Valery Bryusov and Urban Folklore: a game with genre tradition

Abstract

The subject of the study is a literary game with the genre tradition of urban romance and factory (working) songs in the poetry of the poet of the Silver Age Valery Bryusov. The object of the study is Bryusov's genre palette and his creative searches in relation to the extensive development of genres of domestic and foreign literature, as well as folklore. The authors consider in detail such aspects of the topic as Bryusov's genre strategies, his playing with genre constants and the deliberate distortion of the genre "grid" of the working song with the involvement of features of another, related genre of violent urban romance. Special attention is paid to the catamnesis of Bryusov's texts: their further embodiment in music as songs, both purposeful and spontaneous. The main conclusions of the study are observations on the stylization of folklore in the literature of the Silver Age and reflections on the genre nature of the works of one of the most significant collections of poems by Bryusov, “Urbi et orbi” (1903). A special contribution of the authors to the study of the topic is their consistent tracing in Bryusov's "songs" of the presence of references to specific realities included in the apperceptive base of the reader and the author himself. The novelty of the research lies in the appeal to the genre of urban romance and factory song in Bryusov's work and in the expansion of the evidence base of observations on the genre diversity of the work of this poet and prose writer.