Literary and critical singularity of the Book About Alexander Blok by K. Chukovsky

The subject of the article is Korney Chukovsky’s Book About Alexander Blok (1922), one of the first monographs, which critically reviews all works of the poet up to the long poem The Twelve. The book was written during Blok’s lifetime and approved by him, which determines its significance. The relevance of the article is due to the fact that in modem studies this book is almost forgotten: it was included in the second book by Chukovsky Alexander Blok as Man and Poet (1924) in a greatly modified form. With the exception of early articles by Elena Ts. Chukovskaya, which traced the history of the book’s creation, it did not become the subject of a targeted literary analysis. The main aim of the article is to reveal the literary and critical singularity of the Book About Alexander Blok. The first section, based on the analysis of the corpus of Chukovsky’s diaries and letters, demonstrates that in his creative mind the book has always occupied an important place and at the same time existed under the initial title. The second section analyzes the ambiguous semantics of the book’s title, both lapidary and tautological. The author argues that its most probable meaning is that this is the only book of its kind by the first critic about the first poet of the epoch. The proposed interpretation makes it possible to establish a connection between the radical turn in the relationship between Blok and Chukovsky after October 1917 with the creative concept of the book and to reconstruct the double polemical context of its creation: (1) refutation of the political interpretations of the poem The Twelve and (2) unanimous opposition of Blok and Chukovsky to scientific and formal approaches to poetry. Based on a comparison of the “universal” criticism of Chukovsky and Blok’s views on the nature of poetic creativity, the author learns that they were like-minded in understanding the inseparability of the artist’s soul and his style. The third section analyzes in detail the singular structure of the book, corrected under the influence of Blok’s mother, who negatively perceived a feuilletonistic composition. The section offers an alternative interpretation of the multi-level header complex, which includes the titles of parts and chapters; proposes to consider internal headings as structural components of the plot of each part, as semantic dominants, identified as a result of a microanalysis of the “lyrical trilogy”. The author shows that all the final chapters of the first three parts of the book reveal the sense-bearing items of Chukovsky’s aesthetic concept, which goes back to Kant’s ideas: Chukovsky’s definition of the poem The Twelve as “a work of genius” and its creator as “a national genius” is based on Kant’s doctrine of genius. An analysis of the last two chapters of the book in the context of the psychology and phenomenology of Chukovsky’s works led to the conclusion that the literary and critical singularity of the first book about Blok lies in an attempt to present Blok’s works in accordance with Kant’s idea of beauty as “expediency without purpose”. This intention of Chukovsky was reflected in the weaker critical and stronger apologetic mode of narration.

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