Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Smith, G. S

Titel

A Verbal Exhibition: Lev Loseff's ‘Captions to Pictures Seen in Childhood’

Ist Teil von

• The Slavonic and East European review (1928), 2018-10, Vol.96 (4), p.731-760

Ort / Verlag

Modern Humanities Research Association

Erscheinungsjahr

2018

Quelle

Alma/SFX Local Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Each of the five segments of the poem ‘Captions to Pictures Seen in Childhood’ by Lev Loseff (1937–2009) is concerned with an engraving, the creator of which remains unidentified by the poet and students of his work. The article argues that the lack of such identification should not inhibit analysis; as is suggested in recent theory and practice concerning ekphrasis, the actual properties of the original pictures may be less important than the interpretation the poet constructs from them. The five segments are then briefly surveyed in turn; they cover a wide range of persons, periods and locations, none of them Russian except the last. Evidence from Loseff's autobiographical writings suggests that the engravings in question were probably illustrations in books for children. A quantitative analysis is then offered of the versification of the poem as a whole, followed by a survey of other, mainly thematic, unifying elements.