“ELOQUENCE” AS A CONSTRUCTIVE PRINCIPLE OF POETICS OF BRODSKY’S “BIG POEMS”

Abstract

The article deals with various aspects of the category “eloquence” in the aesthetic system of Brodsky, reconstructed on the material of essays and interviews of the poet. “Eloquence” is becoming one of the design principles of poetics of Brodsky’s “big poems”, at the same time beyond the lyric and epic genres. Large amounts of the poetic text are kept not by the plot or the system of characters, but by the unity of rhetorical effects. The language of “big poems” is in a dialectical relationship with the dynamics of the images, informing it about associative mechanisms of deployment. Possible lines of “oratorical” poetic tradition, on which Brodsky could rely, are determined. So, on the basis of the kinship of Brodsky’s system with Baroque-Classicist poetics (confirmed by the poet himself and researchers), the principle of “eloquence” of Brodsky’s “big poems” was compared with rhetorical conventions of Russian ode (allocated by Tynianov).