“With a Hammer on a Chisel” (the Story of a Poetic Metaphor in the Works of N. Aseev and V. Sosnora)

The article draws attention to the metaphor of “hammer on chisel” found in artistic (poem “We will, we will...”) and epistolary (letter to D. S. Likhachev) N. Aseev’s texts in those cases when it comes to the poet V. Sosnora, in whose fate N. Aseev played an important positive role. It was not without the help of N. Aseev that the first poetry collections of V. Sosnora were published. At the same time, the metaphor “hammer on a chisel” is repeatedly used by V. Sosnora himself in poetic (“Hymn to the Chisel”, “Repair of the Sea”) and prose works (“Day of the Beast”, “House of Days”). This phrase is also found in the memoirs of the poetess E. Ioffe about V. Sosnora, as told by N. Koroleva. The appeal to this metaphor is due, on the one hand, to the biography of V. Sosnora, who worked for a while as a locksmith at a factory after the army. On the other hand, the metaphor of “hammer on chisel” becomes an element of the creative dialogue between V. Sosnora and N.Aseev in resolving the issue of the purpose of the poet and poetry. The conclusion is made about the transition of the phrase “hammer on chisel” into the sphere of individual authorial phraseology.

N. Aseev, V. Sosnora, metaphor, poetic dialogue, individual author’s phraseology