Towards the issue of tradition and literary memory in neo-tradionalism

This article defines the concept of “tradition” typical of neo-traditionalism by comparing it with the relations of avant-garde and socialist realism to cultural traditions. Then T.S. Eliot’s idea of the linkage between tradition and an individual talent is carefully analyzed. To characterize a poet’s way of thinking, H. Bloom’s consideration of the “anxiety of influence” is taken into consideration. The neo-traditionalist orientation towards the creative legacy of traditions can be clarified in Bakhtin’s theory of “genre memory”, according to which the genre preserves the image of the human presence in the world alongside its axiological aspects. Further, the neo-traditionalist pursuit of the actualization of “eternity” is explained. Ideas about the temporality of cultural memory reveal an understanding of time as a repository of different temporal dimensions. This can be interpreted in the sense of liberation from the linear sequence of time and is connected to “eternity”, according to Augustinian philosophy, this is the absolute base for all temporalities. At the same time, the main role is assigned to the so-called “poetic labouf’ as an activity of one’s soul, it being to bring the poet under the conditions of earthly life to the eternal center. This temporal orientation of neotraditionalism is revealed in the critical analysis of Pasternak’s poem “Night” (1956), to understand the meaning of which VS. Solovyov’s interpretation of the two meanings of eternity (the absolute state of being, and the constant resistance to the destructive power of time) is applied. In this poem, with the basis of the ode strategy, the “poetic labour” is conceptualized as an active appeal of the soul (memory, contemplation itself, expectation) to different temporal dimensions, which opens eternity to a finite being.