Le?mian Internationally: Contextual Relations

This study shows the literary legacy of Boles?aw Le?mian, the great Polish writer, as an example of inter-literary and inter-cultural transfer of aesthetics, styles, genres, motifs. The volume explores American, French, Russian, Ukraininan contexts (Poe’s, Goglol’s, Pushkin’s, Baudelaire’s, Balmont’s, Gorodetsky’s, Jesienin’s writing) of his work.

is a literature historian, comparativist and editor. She works at the Faculty of Polish Philology at the University of Warsaw, Poland. Her texts have been translated into English, Ukrainian, Russian, Bulgarian, Czech, Slovenian, Hungarian and Serbian. She has received several academic and editorial awards, both in Poland and abroad.

Contents I INTRODUCTION .................................................................................. 10 II CONTEXT AND METHOD .............................................................. 25 PROBLEMS OF CONTEXTS AND RESEARCH METHODS IN COMPARATIVE STUDIES ......................................................................... 27 The subject of comparative studies ........................................................... 27 Typology of contexts ................................................................................... 29 Contextual analysis as a method of historical comparative studies ..... 34 Contextual comparative analysis of literary texts against the issue of historicity ................................................................................................. 39 Aims of contextual comparative analysis ................................................. 41 III CONTEXT RELATIONS: LE?MIAN COUNTERPOSED WITH LITERARY PREDECESSORS AND CULTURAL TRADITIONS .......................................................................................... 45 I CROSS-LITERARY FILIATIONS ............................................................. 46 Literary Mediations (Poe – Baudelaire – Balmont – Le?mian) ............. 48 Poe via the symbolists: searching for sources of Le?mian’s inspirations ........................................................................................... 48 Baudelaire’s Poe .................................................................................... 51 Balmont’s Poe ....................................................................................... 57 Translative replicas (Poe – Baudelaire – Le?mian) ................................. 64 Poe’s tales in Boles?aw Le?mian’s translations: sources, inspirations, replicas ............................................................................ 64 Poe versus Le?mian: outlining the problem ................................ 64 Le?mian and translators: the Genesis of Fascination with Poe ........................................................................................... 65 Poe translated by Le?mian from Baudelaire ............................... 73 Aesthetic transformations (the aesthetics of death: Poe – Baudelaire – Balmont – Le?mian) ......................................................... 86 Ways of representing death ................................................................ 86 Aestheticizing death ............................................................................ 86 De-specification and/or alegorization of death ............................... 98 Macabre aesthetics ............................................................................. 106 Macabresque aesthetics ..................................................................... 115 Stylistic and structural influences (symbolist style – the bylina tradition – the early prose work of Le?mian) ........................................ 130 The Symbolist Style of Boles?aw Le?mian’s Early Work (illustrated by the case of “Ba?? o Rycerzu Pa?skim” [“Tale of the Lord’s Knight”]) ........................................................... 130 The lexical layer ............................................................................ 131 The structural layer ...................................................................... 134 Creative Inspirations or Influences? .......................................... 144 II THE INTERCULTURAL HOMOLOGIES .......................................... 146 The structural reminiscences (demonic female characters: Pushkin – Gogol – Le?mian) ............................................... 148 Not just folklore: on neglected intercultural homologies ............. 148 The function of female demons in Romantic literature, and their transformations in Le?mian’s works ...................................... 152 The anticipation of death: the horror of self-knowledge ........ 152 The victims and/or avengers: the hell of memory .................... 154 Initiation into the experience of time: the hell of nature ............. 157 The grotesque figure of the witch: from Pushkin to Gogol and Le?mian .................................................................................. 157 The Gogol context in Le?mian’s “The Witch” ........................... 160 Grotesque embarrassment .......................................................... 163 Grotesque reconstruction of the stereotype of femininity ........... 165 Grotesque disillusion and social roles ............................................ 170 Metaphorical and parodistic-apocryphal transformations (forms of kaliki perekhozhie: Yesenin – Gorodetsky – Le?mian) ..................... 175 Common cultural traditions? .......................................................... 175 The three poets’ kaliki as protagonist or collective subject .......... 178 Kaliki of Gorodetsky and Le?mian as parodist and individual characters ............................................................................................ 184 The protagonist on the road ............................................................. 199 Pilgrimaging kaliki-kaleki? .............................................................. 206 Homologies or filiations? .................................................................. 208 Genre and structural modifications, thematic references, lexical repetitions (Le?mian’s poetry and Ukrainian culture and folklore) ... 211 Ukrainian culture and folklore in Le?mian’s poetry? .................... 211 Generic and structural modifications ............................................. 213 Thematic references ........................................................................... 222 Lexical repetitions ............................................................................. 226 How many traditions and cultures? ................................................ 229 IV LITERARY FOLLOWERS OF LE?MIAN’S POETIC ............. 235 FROM ALLUSION TO LITERARY STYLIZATION: LE?MIAN’S INTERTEXT IN CONTEMPORARY POLISH POETRY ..................... 237 Le?mian: Poet with No Followers? .......................................................... 237 Parodist and pastiche stylizations ........................................................... 241 Continuations of Le?mian’s aesthetics of death ..................................... 247 Continuations of Le?mian’s erotics ......................................................... 252 IMITATORS? FOLLOWERS? SUCCESSORS? ....................................... 255 V CONCLUSION ......................................................................................... 257 BIBLIOGRAPHIC NOTE ........................................................................... 277 BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................ 281 INDEX ................................................................................................................. 331