'Nam Pamiat’ Mir Svoi Berezhet': Home and Memory in Peter Viazemsky’s Poetic Collection 'V Doroge i Doma' (1862)

• In Event: Peter Viazemsky (1792–1878): “The Lively Recollection of a Great Epoch”

Abstract

Viazemsky’s V Doroge i Doma (1862) was his first and only poetic collection published in his lifetime. Coming out of print a year after Viazemsky’s semicentenary in literature, the collection, indeed, became an epitome of its author’s poetic oeuvre. In my presentation, I will focus on the theme of memory as developed throughout the collection and its correlation with the image of a house / home. By the example of such long poems as “Koliaska” (1826), “Kibitka” (1828), “Roditel’skii dom” (1830), “Samovar” (1838), “Maslenitsa na chuzhoi storone” (1853), “Riabina” (1854), “Na proshchan’e” (1855), “Ostaf’evo” (1857), and “Dom Ivana Ivanovicha Dmitrieva” (1860), I will show the development of this connection through the years. By juxtaposing Viazemsky’s philosophical poetic contemplations with his early Anacreontic verse, I will also demonstrate how the image of one’s house / home as a depository of memory gets its reflection in the theme of memory as one’s house / home; how flexible and loose the borders of a house / home may become; and how a house / home—physical or metaphysical—can defy the linearity of time.

Author

• Daria Solodkaia, Independent Scholar