Where Is the 13th One from? (Riddles About the Date of A. Blok’s Speech On the Destiny of a Poet)

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.22455/2541-8297-2025-35-223-245
EDN:

https://elibrary.ru/XOAALA
УДК / UDK: 821.161.1.0
Publication Type: Research Article
Issue:

no. 1 (35), 2025
Author: Svetlana V. Fedotova
About the author:

Svetlana V. Fedotova, DSc in Philology, Leading Research Fellow, А.M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Povarskaya St., 25A, bld. 1, 121069 Moscow, Russia.

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9991-4966

E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Abstract:

The article deals with the question of the exact chronology of Alexander Blok’s three famous speeches, “On the Destiny of a Poet,” in February 1921. In the memoirs of contemporaries and in the scientific literature there the dating of these events is still controversial (10, 11, 13, 14, 16, or 26 February), as well as their number (3 or 4). On the basis of comparative analysis of various testimonies (in posthumous collections of Blok’s works, in diaries, letters, memoirs of contemporaries), the article establishes the exact dates of the speech, and identifies three most likely sources that provoked the distortion of facts in further scientific research. According to the hypothesis put forward, they include the diary entry by K.I. Chukovsky, the official report on the Pushkin Days in the journal Vestnik Literatury, and V.F. Khodasevich’s article “To the History of ʽThe Days of Russian Culture’.”
Keywords: Blok, speech “On the Destiny of a Poet,” the Pushkin Days, journal report, memoirs, diaries, Chukovsky, Khodasevich, chronology.
For citation:

Fedotova, S.V. “Where Is the 13th One from? (Riddles About the Date of A. Blok’s Speech ʽOn the Destiny of a Poet’).” Literaturnyi fakt, no. 1 (35), 2025, pp. 223–245. (In Russ.) https://doi.org/10.22455/2541-8297-2025-35-223-245
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