“Young Heroes” by Yu. Verkhovsky (1943): An Epic, a Dithyramb and a Pioneer Bonfire

Purpose. Yuri N. Verkhovsky was a poet and philologist, a follower of Alexander N. Veselovsky and Vyacheslav I. Ivanov. His heritage belongs to two different eras – the Silver Age and Soviet Russia, and it is an example of transformation of the artistic discoveries and poetic concepts of the early 20^th century in the official Soviet culture during Stalin’s time. It is also an option for restoring cultural continuity, as he wrote about it in his articles and poems from different periods. The poem Young Heroes, published in 1943 in the newspaper Uralsky Rabochi [The Ural Worker] (Sverdlovsk, USSR), is considered as a fact of both mobilization propaganda literature in the 1940s and the restoration of epic and dithyrambic features in Soviet literature. 

Results. The theses about the unity of the front and the hinterland, as well as the orientation towards the mobilization of creative, physical, and spiritual forces, as broadcast by the press in the 1940s, suggest to the poet a poetic language that meets the demands of the time. This language is simple and understandable to the mass reader and is close to the style of posters or slogans. On the other hand, accessible popular newspaper poetry, adopting classical forms and drawing on folk poetry, fulfills the principles of symbolism. The poem’s case shows conscious archaization, when the original magical and suggestive functions of the poetic word are returned, as Russian symbolists talked about. Excerpts from the poem are being republished for the first time.

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