Reception of Classical Text in the Poetry of Alexander Kushner, Ekaterina Polyanskaya. Part 2

The study of the reception of classical texts in the works of contemporary poets allows us to identify intertextual relationships at various levels of intertextuality (quotations, allusions, and reminiscences that form a “text within a text”), paratextuality (titles and epigraphs), metatextuality, hypertextuality, and the “memory of the genre” (M.M. Bakhtin), as well as the poetic paradigm (images, plots, and motifs). In literary studies, the specifics of the reception of classical texts in contemporary Russian poetry have not been sufficiently explored. Research has identified the reception of antiquity in Russian classical and modern poetry (S.A. Kibalnik, G.S. Knabe, A.V. Mikhailov, L.I. Savelyeva, A.V. Uspenskaya, and P.A. Tsypileva), and the intertextual connections between classical Russian poetry and contemporary literature have been studied most thoroughly in the works of Alexander Pushkin (M.V. Zagidullina, L.A. Karpushkina, and R.G. Kruglov). In E.V. Polyanskaya’s poetry, the connection to classical texts is established through epigraphs that cite the pretext. In the poems “I Ask You: Never...” and “I Would Like...”, the epigraphs are lines from M.I. Tsvetaeva's poems about selfless love, which further emphasizes the difference between the poet's lyrical heroine of the early 20th century and the worldview of her lyrical heroine of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The poet engages in a dialogue with “living classics” (G. Márquez, I.A. Brodsky). Themes of the meaning of life, the transience of existence, and reflections on time and the destinies of contemporaries acquire a philosophical generalization through reminiscences, quotations, and epigraphs from Russian and world classics. E. Polyanskaya’s poetry is characterized by a dialogic quality, which manifests itself both in stanzaic and rhythmic forms. Thus, in the cycle “Frivolous Hexameters”, both the hexameter meter and the use of classical names, references to ancient myths and literary texts suggest a dialogue with the classics.