Poetics of the new year verse cycle by M. V. Isakovsky (comparative and typological aspects)

Six New Year (eonic) poems by M. V. Isakovsky, written between 1942 and 1972, are examined in the article as a non-author’s cycle with its own ‘plot’. It captured such philosophical phenomena as death, guilt, suffering, chance, etc., which revealed themselves in a sacred moment of time — the New Year. The three “battlefield” toasts reflected Isakovsky’s sense of guilt before himself and the people; the desire to cast a spell on hostile forces and thus bring victory closer. The humorous post-war toast of 1948 demonstrated the return of life in the USSR to a peaceful track, which was signified by the restoration of state and family holidays, dinner parties. The official ‘newspaper’ toast “for 1958” expresses the idea of “new happiness” that emphasizes the motive of peaceful labor exploits of the Soviet people, while the poems “for 1973” can be classified as confessional. Isakovsky’s New Year poems are also analyzed in the context of two traditions — Russian aeonic poetry and ritual toasts. Connections with poems by V. A. Zhukovsky, P. A. Vyazemsky, M. I. Tsvetaeva, A. T. Tvardovsky are traced. New Year poetic toast, on the one hand, became one of the many genres that contributed to the unity of the Russian people in the face of mortal danger during the war; on the other hand, it preserved a number of archaic topoi (the experience of the New Year’s transition as a sacred time; ritual magic formulas that invoke Death, Time and Fate; the biblical archetype of the chosen people, etc.).