Women's Masks in the Poetry of Igor Severyanin

The article considers a number of lyric works by Igor Severyanin written from a woman's face and representing such conventional mask types as "socialite", "exalted lady" or "emancipated woman". These poems are analyzed in historical-literary and sociocultural aspects. Their interrelations with such a bright phenomenon of the Russian Silver Age as a sharp increase in women's poetic and prose writings are considered. Severyanin's works, speaking to the reader on behalf of women, reflect the so-called "women's question": the problems of female sexuality, self-realization, creative, social, political, and professional activity. If female authors (E. Nagrodskaya, A. Verbitskaya, G. Galina, N. Grushko, M. Zakrevskaya-Reich, and others) seriously reflected on the above-mentioned issues, Severyanin's poems always reflect a defamiliarized ironic author's view. The author's position is manifested in stylistic shifts, logical inconsistencies and paradoxes, exaggeration and hyperbolization of images and pathos, increased expressiveness of lyric intonation. Similar artistic techniques can be noted in some of the poet's texts written from a man's face but depicting female types of the era ("In the Birch Cottage", "Nelly", "Zizi", "Courtesan's Carriage"). But they are no less noticeable in the texts in which the author allows the woman to speak, for example, "Autumnal Berceuse", "Oblivion in Sin", "M-me Sans-Gene". The latter poem by its very name, "M-me Sans-Gene", refers to the same-name play, popular at the turn of the 20th century, by French playwrights Victorien Sardou and Emile Moreau and literally translates as "Madame Unceremoniousness", "Madame Tactlessness". The plot of the comedy is based on the story of the laundress Catherine Hubscher, who became the wife of Napoleon's Marshal Francois Joseph Lefebvre. For many ladies of the 19th century, Catherine became a model of an "emancipated woman". Severyanin takes this type of the end of the 18th century to the beginning of the 20th century and creates a story about adventures of Madame Sans-Gene in the exotic Mexico. The new historical and geographical context allows him to draw a caricature of modern feminists, using the literary baggage of a well-known cultural type. This work also combines the features of poetics of Balmont, known for his poetic accounts of trips to distant countries, and techniques of parody responses to Balmont's lyrics, for example, Alexander Blok's parody about his trips called "Balmont's Correspondence from Mexico" (1905). Severyanin's experience in the construction of a female subject in the lyrics influenced the experiments of Valery Bryusov (poetic collection New Poems of Nelly) and some poems of the poetess Nadezhda Lvova. Thus, interacting with both mass and "high" poetry, Severyanin creates multifaceted works that ironically reflect the contemporary literary process.

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