“Quiet life”: Things and news in the poetics still lifes by Svetlana Kekova

The article deals with the poetry oeuvre of the modern Russian poet Svetlana Kekova. The goal of this research is to examine texts created in the genre of poetic still life (Tikhaya zhizn (Quiet life), Po reke pechalnoy luna proplyvaet ryboy… (The moon is floating down the sad river like a fish...), Pomme de terre, V starom barake, gde tvoy poyavlyaetsa vrag… (In the old barrack hut where your enemy appears...), Ogon’ veshchey (Fire of things), Sredi nadezhd, raskayanja i strakhov (Among hopes, repentance and fears)). Still lifes in S. Kekova’s poetry is a particular case of the manifestation of a “religious ekphrasis”, due to which the described series of objects acquire a second symbolic meaning. The main place in the article is given to a detailed analysis of the poetic diptych Tikhaya zhizn (Quiet life). Two parts of the cycle address Dutch and Flemish still lifes, though the author’s intentions are connected with the comprehension of a sacred plot that goes back to the New Testament history. The mirror structure of this text has been revealed, the semantic principles underlying the compositional structure of the cycle have been shown. If the “Dutch still lifes” consecutively reflect the key events of the New Testament (The Last Supper, Crucifixion and Resurrection), and all the three poems are united by the idea of the victory of light over darkness and the possibility of salvation, then in the “Flemish still lifes” the author speaks about the sinfulness of the earthly life. The Dutch and Flemish still lifes in Tikhaya zhizn (Quiet life) are contrasted as worlds of salvation and death, which are being infinitely attracted and repelled. Together they represent a complex dialectic of the Christian history. This study pays special attention to the problem of ekphrasis, as it has been found that one of the possible pretexts of the “Flemish still lifes” is the painting “The Meat Stall” by Pieter Aertsen. The article concludes that the main sense-generating mechanism of S. Kekova’s writing is the ability of the author’s view to transfigure earthly things so that you can see echoes of the higher News in them.  

modern poetry, religious ekphrasis, still life, a poetic cycle, an author, gospel images, the eternal plots