Brodsky, Kushner, Rein, Chukhontsev. Author’s myths of 1970s poets through the prism of neotraditionalism

Abstract

The article sets out to summarize the values and principles at the core of the creative world of four major poets active since the 1970s: J. Brodsky, A. Kushner, Y. Rein, and O. Chukhontsev. To that end, the study examines the so-called ‘author’s myths’ of these poets, which epitomize their artistic worlds. In his analysis of poetry, V. Kozlov uses a genre approach. Therefore, a key revolution of Brodsky’s poetics and worldview is linked to his “breaking away from the elegy and into the ode,” Kushner’s lyric poetry appears to contain an idyllic element, while Rein and Chukhontsev develop the elegiac tradition — the difference, according to Kozlov, is that Rein specializes in ‘urban’ elegy, and Chukhontsev — in its ‘historical’ counterpart. The scholar especially considers the category of time and its utmost relevance for all four poets. Kozlov suggests that the common characteristics of the four selected poets reveal them as neotraditionalists and, at the same time, help clarify the neotraditionalist poetics that typified Russian poetry in the 20th century.