«Those days when on the THRESHOLD OF “The paradise…”»: Boris Sadovskoy and his poem «Veniamin Ternovsky»

In accordance with the plans to prepare a scientific collection of B.A. Sadovskoy's works, the author is working to acquaint readers with previously unknown texts of the poet. This article provides the first publication of the poem "Veniamin Ternovsky", referring to the initial period of Sadovskoy's literary activity. The subject of the research is the creative history and the prototypical basis of this work. The purpose of the article is to create a detailed commentary on the poem, reflecting its connection with the biography and work of the poet, as well as with Pushkin’s literary context. The study is based on the materials of the manuscript of the poem, the memoirs and the epistolary of its curator, Moscow philologist M.A. Yakhontova, published collections of poems by Sadovskoy. It was discovered that the prototypes of the characters in the poem were real individuals, whom Sadovskoy met in “Rai (Paradise)” — the Vladimir Realschule of Nizhny Novgorod, a favorite place of young people of pre-revolutionary years. Among them, there was Lydia Glazova, who played a special role for the poet, and to whom Sadovskoy dedicated a number of poems. Some of them are published for the first time. The author emphasizes the importance of “Veniamin Ternovsky” for Sadovskoy's creative self-determination: the poem revealed such features of the poet’s original style as a satirical-parody syllable, a caricature style, grotesque, the use of a literary game and a mask. Numerous intertextual links of the poem with “Eugene Onegin” by A.S. Pushkin testify of Sadovskoy’s attention to Pushkin’s literary heritage, an interest in which has become the general trend of cultural life at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. The work is of undoubted interest to the researchers of the work of B.A. Sadovskoy, due to the fact that it deals with the aesthetic evolution of his poetry, as well as for specialists in the field of literary and historical regional studies.

B.A. Sadovskoy, collected works, «Veniamin Ternovsky», the first publication, Lidia Glazova, M.A. Yakhontova, the diary of Elizaveta Sadovskaya, Zvantsevy, Anatoly Glazov.