Krotova, D. (2023). V. Shalamov’s poetry: Constants of ideology and imagery, and artistic genealogy (a modernist aspect)

Abstract

The review discusses the first monograph to be published in Russia that studies Shalamov’s poetry in the context of the Russian Silver Age and the subsequent artistic traditions. Krotova’s book addresses the gaps in the historical and literary assessment of what is an outstanding example of 20th-c. Russian poetry. The study offers an in-depth analysis of the plot structure of Shalamov’s poetry, pinpoints the aesthetic and ethical-philosophical paradigm of his oeuvre, and examines the principal leitmotifs characterizing Shalamov’s worldview. The author traces the artistic origins of Shalamov’s poetry and explores its numerous connections with works by A. Akhmatova, O. Mandelstam, N. Gumilyov, A. Blok, and other modernist poets. Shalamov’s poetic legacy is viewed through its close correspondence to his prose and biography. A feat of scholarship, the book employs new methods of studying Shalamov’s works as well as the artistic systems of 20th-c. Russian poetry and its relations to earlier traditions