Vasily Kamensky as the Cultural Hero of Perm

The article explores the history of recognition of Vasily Kamensky in his native city, Perm, as a cultural hero in his own way – the first poet who revealed Prikamye (the Kama region) in a poetic dimension to the world of ‘big’ literature. In contrast to other futurists, Kamensky was initially bound to local themes, he wrote about Kama and the Urals constantly highlighting his origins in self-characterizations. “I, the Poet, came from Kama”. The place of birth became a dominant category in the structure of Kamensky’s personal identity. The article provides the analysis of autobiographical books by Kamensky “My Biography of the Great Futurist”, 1918, and “The Way of the Enthusiast”, 1931. It is shown that Kamensky’s biographic discourse actualizes mythopoetic paradigm of death and resurrection (re-birth): each new turn in poet’s destiny is described in such terms. Notably, resurrection is only possible on condition of repatriation, contact with his native land. The classification chosen in the article equates the poet’s role to that of the cultural hero which seems to be natural to Kamensky’s self-consciousness. In his literary and social practices Kamensky invariably considered himself as an enlightener for ‘uneducated Perm’, an artist who not only implanted in his hometown the notion of new art, but also indoctrinated the notion of new life. Kamensky’s pursuit for recognition in his native city was one of inducements to his activity. However, local community did not acknowledge Kamensky’s ambitions for a long time, so he felt like a ‘prophet who is unrecognized in his homeland’. Only in the 1930-s did he eventually acquire the long-awaited recognition. However, it arrived neither by virtue of his talent nor persuasiveness of the images he created, but rather owing to the mechanisms of soviet literature which functioned as a state institution. One of the consequences of the party’s line of administering and developing of literary life in the regions was the appearance, let us paraphrase Boris Pasternak, of ‘vacancies of the leading poets’ in the provinces. Such vacancy in Prikamye was occupied by Vasily Kamensky. Local authorities supported a kind of worship of ‘the leading poet’: to commemorate the 25th anniversary of Kamensky’s literary career in 1933 his name was given to a school, a social centre, a kolkhoz and a steamboat. To the poet himself, however, official recognition had a deep personal meaning: ‘recognition as a poet of the Urals and Kama is a kind of miracle’, wrote Kamensky