In a Dialogue with the Poet

Abstract

The article devoted to questions
of musical and poetic synthesis raises
the issue of the relationship between
the composer and the poet in its special
interpretation, defined as spiritual “affinity”.
In Elena Gokhman’s song cycle “Insomnia”
analyzed from this position, a whole range
of points of contact between the artistic worlds
of the poet and the composer opens up
to the poems of Marina Tsvetaeva. The analysis
of the musical-poetic text at the pre-musical
and musical levels of its organization,
in the unity of syntagmatic and paradigmatic
structures, which unfold, on the one hand,
as a psychological “drama of the gap”,
on the other — as a metaphorical discourse
in the space of the title image of the cycle,
allowed us to reveal in Elena Gokhman’s
“Insomnia” a hidden intertextual plan, also
dating back to the work of Marina Tsvetaeva,
revealing the closest contact between
the creative natures of the poet and
the composer. At the same time, spiritual
“affinity” as it is considered reveals “flaws”
of incompatibility of creative consciousnesses,
which, in accordance with the etymology
of the Old Slavic “co-kinship”, allows
us to see the dialogue between the poet
and the composer in the dynamics
of rapprochements and divergences —
not only moments of striking spiritual unity
of artists belonging to different cultural eras,but also differences that determine
the exclusive spiritual appearance
of the work born in dialogue with the poet.