Arseny Tarkosvky’s small cycles: The artistic history and principles of text preparation

Abstract

The article analyses the publication problem of A. Tarkovsky’s so-called ‘small cycles’ — poems sharing a common storyline and theme, which were not, however, published as poetic cycles in Tarkovsky’s lifetime, even though he had planned them as such and leſt respective handwritten collections. According to the critic, Tarkovsky created these poetic compilations irrespective of the actual possibility (or impossibility) of their publication. His entire experience of ‘living in literature,’ long years of failed attempts to publish abook of original poetry, the type of forbidding censorship policy prevailing at the time — everything indicated that one should better give up attempts toget published in the heavily supervised literary sector. Bak concludes that a publisher of Tarkovsky’s works should focus on reconstruction of the corpus that was not meant for censors, as the two compilations of his lyric oeuvre— the one prepared for publication and the other preserved in manuscripts only— exist in a sort of ‘alternative complementation,’ as if in parallel to each other, and should both be considered for preparation of scholarly publications.