Nikolay Gumilev: pantoums and variations

The paper analyzes the genre of pantoums in Nikolai Gumilev’s works. The poet turns to the genre in five of his works, in the seventh «Abyssinian asong», in the poem «Goncharova and Larionov», in the play «Allah’s Child», in the translation of «Malayan Pantoums» by Sh. Leconte de Lisle and in a draft sketch «What a Mortal Boredom...». Gumilev’s pantoums are attractive owing to their peculiar verbal ornament, turning into a fixed pattern, which makes motives and images firm and stiff, bur at the same time rocks them to and fro by revealing each time new shades of meaning. In modernist poetry, the form of a pаntoum, oriented to the national oriental poetry and to the genres medieval lyrics, was combined with oriental motives and became a part of a new way of expression.

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