ThawFilm
Post-Stalinist society longed for lyricism after years of socialist
realism with its officially imposed clear-cut truths.
Lyric poetry and lyricism as a world view in other expressive media
opened the way for a personal re-evaluation of Soviet history and of
the individual's place in Soviet society, both past and present. The
mid-1950s and the 1960s witness the re-birth of the lyric hero which
leads to an individualized perception of historical time and social
space, a cultural phenomenon which found its expression in a variety
of artistic media. In order to show the all-pervasive nature of this
new cultural phenomenon, I will show its artistic representation in
both poetry and film.
At the basis of the present research is a comparative analysis of
Okud&zhachek;ava's lyric poetry and Xucyev's 1961 film
lyric
films of the thaw period. The choice of the
material is motivated by the centrality of a lyric hero for both
authors, as well as by their manifest concern with the issue of
historical continuity and with the reevaluation of the relationship
between social and personal space.
The first part of the paper concentrates on the approach to history
in Okud&zhachek;ava's poetry and in Xucyev's
This cyclicality of time and a belief in the continuity of
generations is also characteristic of Xucyev's film. The film's
narrative, which uses the structural elements of a lyric poem, makes
it ideal for a comparative analysis with Okud&zhachek;ava's
poetry. One may read Xucyev's film as a rendering of
Okud&zhachek;ava's poetic metaphors. He makes them tangible by
translating them into visual images and physical realia.
The second part of the paper discusses the image of
unofficial
Moscow created in Okud&zhachek;ava's poetry
and Xucyev's film. The new lyric perspective reverses all ideological
codes of the capital in Stalinist literature and film: in