Boiling cup

The name of the first poetry collection of the Severyanin dates back to the famous poem by F. I. Tyutchev " Spring Thunderstorm ", one of the stanzas of which serves as an epigraph that precedes the collection. This stanza sets the tone for the entire collection and precedes its languid lyrical mood: before the eyes of the reader there is an accurate and multifaceted image of a loud boiling spring cup, which turns out to be splashed to the ground. Very accurately, the author conveys the psycho-emotional filling of the image, the mood of freshness and clarity of the spring day, sings “a hymn to jasmine nights” and “lilac rapture”. The first section of the collection, entitled “The Lilac of My Spring”, is thematically devoted to the need to achieve the rapture of the “hungry instinct” of love, for the sake of which there is a universal revival of spring nature and the formation of a new cycle of development of the universe.

First Section

The key motives of the first section of the book are the worship of the primordial power of redeeming love, the admiration for the spring renaissance of soul and nature, the sensual self-sufficiency of the unique moment of universal awakening. At the same time, one can speak of the duality of the impression made: the transparency and naivety of the lyrical attitude are captured, which is akin to the attitude of a child who knows the pristine sensual world - hence the sincerity of moods that bribes any reader. On the other hand, we have before us a bizarre manifestation of undisguised aesthetic mannerism, which, according to researcher S. M. Pinaev, to some extent impedes the purity and uncomplicated perception of new images. One of the central poems of the first section is called “Chanson Coquette” (literally translated as “playful song”), which largely resolves the reader’s emerging contradiction in the perception of the motives that dominate the poetic picture of the first section - a great genuine feeling is subordinated to the game factor. Often, the child’s kindness of the author and sympathy for all living things that come to life are turned into gossip (“A girl was crying in the park”), and the poetry of the rural beauty’s intimate feelings is perceived through the prism of a given molten image (“Chanson Russe”), which nevertheless creates an innovative uniqueness author's poetic discourse.

Second Section

The second section is somewhat different from the first, it is called "Lilac Ice Cream"; it demonstrates the author’s attitude to the transformation of the natural world by the trends of destructive civilization. The “otherworldly” mercenary calculation, an integral component of the development of an external civilization completely alien to the nature, cruelly intervenes in the world of pristine untouchable nature. The culture of feelings in the second section of the collection, manifesting the evolutionary dynamics of the author’s poetic world, is mercilessly subordinated to the phenomena of a pseudo-culture with deceptive but seductive pseudo-values ​​prevailing within it. The world proposed by Severyanin in “Lilac Ice Cream” turned inside out, it turns out to be very far from the ideal aspirations of the poet, and at the same time, in the understanding of his descriptor, it is a natural stage of the inevitable dystopia, which seems possible to overcome in the future. The anthropomorphic amalgamic creatures that inhabit it are called "daydreams," "courtesans," "excesses" and "ecstasy," while such a series of ironic-phantasmagoric nominations is not without the sensations of global tragedy, which the author uses with this kind of means of artistic expression used in the description altered context, intends to convey to the reader. Unnecessary, imperfect cinematography and a “wife-club” replace the idealized birch cottage on the “trout” river. Instead of a chaise rushing along bumps, the reader can now see “phaetons”, “gasoline landos”, “airplanes” and “elliptical springs”, which are faithful witnesses of a renewed, technocratic, anti-pantheistic to some extent world order. The poet generously pays tribute to the latest trends in modern fashion, but with ironic sadness refers to the whole entourage, which appears as a surrogate for life.

Third Section

The third section, entitled “Behind the Lyre's String Fence,” concentrates the irresistible author’s desire to rise above the extravagant and shocking disharmony of being, to free itself from the dictates of anti-humanistic conventions, from the irrational imperatives of the ersatz model of the same type of existence within the framework of the doctrine of a new civilization order. The poet, dissatisfied with this order, inevitably finding himself alone, but also forced to obey the conventions that the new world offers, is placed in a situation of vital choice. He finds his ideal in literature and art (poems “Vrubel”, “On the death of Fofanov”), in the universal greatness of nature (“Demon”, “Koktebel”). The poet in the third section of the collection goes through a state of a kind of redeeming long-awaited catharsis (“My Funeral”, “Sextin”), and faith in his own immortality, in the purification of the whole world, the main tools of which will be beauty and the spiritual connected with it, is also salutary - creationist threads of poetry.

Section Four

In the fourth and final section of the book, which brought Igor Severyanin popularity among the wider readership of Russia, a manifestation of the general poetic principles and attitudes of the author, an adherent of a new worldview, the only salvation and possible in conditions of total hegemony of vital decline, takes place on a value level. The section is called " Egofuturism ", by the name of a new poetic direction, the founder of which is considered a Northerner. This section is something like a poetic manifesto of a whole group of like-minded people, possessing a high power of persuasion; the art that this close-knit group adheres to is organically opposed to that decaying pseudo-culture that "decayed ... like Roquefort." The main motto of the poet in the fourth section, and throughout the book as a whole, is to merge creativity with nature. The author himself speaks of this as the need to be based on "primitive" and "savagery" in order to enable "to know the obscure land." The poet eventually becomes intoxicated by his own utopia, and the culmination of such a captivating full-blown personality intoxication is the judgment “I am the king of a country that does not exist” (poem “Dreamland”). A similar worldview, never before figured in Russian poetry, attracted the attention of readers with its authentic psycho-emotional self-sufficiency, which determined its high status in the context of the general multi-vector poetic concept adopted in the Silver Age. This unique fairy-tale country will remain an emblem in the minds of all fans of Igor Severyanin's work. She will receive the traditional name Mirrelia, in association with the famous poetess Mirra Lokhvitskaya, the personification of Russian Sapphian poetry (“Russian Sappho”), a singer of love and voluptuousness. In a broad sense, Northerner Mirrelia is a delightful mirage that obscures everyday reality, inhabited by all who are looking for their own special utopian and ideal dream world, who are not satisfied with this reality to one degree or another.

• Wreath to the poet: Igor Severyanin: Collection. Tallinn, 1987.
• Koshelev, V. Poet with an open soul. // Severyanin I., Poems, Moscow, 1988.
• Critics of the work of Igor Severyanin. Moscow, 1916.
• About Igor Northerner. Abstracts of scientific conference reports. Cherepovets, 1987.
• Russian literature of the Silver Age / Edited by V.V. Agenosov. Moscow, 1997, p. 311-324.