The author's identity and "internal cities" of Russian modernism (Moscow and Saint Petersburg)

The article examines the role of poetic affiliation with Moscow or Moscow and Saint Petersburg on the self-idenitidication of Osip Mandelstam and Marina Tsvetayeva, along with poets, critics and philosophers of the Russian emigration's first wave, as well as genealogy of "Petersburgians" and "Muscovites" in exile in relation to the 1910s discussions on the future of poetry. The Russian Paris literary criticism projects the fall of the empire in general and Petersburg losing its status of a capital in particular upon the "emigre capitals" (Berlin and Paris), while the "Moscow style", associated with an invasion of barbarians, is thought to be a threat to the new St. Petersburg, i.e. Paris. The research is based on early soviet and emigre periodicals (newspapers Zhisn' iskusstva, Zveno, Posledniye novosti, journal Versty, etc.). Mandelstam's "eidos" of Moscow in his 1916 poems is devised in the Apollonian aesthetic field (which will later be interpreted by the poet as "longing for the world culture"), and the Petersburgian poet as a civi-lizer naturally is obstructed by the "barbarian" capital. On the contrary, Tsvetayeva's "Poems about Moscow", included in the book Milestones I, demonstrate an incorporation of the ideal merging of the "popular" and the "universal". A. Blok and V. Ivanov dreamed of this merge in the discussion on the future of Symbolism which resulted in the division of the Russian poets into "French", Parnassians of Bryusov's School, and "Germans", younger symbolists in A. Bely's conception. In the 1920s criticism, the "French" and the "Germans" will be followed by the "internal" Peters-burgians and Muscovites. In this case, the frustration of the real original Petersburgians who in a short time witnessed the city losing both its name (twice) and its status of a capital is projected upon virtual spaces - "internal cities" (N. Antsiferov) and "other capitals". For instance, emigre critic A. Levinson (Zveno), in his reaction to the publishing boom in Berlin in 1922-1923, reflects bitterly on the provin-cialization of Paris making analogies with Moscow and Saint Petersburg. A strict division of emigre poetry into Petersburgian and Muscovite is also typical for the criticism in Zveno and Posledniye novosti. Tsvetayeva's poetics (from gypsy motifs to "the dissolute Muscovite") will thus be embedded in the context of the "Moscow invasion", and the danger of the Moscow influence will be noted not only by the poet's literary opponents but by her friends as well. An early D. Svyatopolk-Mirsky's characteristic of Tsvetayeva as a "dissolute Muscovite" will return in the 1926 critical discussions around journals Versty and Blagonamerenny.

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