«Is it really just for the sake of beauty?..» David Samoilov’s «Semyon Andreevich» and «The Tsyganovs» as an epic diptych

Abstract

In the focus of David Samoilov’s poem «Semyon Andreech» and the little poem «The Tsyganovs» is a peasant who according to the author’s idea, discovers «the powerful specifics of his mind». The integral and complex personality of the hero is morally close to the narrator-intelligent. The article considers the common features that combine the two works into an epic diptych. It is a combination of the epic and lyric, noted already in the criticism of the turn of the 1970s and 1980s, At the level of the artistic world, these are the laws of the universe and images of the traditional way of life, which are thought of as unchangeable. The characters positively perceive their inextricable connection with the world order. The material basis of existence is described as a value. The ambiguous image of a horse acts as an object of love, as the personification of beauty and as a manifestation of changeable matter. Various techniques emphasize the rapprochement of the intellectual narrator with the bearer of a different cultural code. There are themes of male friendship and marital love and harmony. The death of heroes who have not reached old age appears as part of the life cycle. The poet depicts heroes in an environment of war and peace, resorts to heroic and idyllic pathos, illuminating different sides of the image. In the finales of both works, the beauty emerges as a category that can, as the characters think, justify the contradictory life as a whole. The moral authority of the peasant warrior allows the author to confirm his hypothesis about the meaning of existence.