Apollon Grigor'ev's Poetry.

Apollon Grigor'ev's poetry presents a set of contradictions. V. Belinskij says Grigor'ev is not a poet; A. Blok exalts his poetry. Grigor'ev's verse is described as "intellectual" on the one h and , "meaningless" on the other. Symbolist criticism praises Grigor'ev's romanticism; Soviet criticism praises his realism. His poetry was out of print and "forgotten" from his death in 1864 until 1916. The purpose of this dissertation is to resolve these contradictions. Chapter I surveys the history of criticism of Grigor'ev's poetry from Belinskij and Grigor'ev's contemporaries, through Blok and the symbolists, to early and modern Soviet criticism. This chapter documents the contradictions of critical interpretation of Grigor'ev's verse. Chapter II catalogs the meters, rhythms, strophes, devices, genres and themes of Grigor'ev's lyrics. It describes the texts upon which the critical controversy and contradictions are based. Chapter III describes the corpus of Grigor'ev's poemy. They are found to be essentially lyric romantic works. The dissertation concludes (1) that Grigor'ev "fell out of the history of Russian literature" (N. Stepanov), but temporarily, and resumed his position of late romantic under Blok's subsequent championship; (2) that Blok is stylistically indebted to Grigor'ev; (3) that Grigor'ev adhered to "psychological romanticism" (G. Gukovskij) until the end of his career and made no significant move towards realism; (4) that Grigor'ev's language is uneven and he possessed a great, but flawed talent.Ph.D.Slavic literatureUniversity of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/158592/1/8204605.pd