Meta-genre formations in the poetry of Valery Bryusov

Kartasheva Anna Olegovna ORCID: 0009-0001-6086-1780 Postgraduate, Moscow University named after A.S. Griboedov 21 Entuziastov str., Moscow, 111024, Russia Anna.kartasheva@internet.ru Other publications by this author

The specifics of the development of lyrical genres in the work of the founder of Russian symbolism continues to be a rather poorly studied topos in literary studies. At the same time, mastering the genre system or individual genres, updating the functional foundations of a particular genre, changing its formal components, building a dialogue with other works created in the corresponding genre, etc. is a constant practice of Bryusov, a poet, Bryusov, a verse theorist, Bryusov, a leader of the poetic trend. In this regard, the question of the continuity and transformation of the lyrical genres of world literature in his work, as well as the specific trend of his poetry – the formation of supercycles-catalogs, in which the genre of the poem "monument" is especially highlighted, becomes relevant.

From intra-collection cycles to supercycles-catalogs

Bryusov's work is characterized by the desire to create cycles, including in the aspect of the genre. The beginning of this was already laid in the first collection "Juvenilia". Even earlier, in the collections of "Russian Symbolists". His future collection-catalogues "All melodies", "Dreams of mankind" and "Experiments on metrics and rhythm, on euphony and consonances, on stanza and forms" also have a prototype in the form of a desire in the mid-1890s to write a "History of Russian lyrics" ^{[22, 87]}.

In the future, this trend only intensified. In each of the subsequent collections, the poet designated one or two sections according to the genre principle. In the collection "Urbi et Orbi", one or another genre is mentioned in the titles of all sections (except the first). Bryusov himself emphasized that the collection should be an integral book, which "Like a novel, like a treatise <...> reveals its content consistently" ^{[5, 605]}. In the preface to this collection, he also wrote about the connection of form, despite its artificiality, with the content and that some genre designations were taken by him "not in the usual meaning of these words" ^{[5, 605]}. For example, above we talked about the "Songs" section in this collection, where the poet masters various genres of urban folklore songs and often radically transforms them.

In the collection "Chefs d'oeuvre" Bryusov characterizes a group of poems as a separate whole work in a conventional genre. In a letter to P. P. Pertsov, he wrote as follows: "There is a lot of prose in M?ditations, but these are "ideological" poems, a small poem of the soul..." ^{[5, 579]}. The poems included in this mini-cycle paint a post-apocalyptic picture. People found themselves in a ruined world ("We, like animals, roosted in a cave" ^{[5, 88]}), almost died ("Our body looks like carrion..." ^{[5, 88]}), but they are looking for a dialogue with the world of the transcendent:

Will the voice of salvation be heard:

From where – from the abyss or from above?

^{[5, 89]}

The "ideological" poems "M?ditations" proceed from the concept of Manichaeism about the existence of two principles in the universe – good and evil. Spatially, they relate as top and bottom: good, or light, is the top, evil, or darkness, is the abyss ^{[25, 125]}. Hence the uncertainty of the question from the point of view of the addressee in the poem "Pale shadows curl...": there is no obvious and distinct god in the world, and people are "travelers of the starless night" ^{[5, 89]}.

In the sonnet "Rock to rock; the silence of the desert..." the Manichaean concept is presented visibly and clearly: "demons in arms", "two brothers and friends" depicted on the rock are "two images of the shrine" ^{[5, 89]}. In this sonnet, "there is no contrast of thesis and antithesis in the composition, but there is an annoying contrast of images in the theme: from the construction technique, the contrast seems to become the subject of the image" ^{[10, 347]}.

Bryusov includes in the sonnet the genre of the inscription, characterized by "a special kind of spatio-temporal relations (the situation of continuous dedication / reading of the inscription, schematically defined as "the inscribed object is the viewer; now, here") and an indispensable condition for the presence of a substance (object or action) perceived by the author as inscribed" ^{[5, 89]}. The inscription in "Rock to rock; the silence of the desert ...", made in cuneiform ("The meaning of wedge-shaped signs is unclear" ^{[5, 89]}), which evokes an association with Persia, acts as an explanation for the image of two "demons". The world is empty and depopulated ("the silence of the desert"), and there is no one not only to clarify the question, but also to read and realize the answer. The duality of the world nevertheless persists: a nightingale flies to the cliff, connected with the world of light, harmony, and a tiger approaches, connected with the world of darkness, violence.

In Manichaeism, light manifests itself in the active existence of the Father of Greatness, who possesses five attributes associated with the phenomenon of consciousness: Mind, Thought, Understanding, Thinking, Reflection ^[28]. In this regard, the name of the mini–cycle "Meditations" can be understood not only as a reception of the speech genre "reflection" or as a variant of philosophical lyrics - meditative lyrics, but also as a reference to the attributes of the Father of Greatness in Manichaeism and the way to approach him.

Note that through the prism of occult symbolism, one can also read the famous Bryusov poem "The Bricklayer" (1901). In addition to the fact that it is written in the genre of work, as well as close to the genre of prison songs, it can be seen references to Masonic symbols (white apron, shovel). The authors of the article "Urban Text in the works of Valery Bryusov" believe that it is "ironically played by the author: a "free mason" builds a prison for workers and poor people like himself" ^{[3, 22]}. However, another, serious reading is also possible: the "free mason" builds a mysterious temple of culture (symbolically seen the world) or a Masonic dark chamber in which they reflect on the impermanence of existence and undergo initiation (in the poem "The Mason from 1903, an image of an "earthly prison" appears ^{[5, 415]}). In this case, the "Mason" approaches the Masonic genre of philosophical dialogue ^{[26, 98]}. It can be assumed that Bryusov combines several different cultural layers in this work: a reference to P. L. Lavrov's political poetic dialogue "The New Prison", the memory of genres of urban folklore, Masonic symbolism of philosophical dialogue. The same is true in the message to "V. I. Pribytkov", where the speech genre "Table speech" ^{[5, 355]} (included in the subtitle) contains esoteric and symbolic content: the poem speaks about the illusory reality. (Pribytkov is the editor of the occult magazine Rebus.)

"Dreams of Mankind" is a large Bryusov project of "lyrical reflections of life of all times and all countries" ^{[6, 460]}. He sought to create catalog cycles of world poetry, reflecting a specific culture as representatively as possible. In the preface to the book, the poet stipulated that for various reasons we are talking not only about translations, but also about imitations, about creating works in the spirit of the author or the era. "At the same time, he denied that his "samples" in the "Dreams of Mankind" were pure imitations, he preferred to call his works by another term – "imagination" ^{[14, 287]}.

The cycles "Japanese Tanks and hai-kai" and "Japanese Tanks and uta" have one of their sources in the book by V. G. Aston "History of Japanese Literature", which contains translations into English of Japanese haiku, tanok and uta (in turn translated into Russian by V. M. Mendrin). Haiku "O drowsy pond!.." Matsuo Basho, according to L. P. Davydova, Bryusov translated, "relying precisely on the translation of V. M. Mendrin" ^{[13, 45-46]}. At the same time, "Bryusov in translation <...> managed to convey surprisingly accurately the principle of the presence of the invisible, but present, the principle of the mystery of the world, which can be pointed out, but cannot be expressed in the usual way" ^{[13, 52]}.

It should also be noted that Bryusov's haika "Who called Love?.." is a transformed "Tank from Kokinshu" by an unnamed author translated by Mendrin:

Who could it be,

What did you give to love

Is that a name?

The simple word is Death,

He could also apply.

^{[2, 41]}

Who called Love?

He could have given her a name.

And another thing: Death.

^{[6, 335]}

Bryusov made a poetic reduction, converting one solid form into another and thereby compacting the meaning. In addition, his haika began to resemble an aphorism. Interestingly, in all the poems of the cycle "Japanese Tanks and Hi-kai", the poet sought to introduce elements of Western European euphonism into Japanese genres: various kinds of rhymes, alliteration, assonances. In "Who named love?.." each line ends with a word ending in "b". In the third line, anjambeman is used, which generates a double meaning: in addition to "death", love could receive, for example, a personal name – a specific beloved.

We have not found direct sources of other texts for the Bruce cycles, although some of their motives obviously also go back to the texts available in the History of Japanese Literature. For example, Bryusov's "Dew falls, but the sun rises..." and the poem by an unnamed Japanese "In the suffering of love ..." are similar:

In the suffering of love

I stayed until nightfall,

But tomorrow is a long day of spring,

With his fog floating up,

How will I spend it from now on?

^{[2, 31]}

The dew is falling, but the sun is rising,

And all the reflections melt in the dew,

But days and nights and years pass, –

There are the same torments of love in my soul.

^{[6, 388]}

It should be noted, however, that Bryusov's tanka, haiku and uta, in addition to transformation at the level of form, have a different philosophical interpretation: "a feeling of bitterness from the inexorable passage of time, a desire to assert one's self" ^[24].

According to L. P. Davydova, "Bryusov <...> retains the syllabic principle of stanza organization <...> and resorts to rhyme, which is completely alien and inorganic for Japanese poetry. The Japanese miniature, when formally following the rules, looked artificial, and its substantial side was sacrificed to the formal one" ^{[12, 72]}. However, it seems to us that with this approach, Bryusov's Japanese miniature simply ceased to be a Japanese miniature. The poet leaves the number of syllables and the division into lines, the parallel of human and natural states, but due to the myth and conceptual logical completion of the tank, losing the opening of the plot, as well as space and time into eternity, becomes an ordinary lyrical poem.

In a commentary on the tank cycle in The Experiments, Bryusov wrote the following: "For a European, a tank seems to be an introductory verse to an unwritten poem" ^{[7, 544]}. He also cited G. A. Rachinsky's idea that "thirty–one syllables of the tank coincide with thirty-one syllables of the ancient elegiac distichus; the first three verses (five, seven and five syllables) form seventeen syllables of the full hexameter, the last two verses (seven and seven syllables) - fourteen syllables of the pentameter" ^{[7, 544]}. In other words, Bryusov looked at traditional lyrical Japanese genres through the optics of ideas about ancient versification, and because his tanks, "hi-kai" and uta, rather resemble aphorisms and epigrams.

At the same time, the poet creates cycles with a single plot – death from love or love like death. "Japanese tanks and hi-kai" have a circular motif structure: they begin with the image of the month, which is "paler than the dead", and end with the word "Death" ^{[6, 335]}. "Japanese tanks and uta" have a linear structure: in each of the poems the theme of unrequited love is manifested, in the latter loneliness, restlessness, the desperate situation of the hero is expressed in the image of a cherry blossom flying to the river and an ellipsis.

Historical and mythological medallions: variants of the genre of the poem "monument"

In Bryusov's work, one can see different approaches to cyclization. For example, not only similar images and ideas can pass from collection to collection, but also similar genres, within which the image or idea undergoes a certain development. One of such cross-cutting genres that make up the cycle is the genre of the poem "monument" ^[17].

The poem "Assargadon" from "Tertia Vigilia" has the author's genre subtitle – "Assyrian inscription". If in "Rock to Rock; the silence of the desert..." (which, like "Assargadon", can be read as a poem-"monument") from the collection "Chefs d'oeuvre" a possible "Persian" inscription is included in sonnet form, then in this case the "Assyrian inscription" entirely takes this form A. E. Dudko draws attention to the fact that "the idea of using the sonnet form to create a thematic cycle "Favorites of the Ages" was learned by V. Ya. Bryusov, of course, from P. B. Shelley ^{[15, 43]} and from the poems-ecphrases of D. S. Merezhkovsky, which "became a phenomenon of symbolist neo-mythologism" ^{[11, 18]}. At the same time, an important feature of V.Y. Bryusov's sonnets is that they mainly represent the so-called personalist type, "dedicated to the description of a great historical figure of the past – a tsar, emperor, military commander, scientist, artist, etc." ^{[11, 18]}.

M. L. Gasparov, characterizing the formal side of "Assargadon", draws attention to the fact that this sonnet is a "classic type of "list"": "all statements in quatrains and all statements in terzets repeat each other with minor variations, and this is not hidden, but emphasized: each of the initial lines <...> it is repeated in the text once more, contrary to the most elementary rules of sonnet construction. <...> An attempt at such an unconventional sonnet-list with repetitions (modeled after vilaneli) was first made by Bryusov back in 1895 in the unpublished poem "The Ghost of the moon is incomprehensible to the eyes..." ^{[10, 347]}.

Assargadon has a circular structure: the beginning and the end of the text are the same line with different punctuation, which essentially does not change anything. Just as nothing essentially changes from stanza to stanza: the hero of the sonnet is "fixated" on one thought – about his greatness; Bryusov lists the deeds and characteristics of Assargadon, but they all boil down to violence as a manifestation of power. The circular structure is also what distinguishes the temporal organization of the text. At first glance, it is linear: there is a starting point – the time of Assargadon's life, VII century BC, there is an end point – the time of writing the poem, 1897. But Assargadon, in his own words, is "the leader of earthly kings", the king of kings, he stands alone, "intoxicated with greatness", in eternity, he is above all who came before him, and above all who will be.

The sonnet "Assargadon" is a historical poem, but Bryusov himself wrote in a letter to M. Gorky about the sonnets of J. M. de Heredia and his work as follows: "Everything is depicted from the outside, but I have my "I" everywhere – in the Scythians, in Assargadon, and in Dante." ^{[18, 640]}.

The same is said in the first and last line referring to the "Assargadon" of Bryusov's parody "On Myself", which, although embedded in a number of other parodies and epigrams, seems to be devoid of humor and self–irony:

I am a pharaoh. I've lived in the world.

I occupied the throne in Egypt.

Twenty-five centuries ago,

How I died. I am a pharaoh.

^{[8, 560]}

The juxtaposition of the motif of life and death in it – in the past and present, respectively, and the statement of the latter – disputes the idea of both "Assargadon" and "Ramesses" and "The Egyptian slave": the "darling of the ages" died 25 centuries ago, no matter what they say about his stay in eternity. The poem can also be read as a statement of its author's status in the world, at least literary: "I am the Pharaoh," that is, the leader, the master. Another interpretation of this parody may be to understand it as an epitaph inscription written from the present tense by those who felt the connection between their births.

The assertion – through at first glance self–disclosure – of his leadership status is also present in the epigram "V. Bryusov":

To himself in a soldier's satchel

The royal skiptre was thrown up – he

In the world of rhymes, he sat on the throne –

Is the King an Impostor?

^{[8, 561]}

Separately, you can pay attention to the parody "In the style of F. V. V. Filicheva in the article "On V. Ya. Bryusov's parody of F. K. Sologub" notes that the parody turned out to be double ^{[27, 279]}: Bryusov in 1923 not only parodies Sologub's style (and also partly Gumilyov's), but through him his own decadent style of the past. A parody "In the style of F. Sologuba" in its comic techniques, the nature of the images, and poetic syntax clearly resembles the parodies of V. S. Solovyov that appeared in connection with the publication of the collections "Russian Symbolists" (see, for example, "Panic lights are burning in heaven ..."). Thus, Bryusov's parody turns out to be simultaneously a hidden auto-parody.

At the same time, N. G. Matveevskaya believes that in such poems by Bryusov "there can be no talk of leveling the positions of the author and the hero or a "masquerade", but in many cases we can observe the transubstantiation of a single worldview in pure and "role-playing" lyrics" ^{[19, 256]}. Bryusov seems to coincide with the hero of his "historical" poem, or rather, partly coincides, partly subordinates him to his vision of the world. Thus, in Bryusov's Assargadon, compared with the inscription in Nar el-Kelba, in Syria, there is one significant motif missing: Assargadon, according to the inscription, is an imperious king, but he is the one who "4. (who is named Ashura, Bela), Sina, Shamasha, / 5. Naboo, Marduk, Ishtar of Nineveh, / 6. and Ishtar of Arbel, the great gods, my lords, / 7. from sunrise to sunset / 8. moves victoriously, having no equal" ^[1]. In other words, the annals of Assargadon speak of his embeddedness in the religious hierarchy and religious motivation: "27. I destroyed the people of Manna, / 28. who did not worship the gods in heaven."^[1]

The sonnet "Assargadon" is part of an intertextual constellation. Together with him, the section "Favorites of the Ages" includes the poem "Ramses", "which clearly identifies all the artistic lines leading to P.B. Shelley's "Ozymandias" ^{[15, 43]}, this "Shelley Sonnet is thematically connected with <...> Bryusov's work (poems "Assargadon", "Ramses", "The Egyptian Slave") ^{[4, 302]}. Shelley's Ozymandias in the original poem is defeated by eternity, his statue is destroyed, his great deeds are in the distant past. "Bryusov makes his translation generally accurate" ^{[4, 302]}, emphasizing the emptiness and infertility left after Ozymandias ^{[9, 223]}. The same motif is in the translation of the Avsonian poem "About the name of a certain Lucius carved on marble": time destroys the text, the stone and the person about whom the inscription on the stone ^{[8, 568-569]}. On the contrary, Assargadon argues with Shelley's Ozymandias, endowing a similar hero with victory over eternity and acceptance of loneliness.

Bryusov's passage "Ramesses" is the author's version of the justification of the idea of "Assargadon". Ozymandias is the Greek form of the name Ramesses:

– Who are you, bold warrior? Is the spirit disturbing?

Are you Ozymandias? Assargadon? Ramesses?

^{[5, 145]}

The poet uses Shelley's anti-Zimandian arguments in Ramesses:

Residents of deserts, we are still insignificant

In the ages of the earth and in the eternity of heaven.

^{[5, 146]}

But he refutes them with the beginning of a new, last, intentionally unfinished stanza:

And then Ramesses stood in front of me

^{[5, 146]}

The hero of the poem reveals his insignificance in laughing at a great man: people are equally insignificant before eternity, but not equal relative to each other. The poet disputes the right of a small person to the possibility of disrespectful criticism of a big person.

Bryusov literalizes such a characteristic feature of the genre of the passage as incompleteness, ending the poem with a sharpness, a silent scene, behind which the hero's reaction to a mystical miracle and the likely tragic ending of his life is hidden.

The sonnet "The Egyptian Slave" from the collection "Mirror of Shadows" once again raises the theme of human greatness going through the ages (in the manuscript it was accompanied by an epigraph from "Assargadon" ^{[6, 410]}). Bryusov clarifies the method of preservation in eternity: the hero of the poem denies himself the right to a long life (it is also implied that this applies to the tsar), but says that "the trace of hard work will not disappear, / And the royal Tomb will stand for eternity ..." ^{[6, 69]}. The same motif is present in the sonnet "Cleopatra" from "Tertia vigilia", which begins like "Assargadon". The heroine of the poem sees her immortality in femininity and passion preserved by immortal art ^{[6, 153]}.

"The Egyptian Slave" is a dialogue between different texts, but it directly indicates the connection with "Assargadon". Their initial verses have the same structure: "I am the leader of the earthly kings..."– "I am a miserable slave of the king." Two "I's" of opposite social status enter into a dialogue in it, each of which claims its own eternity, understood in its own way.

Also, the image of Assargadon appears in Bryusov's poem-political invective "Satisfied" (1905) from the collection "Stephanos". According to V. V. Yemelyanov, Assargadon in it acts as a symbol of an Asian elemental force, similar to the Huns from the "Coming Huns" (this poem in the collection just follows "Contented") ^{[16, 153]}. However, the syntactic construction of the stanza is different, it accompanies the king and the crowd, brought together by the principle of two extremes:

Beautiful <...>

The Eastern king Assargadon,

And the ocean of people's passion.

^{[5, 432]}

The poem "Contented" paints the image of the bourgeoisie, advocating peace, preserved by half measures, and in contrast to them – the image of a hero calling for the destruction of the bourgeois system. Bryusov in his invective compares the "contented" with animals:

Your contentment is the joy of the flock.

Who found a piece of grass

^{[5, 432]}

The same thing, but in a more crude form, will be repeated by V. V. Mayakovsky in the invective "To you!" (1915):

Do you know, incompetent, many,

Thinking it's better to get drunk how…

^{[21, 75]}

Bryusov's finale, with a call for destruction, was replaced by a contemptuous one in Mayakovsky:

I'd rather be at the bar...

Serve pineapple water!

^{[21, 75]}

The genre subtitle "Invective" has a poem "To Fellow intellectuals" from the collection "On such days". It looks like a continuation of the poet's dispute with the Russian and European intelligentsia, striving for half measures, avoiding extremes, wanting peace, not the realization of utopia.

Assargadon is a symbol of absolute dominion, the crowd is a symbol of absolute chaos. The hero of the poem opposes the petty-bourgeois "half measures" of the 1905 Constitution. At the same time, he experiences a suicidal delight in the crushing renewal of the world, similar to what the "Egyptian slave" from the 1911 poem would later experience. It can be said that Bryusov in 1897 feels more like an Assargadon, Bryusov in 1905 drifts towards the "Egyptian slave". "Subsequently, "Assyrian" will become for Bryusov <...> a synonym for "Bolshevik", an image of a totalitarian social system" ^{[16, 153]}.

Separately, you can pay attention to the image of Assargadon in the works of Leo Tolstoy. It is unknown whether Tolstoy read Bryusov's sonnet of 1897, but the optics of his view of Assargadon are similar to Bryusov's. In the fairy tale-parable "Assyrian King Asarhadon" Tolstoy also concentrates on the problem of power, loneliness and eternity. At the same time, the writer, of course, interprets this image in a completely different way: "Having understood the illusory nature of his ideas about the Other and others, realizing the unity of being <...> The former tsar becomes a wanderer preaching the non-doing of evil ^{[16, 154]}. V. V. Yemelyanov quite rightly believes that Tolstoy here was "guided by the images of Indo-Buddhist mythology" ^{[16, 154]}. If Bryusov saw Assargadon through the prism of the culture of Southwest Asia, then Tolstoy saw him through the prism of the culture of South Asia.

Also, in general, it should be noted that, speaking about Assargadon, Bryusov chooses a strict sonnet form in order to clothe the direct words of the tsar in it and cast his (and his) majestic image in it, Tolstoy is a genre of fairy tale, the images of which are universal to the complete diminution of the individuality of a particular hero.

In the "Ballads" section of the collection "Urbi et Orbi", the poem "Pompeian Woman" is a variation on the theme of lovers whose death remains in the centuries. Bryusov does not sing of love in her, similar to the feeling of Francesca or Juliet, who tried to overcome external obstacles. Matron Lydia is a different woman in character and life experience, and her death was caused not by social reasons, but by natural ones. Besides, Bryusov is not interested in herself, but in that eternal extrahuman love passion that she experienced on the verge of death.

In the last stanza of this ballad, the motif of the monument appears, which must be installed so that "memory does not fade away in the universe / About the passion that has gone beyond the limit!" ^{[5, 289]}. Paradoxically, this monument is a "living sculpture of eternal bodies" ^{[5, 289]}, although it is covered with Pompeian ashes of dead bodies. Also, the entire poem can be considered as written in the genre of the poem-"Monument". "The Pompeian Woman" opens with a list of her husbands and her love merits, the main of which she calls fidelity, albeit relative, associated with experiencing it in the moment. The features of the requiem and testament can also be found in the poem ^{[17, 4]}.

At the same time, L. V. Pumpyansky characterizes "Pompeianka" as a poem written in a new genre: "Glory to the glorious. Bryusov created a new genre of odes to those who have already been glorified by odes and epics of the 25th century. <...> This is a special new genre; it is not an ode, because there is no odic stanza in it and because the "favorites of the ages" are glorified, i.e. those who have long been glorified; these are not stanzas, although the stanzas are mostly stanzas; these are stanzas of "glory" ^{[23, 535]}.

An interesting version of the poem "monument" is "Charles XII" from the section "Greetings" of the collection "All melodies". "Charles XII" has the subtitle "Monument from Stockholm" and from the point of view of the genre can be characterized as an ekphrasis. Bryusov describes the monument to the king standing in Sweden:

You are standing, the ghost of an ancient saga,

In his capital above the crowd

And with an inspired swing of the sword,

As before, you beckon for yourself

^{[5, 528]}

On the other hand, the poet points out the virtues of the king: he expressed "the dreams of the cherished people" ^{[5, 528]}, his dream of glory and other spaces, an attempt to go beyond the north of Europe. The most important quality of Charles XII, according to Bryusov, is his desire to play with fate, faith in predestination. In this poem, the concept of "monument" is realized literally and figuratively.

The sonnet "On the death of A. N. Scriabin" from the collection "Seven Colors of the Rainbow" is an epitaph that speaks about the great composer who died prematurely. And at the same time, this work can be viewed as a "monument" poem, the main idea of which is the tragic incompleteness of the Scriabin Mystery and, accordingly, the "unfinished" nature of his "monument":

He dared to melt the metal of melodies

And I wanted to pour it into new forms;

He relentlessly longed to live and live,

To put up a completed monument…

^{[6, 201]}

Bryusov's most vivid appeal to the genre of the poem-"monument" – is actually a "Monument" from the collection "Seven Colors of the Rainbow", which is a reference not only to Horace's ode (which he also translated, see "Monument" in "Experiments" ^{[7, 488]}), but also to Derzhavin's "Monument", and to Pushkin's poem "I erected a monument to myself not made with hands...". At the same time, it is interesting how the lines that Bryusov chose for the epigraph changed: from the neutral "Exegi monumentum..." through the reminder of overcoming "Ex humili potens..." ^{[6, 419]} to the unambiguously proud, self-affirming "Sume superbiam..." ^{[6, 96]}. Bryusov's "Monument", with its composition and individual motifs, follows Derzhavin and Pushkin, but at the same time argues with them in the main: Bryusov takes credit not for ethical achievements, but for literary, intellectual ones – and thus returns to the past, to Horace, to Ancient Rome. On the other hand, the Bryusov monument proceeds from other spatial and temporal coordinates: speaking about the greatness of his poetry and about eternity, the poet goes beyond the limits of Russian culture into the wider world in his hopes:

Crown my brow, Glory of other centuries,

Introducing me to the world temple

^{[6, 97]}

The features of the "monument" poem are also "Ode in the spirit of Horace", or "Imitation of Horace", the hero of which dreams that his poetry will outlive him and spread to "unknown countries" ^{[6, 326]}. This is not a "monument", but the dream of a "monument". In addition, there is a game in the poem: the Russian poet puts into the mouth of the hero of the poem, correlated with Horace, the desire to be read and revered in Russia:

...The poet of the Hyperborean land

He will imitate my tunes.

^{[6, 326]}

***

Thus, Bryusov sought not only to explore new genre possibilities as widely as possible, but also to streamline his work with genres. Starting from the first collection, he proceeds from the desire to group poems into sections, which are named not only according to the principle of content, but also according to the principle of designating their genre nature. Bryusov himself stipulated that the names of sections do not always literally denote the genre in its generally accepted meaning. Nevertheless, there is an attitude towards the systematization and cyclization of genres in general and individual genre groups.

The collections "Urbi et Orbi", "All Melodies" and in particular "Dreams of Mankind" and "Experiments on metrics and rhythmics, on euphony and consonances, on stanzas and forms" are examples of Bryusov's concentrated work on the development of genres of world literature, the reproduction of the canons of genres and, paradoxically, on the reinterpretation of these genres based on his own artistic preferences, the theme of a particular poem, a dispute with the previous tradition and taking into account the literary context of the poet ^[20].

The creation of large-volume genre supercycles-catalogs, undertaken by Bryusov, is an almost unprecedented phenomenon for the Russian literary tradition. The poet outlined the road to world poetry as an aid to writers and readers, and he himself failed, did not have time to fully realize his plans. However, later, individual writers, bearing in mind the need for cultural and literary education, created their own versions of such catalogs. As an example, we can name "Some notes on poetry" (the unrealized book "Poetry") by D. L. Andreev.

In addition to cataloging genres of world literature, Bryusov's work contains what can be called supercycles-catalogs: these are invariant genres that allow the poet to most succinctly realize his main intentional images and themes. Among such genre supercycles catalogues, one can especially highlight the genre of the poem "monument". Poems-"monuments", often historical and mythological medallions / mytho-historical portraits, can take different forms from Bryusov: These can be lyrical ecphrasies based on sculptural images of great people, or poems of "glory" combining different genres, such as requiem and testament.

Creating such poems, Bryusov focuses on a diverse literary tradition – from antiquity to Western Europe and Russia of the XIX century. And at the same time lays the foundations for such poetic work, traces of which can be seen in the works of V. I. Ivanov, N. S. Gumilev, I. Severyanin, etc.

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