«ДУХ» И «ДУХОТА» ЛИТЕРАТУРНОЙ ПУШНИНЫ
"SPIRIT" AND "STUFFINESS" OF LITERARY FURS

Summary/Abstract: The article focuses on the research of variants of a widely spread motif in the Russian literature of the 1920s. Expression of the topic on relationship between literature and official power in the metaphorical language of clothes / service uniform is found in the poetry by V. Mayakovski, O. Mandelstam, I. Selvinski. The object of analysis is the structure and genesis of the metaphor, that can serve as a formula of the poet’s independence from the time (“pants made of voice velvet” and “the yellow jacket” in the early works of Mayakovski, or also his “freshly cleaned shirt” in the poem “At the Top of My Voice”), an ironic definition for a poet’s political bias (“that lordly fur-coat is not by rank” in Mandelstam’s prose), a metaphor of literary way of life (Selvinski’s “Pushtorg”). In the basis of the majority of variants of metaphors there lie idioms (“A small head for a hat”, “a good fur-coat to sew”), that generate humorous and at the same time tragic connotations of the motif.

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