V. T. SHALAMOV AS “A FORMALIST”: THE TYPOLOGY OF FORMAL MEANS IN A LYRICAL BOOK “KOLYMA NOTEBOOKS”

The article highlights the poetics of V. T. Shalamov’s poems in the book of lyrics “Kolyma notebooks”. A striking feature of Shalamov’s work is the desire to capture the cruel world of the GULAG combined with close attention to the form of a literary work. As a result of the analysis, a typology of formal techniques defi ning the idiostyle of Shalamov-poet is outlined: actualization of extra-metric means with a quite traditional metric repertoire, attention to the architectonic elements of the text, manifestation of the phonic level, conscious regulation of the length (volume) of the poetic text, the implementation of “grammatical models” as a principle of the organization of the whole. In particular, it is shown that the main number of the texts in the “Kolyma notebooks” belong to syllabic-accentual versifi cation: fi rst of all, these are iambus and trochee. There are only 464 works in the book, 281 poems (60.56%) of which were written in iambus, 111 (23.92%) in trochee. At the same time, the rhythms of syllabic-accential texts are diverse and rich due to a number of extra-metric means. First of all, it is the “stringing of pyrrhichiae” in two-syllable sizes and pronounced rhythmic failures that mark the semantic signifi cance of a word (utterance) in verse. In addition, the “calling card” of Shalamov becomes the iambic diff erence (i.e. regulated alternation of lines of diff erent lengths). Shalamov’s work, as a whole, demonstrates the importance of the construction, organization of the work — this is, for example, the search for a key (reference) word in a verse, the choice of the initial or fi nal text in the cycle, the order of the poems in the book of poems. In the article special attention is paid to the implementation of “grammatical models” as a principle of text organization. In “Kolyma notebooks” two varieties of such grammatical models are implemented. One of them we can call “imperative writing” (by analogy with the formula proposed by A. K. Zholkovsky: “infi nitive writing”), the second, respectively, “subjunctive”. In addition, the titles, the initial and fi nal lines (the last verse) of the poem are highlighted as strong positions.