“All objects at once”: Still life in Russian poetry

The article analyzes still life as a form of representing the visual in twentieth-century Russian poetry. The focus is on the ways in which the pictorial genre is poetically appropriated and its semantics transformed within the lyric text. Drawing on poems that include the words “still life” in the title or the body of the text, the study examines the main models of this image’s functioning: still life as a work of painting, as a composition created by nature or the world, and as a juxtaposition of objects that organizes poetic utterance. It is shown that recourse to still life activates visual imagery while simultaneously engaging other sensory modalities and fostering reflection on the relationship between the living and the non-living, the thing and the human being, art and reality. The analysis demonstrates that in poetry still life is rarely realized in the form of direct ekphrasis; rather, it structures the lyrical plot and activates the reader’s visual imagination.

1. Adlerberg, D. (2017), “In search of eternity: towards interpretation of Joseph Brodsky’s ‘nature mort’ ”, Prosōdia, no. 7, pp. 164–174.

2. Danilova, I.E. (1998), Problema zhanrov v evropeiskoi zhivopisi: Chelovek i veshch’.

3. Portret i natiurmort [The issue of genres in European painting: Man and thing. Portrait and still life], RGGU, Moscow, Russia. (Chteniya po teorii kul’tury; iss. 21)

4. Danilova, I.E. (2004), “Still life as a genre among other genres”, in Veshch’ – vest’: natiur- mort XVII–XX vv. iz sobraniya GMII im. A.S. Pushkina [Thing as message: Still life of the 17th – 20th centuries from the collection of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts], RGGU, Moscow, Russia, pp. 8–18.

5. Danilova, I.E. (2005), Sud’ba kartiny v evropeiskoi zhivopisi [The fate of the painting in European art], Iskusstvo-SPb., Saint Petersburg, Russia.

6. Fomicheva, I.S. (1984), “Still life exhibitions: historical overview”, in Danilova, I.E. and Sadkov, V.A., eds., Natiurmort v evropeiskoi zhivopisi XVI – nachala XX veka: vystavka kartin iz muzeev SSSR i GDR: katalog [Still life in European painting of the 16th – early 20th centuries: Exhibition catalogue from the Museums of the USSR and the GDR], Sovetskii khudozhnik, Moscow, USSR.

7. Kuznetsov, Yu.I. (1984), “Social content of still life. Flora and fauna”, in Danilova, I.E. and Sadkov, V.A., eds., Natiurmort v evropeiskoi zhivopisi XVI – nachala XX veka: vystavka kartin iz muzeev SSSR i GDR: katalog [Still Life in European Painting of the 16th – early 20th centuries: Exhibition catalogue from the Museums of the USSR and the GDR], Sovetskii khudozhnik, Moscow, USSR.

8. Losev, L.V. (2008), Iosif Brodskii: opyt literaturnoi biografii [Joseph Brodsky: An at- tempt at a literary biography], Molodaya gvardiya, Moscow, Russia. (Zhizn’ zamechatel’nykh lyudei)

9. Lotman, Yu.M. (2002), “Still life in the perspective of semiotics”, in Lotman, Yu.M., Stat’i po semiotike kul’tury i iskusstva [Articles on the semiotics of culture and art], Akademicheskii proekt, Saint Petersburg, Russia, pp. 322–339.

10. Vipper, B.R. (2005), Problema i razvitie natiurmorta [The problem and development of still life], Azbuka-klassika, Saint Petersburg, Russia.

11. Volodarskii, V.M. (1984), “Russian still life of the 18th – early 20th centuries”, in Danilova, I.E. and Sadkov, V.A., eds., Natiurmort v evropeiskoi zhivopisi XVI – nachala XX veka: vystavka kartin iz muzeev SSSR i GDR: katalog [Still life in European painting of the 16th – early 20th centuries: Exhibition catalogue from the Museums of the USSR and the GDR], Sovetskii khudozhnik, Moscow, USSR.