Serapion sister: The poetry of Elizaveta Polonskaja.

Elizaveta Polonskaja (1890-1969) is the least-known member of the Serapion Brothers, a controversial group of Soviet writers who, while supporting the revolution, were committed to artistic freedom. Highly regarded in her day, Polonskaja is no longer widely known. This dissertation examines not only her poetry but also factors in critical reception and literary politics which makes it possible for a writer of her talent to fade so completely from memory after her death. It is also an exercise in gender scholarship, since Polonskaja's poetry stretches the boundaries of traditional female identity. Her entire output is covered, including unpublished poetry from her private archive. The approach has been to examine the poems in historical context and establish precise meanings by tracing intertextual links, either between Polonskaja's verse and that of other poets, or between her own published and unpublished texts. Chapter 1. Literary biography of Polonskaja. Chapter 2. Polonskaja's early verse, from the Symbolist-inspired poems of her student years in Paris (1908-1914) to the Civil War poems of her first collection, Znamen'ja (1921). The Jewish theme, both in the poems themselves and in critical reception. Chapter 3. Polonskaja's second collection, Pod kamennym dozdem (1923), in which she uses ambivalence and historical allusions to get some of her most provocative anti-Bolshevik poems past the sensor. Chapter 4. The mid-twenties: journal and almanac publications (1923-1927) and the third collection, Uprjamyj kalendar' (1929), which contain some of her most outspoken criticisms of NEP. Chapter 5. The Stalinist period (1930-1953), marked by Polonskaja's adaptations to the demands of Socialist Realism. Four collections, Goda (1935) and Novye stixi (1937), and two from the war years, Vremena muzestva (1940) and Kamskaja tetrad' (1945). Discussion of why Polonskaja published no original poetry between 1946 and 1956. Chapter 6. The post-Stalinist period (1953-1967). Polonskaja's late poetry, published in periodicals and in her last two collections, Stixotvorenija i poema (1960) and Izbrannoe (1966). Chapter 7. Unpublished verse. Survey of the contents of Polonskaja's private archive.PhDLanguage, Literature and LinguisticsModern literatureSlavic literatureSocial SciencesWomen's studiesUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/129760/2/9624600.pd