‘I see the divine will working in culture’. A 1994 questionnaire filled out by Boris Chichibabin

Abstract

A publication of the responses written by B. Chichibabin to questions listed in a questionnaire offered to him at the Lermontov festival in Penza and Tarkhany in July 1994. The signature to the questionnaire is kept in the poet’s personal archive in Kharkiv. Although the list of questions is lost, some of them can be easily reconstructed from the context. The responses are not concerned with Lermontov as such, but rather represent a traditional discourse about life, history and culture by a member of the intelligentsia. The poet dwells on the loss of the prophetic vocation by modern writers, and ponders the changing fortunes of Russian culture. Chichibabin’s answers present his opinion about a wide range of problems: from philosophical and religious to cultural, literary, political and social, as well as personal issues. Chichibabin shares his thoughts about the Russian intelligentsia and his contemporaries: Z. Mirkina, A. Sakharov, and A. Solzhenitsyn. The publication is supplied with comments that compare and contrast Chichibabin’s responses in the questionnaire with other transcripts of his.