Story in Verse "Dorozhen'ka": Poetics, Literary Traditions, the Place in the Works of A. I. Solzhenitsyn

While the prose of A. I. Solzhenitsyn is still at the heart of numerous discussion, his poetry, particularly, the poem The Path (Dorozhen'ka), has been generally neglected. Despite the existence of few articles discussing this poem along with Solzhenitsyn’s other works, a significant number of questions remain open. The topic of this research paper is twofold. On the one hand, it examines the place of the poem in the context of Solzhenitsyn’s early prose and reveals how the narrative strategies of Solzhenitsyn changed during 40-s and 50-s of the past century and what common themes and symbols unite the works of this period. On the other hand, it analyzes how Solzhenitsyn interacts with the existing literary traditions within The Path, what works influenced him the most, how a poetic meter corresponds to a certain plot and what logic the author follows, choosing a meter.