W. B. Yeats and 20th Century Russian Music: New Aesthetic Ideas at the Crossroads of Culture

About the author:

Abstract:

The article dwells upon the conceptual parallels between one of the greatest Irish poets W. B. Yeats and Russian composers of the 20^th century, Alexander Scriabin and Igor Stravinsky.

Yeats first became known in Russia in the end of the 19^th century. Gradually, his works entered the literary context and subsequently opened a new perspective in the critical studies of early 20^th century Russian poetry (prominent examples include works by the linguist and anthropologist Vyacheslav Ivanov, the poet and translator Grigory Kruzhkov, and so forth). However, very little attention has been given so far to the intriguing connection between Yeats and his Russian musical contemporaries.

Thus, the article focuses on the comparative study of the philosophy and aesthetic principles of W. B. Yeats and the Russian composers, and highlights similarities in their aesthetic systems (such as the idea of time and Hermetic symbolism in the philosophy of Yeats and Alexander Scriabin).

The comparative approach allows the author to look at the music of Scriabin and Stravinsky through the prism of poetry and vice versa to view Yeats’s works through the music of his Russian contemporaries. The author also aims to find out how the poet and the composers expressed similar ideas and aesthetic principles using completely different systems — that of music and that of the language.

References:

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