Rhyme by I. F. Zhdanov in the aspect of historical and literary context

The paper aims to determine the historical and literary context of Ivan Zhdanov’s lyrics by studying the rhymes used by the poet, with the examples taken from the poetic texts of the book «Air and Wind» (2005). Since most of the texts from other books of the poet are included in this book, it can give a complete idea of the poetry work of I. Zhdanov. Classifications and techniques presented in poetry studies of V. M. Zhirmunsky, M. L. Gasparov, D. S. Samoilov, A. V. Isachenko and others are used in the rhyme analysis. The poet's rhyme system is defined as «moderately slant» (M. L. Gasparov). This is indicated by a small number of slant rhymes (10.5 % feminine and 6 % masculine), the frequent use of rhymes with addition of sounds in the post-tonic position (according to Gasparov’s classification), 44 % of feminine slant rhymes with final syncopation of «j» (according to Samoilov’s classification), and the absence of imparisyllabic rhymes. Basing on the same characteristics, the structural peculiarities of the slant rhyme in I. Zhdanov's poems are found to correlate with rhymes used by Russian Silver Age Modernist poets and by those poets of the second half of the 20th century who align themselves with the classic tradition of rhyme development (A. Tarkovsky, N. Zabolotsky, B. Pasternak in the 60s, O. Chukhontsev, etc.). The results of the comparison are analysed in the light of the fact that the poets who want to continue traditions of modernism are characterized by moderate use of slant rhyme (Yu. Kuznetsov, S. Gandlevsky, A. Tsvetkov, etc.) and by a program appeal to poetics and aesthetics of the poets of the sixties (E. Yevtushenko, A. Voznesensky, R. Rozhdestvensky and others). The latter, according to the researchers’ calculations, tend to expand the rhyme repertoire by experimenting with «anomalous» consonances in slant rhyme. At the same time, the analysis showed that Zhdanov’s poetic texts contain a significant number of sound coincidences in the pre-tonic part of both rich and slant rhyme pairs. The author interprets this special feature from the point of view of the processes taking place in modern Russian rhyme, in particular, the expansion of sound equivalence from individual syllables to whole words.

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