Poetic dialogue between V. Bryusov and A. Bely: text and life

The object of consideration is the poetic appeals of Valery Bryusov and Andrei Bely, which the poets exchanged in the 1900s. They, as a rule, were connected by the unity of the author's strategies, cross-cutting motives and had a certain aesthetic integrity and completeness. The purpose of this article is a receptive analysis of the dialogical and myth-making attitudes of Bryusov and Bely, implemented in their mutual initiations/messages to each other, which formed a dual unity. The sources of the study were the mutual poetic appeals of Valery Bryusov and Andrei Bely in 19031909, as well as memoirs and personal correspondence of the poets. In the course of the study, biographical, cultural-historical, communicative-semantic and comparative-historical methods were used. Firstly, in the content structure of the poetic addresses of Andrei Bely and Valery Bryusov to each other, the dominant genre setting for a dialogue with the addressee is singled out, which makes it possible to identify these poems as messages/dedications. This makes it possible to enter the mutual addressing of Bryusov and Bely in the general symbolist poetological context of the early twentieth century, when this genre was a kind of mainstream. Secondly, the work shows that poetic addressing is simultaneously included in two semantic contexts: life-biographical and poetic-semantic. The uniqueness of the addressed genres of these authors lies in the fact that these genre formations make it possible to combine both of these plans and reach the theurgical dominant of symbolist creativity. The very nature of the genre of lyrical addressing implies the accumulation of life and creative attitudes in their polyphonic diversity. Thirdly, at the formal level, the mutual addressing of the masters of symbolism is considered as a single code, permeated with related topics and common narrative elements. Thus, the work reveals a common motive-plot pattern, which is "distributed" between the two poetic systems and leads to the formation of a figurative-plot complex common to both Bryusov and Bely. This "plot for two", as shown in the article, goes back to the Neo-Symbolist Neoplatonic code, which is realized in the famous philosophical triad "thesis - antithesis - synthesis". As a result, the poetic correspondence between V. Bryusov and A. Bely is interpreted as an ideological duel, implicitly realizing the dramatic situations of personal and “guild” relations, with a clear separation of ethical and ethical roles at the beginning of the conflict, and their "inseparability and separability" at the end. These roles also structure the metaplot of the epistolary novel, the vicissitudes of which come down to the binary oppositions of "light" and "darkness", heavenly and earthly, divine and demonic principles. However, at the same time, this exchange of messages appears as a philosophical dialogue about the role of the poet in Symbolist discourse, a dialogue that reflects the different vectors of the creative aspirations of the Symbolists and, consequently, the ambivalent tendencies of the current both towards consolidation and towards demarcation. It is proved that these ideological attitudes determine the choice of the role of the author and the addressee (brother, enemy, theurgist, prophet, magician, demon), which are indexed in the frame of the text and carry not only aesthetic, but also some kind of providential-magical charge, which is realized in models behavior and work of both poets.

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