The Constructive Principles of Igor Severyanin’s "The Medallions"

Igor Severyanin’s early texts (until 1918) have become a topic of a number of his contemporary critical reviews and literary studies of the 21st century, while his later works might be considered the least studied. The present study is devoted to Igor Severyanin’s collection of sonnets The Medallions published in 1934. The collection seems to be a unique modernistic experience in creating the history of literature and music in verse. While creating literary portraits, Severyanin mentions the facts of the heroes of the sonnets’ life, uses direct quotes, techniques of stylization and parody (parodijnost’ and parodičnost’, according to Yury Tynyanov), and as a result enters to a literary dialogue. This study analyzes the principles of structure of the collection The Medallions, the poetics of the sonnets and compares them with similar ones published in the magazines of that time (namely, Satyrikon and New Satyrikon).