Bryusov's Pushkiniana in the Perspective of Modern Cultural Studies

In the work, in the light of modern cultural studies, the literary and poetic activity of Valery Bryusov, a bright Soviet critic and an outstanding symbolist poet of the Silver Age, is reinterpreted. The material for the analysis was Bryusov’s Pushkiniana and, in particular, the article “The Copper Horseman” (1909) and the poem of the Soviet period “Variations on the theme of the ‘Copper Horseman’“ (1923). It is traced how the critic Bryusov analyzed Pushkin’s “Petersburg story” in detail, how analytically precisely he formed the main trends of the research discourse. The appeal to the system of arrangement of Pushkin’s characters explicated Bryusov’s idea of the antithetical confrontation between the autocrat Peter and the “most insignificant of the most insignificant” poor official Eugene. However, an analysis of the works of modern Pushkinists allowed the authors of the article to show that Bryusov, the researcher, was mistaken in his hypothesis of the “little man”. It is shown that the prototype of poor Eugene in Pushkin’s “The Bronze Horseman” was his closest friend, the lyceum student Wilhelm Kuchelbecker. But the involvement in the analysis of Bryusov’s poem “Variations on the theme of the Bronze Horseman” allowed us to show that the poet Bryusov, unlike the critic Bryusov, turned out to be visionarily more accurate, intuitively introducing into the lyrical text the name of “noble Eugene”, the lyceum student Wilhelm. As a result, the difference between the poet-Bryusov and the critic-Bryusov is clarified, it is shown that the restriction of the poet’s freedoms in the Soviet years activated his intuitive vision of literature and, as a result, history.