Egor Letov’s ‘eternal spring’ formula as a result and an object of creative reception

Abstract

The article analyzes the history of the ‘eternal spring’ formula before Yegor Letov, as well as the reception of the video for that song in Dmitry Danilov’s poem “Eternal Spring in Solitary Confinement”. The author for the first time in Russian literature analyzes the history and content of the ‘eternal spring’ image, dating back to Ovid, and clarifies the stable semantics of this formula as a designation of the topos of the earthly Paradise (or the time of the Golden Age). The author also considers the reception of Letov’s song “Eternal Spring” in an intermedial aspect: based on a fan clip (2010), edited from Artur Aristakisyan’s film Ladoni (Palms, 1994), and a poem by Dmitry Danilov (2014), in which the clip, and the song became starting points for thinking about the Russian people. The title of Danilov’s text, “Eternal Spring in Solitary Confinement”, emphasizes the semantics of imprisonment, which will be fully realized in the novel Sasha, privet! (Sasha, hello!, 2021). Thus, the history of the use and rethinking of the ‘eternal spring’ formula from Ovid (characteristic of the Golden Age) to Danilov (characteristic of the Russian people) is traced.