«Барков» Олега Чухонцева: генезис, семантика, подтекст
Oleg Chukhontsev’s “Barkov”: Genesis, Semantics, and Subtext

Summary/Abstract: The present work is a part of the comprehensive research on the oeuvre of O.G. Chukhontsev, the most prominent Russian poet, and analyzes his poem “Barkov” (1968). I.S. Barkov’s (1732–1768) poems are among the most taboo ones in Russian literature due to their specific content and the abundance of obscenities. His relatively complete works were published only in the post-Soviet time. At the same time, his oeuvre takes an important place in the history of Russian literature at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries. He noticeably influenced many contemporaries, including G.R. Derzhavin. The tradition of Russian burlesque was formed under his influence. The image of real Barkov, a person and a poet, interacts with a mythical one – a figure of a liberal thinking author, being at odds with his time – in O.G. Chukhontsev’s poem. O.G. Chukhontsev’s character is easily imaginable in the Soviet chronotope. Furthermore, the modern poet provides Barkov with some autobiographical features. Finally, the character of the poem is set in the line of the poetic portraits of litterateurs and thinkers of the 18th–19th centuries, being created by O.G. Chukhontsev, trying to personify in the different figures a universal image of the Poet, since the beginning of the 1960s.

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