EASTERN GENRE FORMS IN VLADIMIR SOLOVYOV’S POETRY

The crisis of the Eurocentric orientation of creative consciousness in Europe in the second half of the 19th century contributed to the growth of interest in the East, its spiritual and cultural values.

In Russian (as well as in Western European) poetic art of the late 19th century orientalism became widespread not only through the borrowing of images and motifs of Eastern Muslim literature, but also through the stylization of its genre forms, which can be traced to fashionable neo-romantic "exoticism". For example, "in poems of the 1880s–1890s the phytonymic context is quite frequent, which is primarily associated with the oriental images of the nightingale and the rose – central in Eastern Muslim poetry"

In the 1880s the East acquires the status of a dominant in the philosophical-ethical, historiosophical concepts of V.S. Solovyov, who was "the first to “remember” the medieval Christian question about the place of Islam in the divine economy of salvation, tried to find the deep foundations for restoring the spiritual unity of Abrahamic religions. In this, V. Solovyov can be considered the forerunner of the modern dialogue of religions"

In the last twenty years of the 19th century Solovyov turns to the lyrics of the “singer of roses and nightingales” Hafiz Shirazi, which is natural: it was at that time that the symbolist poet experienced a dramatic relationship with Sofia Khitrovo, who had Mongolian features, for which the society called her the Madonna of steppes (according to K.F. Golovin, "something mysterious, something unspoken was read willingly, but was never fully read in her intelligent features. She never fully revealed herself, just as a lotus flower does not do this in sunlight"

So, for example, the poetic form of the work "For me the question is tricky...", conditionally reproducing a ghazal of a classical example, consists of six structural units - beits. Solovyov moves away from the generally accepted rhymes aaaa / aa ba ca da, using only internal rhyme for sound organization, creating a melodic line (the first line rhymes with the second to the last, the second line of the fifth beit – with the last one). However, this does not deprive Solovyov’s ghazal of traditionalism, since instrumentation is at the forefront of the poetic art of the Muslim East: special attention is paid to phonetic details, the play of consonances forms the musical fabric of works (cf.: "...pure nothing, – / And yet he is something: Being with non-being" 

The love theme in V. Solovyov’s works explicates the theme of wandering, the road and, as a consequence, loneliness and exile. "Throughout the entire period of the development of Russian literature, various semes are actualized in the semantic field of the image of the way: in Pushkin – "love", "patriotism", "Motherland", "service to God"; in Lermontov – "the chosenness of the poet", "wandering"; in Nekrasov - "the torment of the people", etc"

In the 80s, the poet creates an original stylized work "You are slimmer and finer than gazelles of deserts..." which is not only a mechanical imitation of the "foreign" and has a philosophical nature. Note that all of Solovyov’s poetry can be considered philosophical, since it is fundamentally based on the author’s built-up system of ideas about nature, man, love, and space. His work is "unprovable philosophy, metaphysics" 

In the 1880s,V. Solovyov, passionate about the Easttheme, creates adaptations of Hafiz’s rubaiyat ("If only the mind knew how sweet it is..." (1885), "There are so many, many languages!" (1885), etc.) while preserving the canons of the classical form of oriental poetry. This is, first of all, a mixed rhyme system, brevity, and philosophical depth. The quatrain has a traditional scheme for the rubai genre – aaba; the lines are connected by a common musical rhythm and have an equal number of syllables. The poet affirms the joyful acceptance of life, the immortality of love. The work glorifies wine and the cult of wine drinking, which have Sufi symbolism.

During the same period V. Solovyov works under the pseudonym Exper Heliotropov, creating comic works in which elements of self-irony are noted, mainly towards personal love failures. Similar ones may include "Confession to a lady who asked the author why he was hot" (1886). The poem is an improvisation on the theme of Lermontov’s "Wherefore" as evidenced by numerous reminiscences from textual (cf.: "I’m sad because I love you ..." 

Thus, through the stylization of Eastern literature genre forms, neo-romantic exoticism is expressed in V. Solovyov’s poetry. In the 1880–1890s the Muslim East acquires the status of a dominant not only in his philosophical-ethical, historiosophical concepts, but also in poetry writing.

Eastern Muslim genre forms (ghazal, rubai) become quite widespread in the symbolist poet’s lyrics. These are mainly translations from Hafiz Shirazi in the European version of imitation, but there are also original works, the content of which is more often regulated according to the classical Eastern tradition.