THE THEME OF POWER IN WORKS OF ALEXANDER BASHLACHEV: THE IMAGES OF STALIN AND NAPOLEON

• Main Authors: Vitaliy A Gavrikov, Evgeniy A Klyachenkov
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia (RUDN University) 2018-12-01
• Series: RUDN Journal of Studies in Literature and Journalism
• Subjects: Башлачев; тема власти; Сталин; Наполеон; Абсолютный вахтер; «Мастер и Маргарита» Булгакова; «История одного города» Салтыкова-Щедрина
• Online Access: http://journals.rudn.ru/literary-criticism/article/view/18783

The article deals with the theme of power in the works of Alexander Bashlachev. First and foremost, it concerns the images of “bloody rulers”: Stalin and Napoleon. “Stalin text” is implemented in the cycle of “Songs in a whisper”. In these works, Vysotsky’s influence is felt, which Bashlachev probably inherits his antitotalitarian pathos from. For Bashlachev the phenomenon of power is associated with the theme of death and the infernal world. This tendency is most fully implemented in the song “The Absolute Janitor”, where Stalin is represented as a part of the impersonal force from the beyound, its “guardian”. The image of Napoleon is considered on the material of the song “Griboedovsky Waltz”. In addition, the article offers the periodization of Bashlachev’s works. The authors distinguish five stages: early poems, early songs, songs of the “Russian cycle”, the “ontological” stage and the fifth stage, in the center of which there are experiments with lexical consonances and searches in the field of etymology. The third (“Russian”) period is full of lyrical thoughts about the nature of power more than any other.