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DOI 10.52172/2587-6945_2021_18_4_103

Abstract

The article analyses the video versions of two poems by A. S. Pushkin – «I loved you ...» and «I remember a wonderful moment...». The first poem is presented on the Internet by a three-minute mini-film by actor Anatoly Beliy; the second – by a four-minute clip – the song by a rock musician Vyacheslav Butusov. The videos were shot in different styles, partly reflecting the confrontation between the «Moscow» and «Petersburg» artistic cultures. The article makes a «storyboard» of two videos; an analysis of their composition, plot, images, the manner of reading (A. Beliy), and the interview (V. Butusov) leads to the following conclusions.

The two poems by A. Pushkin are archetypal and precedent-setting for Russian culture and are unconsciously reproduced by native speakers of the Russian language to describe life experience similar to Pushkin's. «I remember a wonderful moment...» orients the reader to achieve «completeness of being», «I loved you...» – to overcome a dramatic emotional (love) experience. Both performers strive to feel into the corresponding Pushkin’s text, to make it «their own», to reveal for themselves, and therefore for their audience, its complex meanings expressed through simple, in general, words.

A. Beliy, an actor, reader, director and hero of the film in one person, uses fantasy techniques and religious-symbolic images to visualize the meanings of romantic elegy. V. Butusov, performing the work about a miracle, on the contrary, resorts to a realistic shooting style, with the elements of retro and documentary cinema. He is closer not to a romantic love story, but to an elegiac mood as such, penetration into the atmosphere of St. Petersburg, beloved by him and Pushkin, fantasizing on Pushkin’s themes.

Keywords

A. S. Pushkin, video poetry, media text, completeness of being, phenomenology of love and happiness, Vyach. Butusov, Anat. Beliy, unconsciousness, reception of the classics.