later, at the turn of the 1910s, referring both to his original texts, and translations and critical
articles by his older contemporaries (V. Bryusov, F. Sologub, Viach. Ivanov, Ellis, Andrej
Belyj, etc.). The analysis covers the peculiarities of this second-wave “Baudelairianism,” its
differences from senior and junior symbolists’ apprenticeship, namely, the ironic game involving both the image of the “pariah poet” and some of the key themes and motifs of his poetry. In 1909, Severyanin begins mastering Baudelaire’s style by translating his sonnets, but
later these, not being entirely successful, are ironically reinterpreted and published in the collection “Poesoantract” as purposeful parodies. Another version of the reception is presented in
the poem “Sextina” (1910). Weaving a web of verbal puns, the Russian poet inscribes himself
in the Pantheon of the famous rulers of doom, while destroying Baudelaire’s tragic aura and
placing himself in the vacant place of the poet persecuted by public opinion. Thus, the
Severyanin’s reception is seen to reveal the evolution of pre-modernist and modernist cultural
codes being a part of the mass discourse, ironic distancing from them, and their loss of philosophical and ideological foundations. A conclusion is drawn that the deferential attitude to
Baudelaire’s legacy is due both to the change in the readers’ perception in general and to the
Severyanin’s aspiration for new avant-garde poetics.
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in the poetry of Igor Severyanin // Сибирский филологический журнал. 2020. № 4. Pp. 105–118. DOI: 10.17223/18137083/73/7.