UDC

821.511.132-1:821.511.111

Authors

Eltsova Elena Vlasovna
Institute of Language, Literature and History, Komi Science Centre, Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences
24 Kommunisticheskaya St., Syktyvkar, 167000, Respublika Komi, Russian Federation;
e-mail: alena.eltsova@mail.ru

Abstract

The motifs, imagery and rhythmics of Finnish folklore and literature had produced considerable influence on Komi literature of the 20th century and V.T. Chistalev’s (1890–1939) works in particular. The Kalevala Karelian-Finnish epic and works of Finnish authors formed the basis for such Chistalev’s poetic and prosaic writings of the 1920s as The Birth of Poetry, The Creation of Kantele, Somewhere Far Away by the Forest Lake, and About the Forest. The undertaken comparative analysis of these works with The Kalevala and with the prosaic miniature Praise of Grief by the Finnish author Juhani Aho showed Chistalev’s use of the experience and traditions of the closely related foreign literature and revealed the relationships between the literatures of the two kindred peoples. The Kalevala and Finnish literature provided Chistalev primarily with the images of kantele and a small isolated forest house, motifs of the origin of creativity and purpose of poetry, as well as with such devices as personification, syntactic parallelism, repetitions, and a rhythmic system. It should be mentioned, though, that the Komi writer’s perception of Finnish literary traditions is a creative process which is not limited to direct borrowings. Special attention in this article is given to literary translation, author’s interpretation, transformation, creative editing and revision of the original. The author of this paper comes to the conclusion that V.T. Chistalev’s original works based on Finnish folklore and literature had enriched Komi literature by expanding the thematic and aesthetic potential of Komi poetry, brought it closer to art treasures of other peoples and became an embodiment of the national lifestyle, literary tradition, and the Komi writer’s individuality.

Keywords

Komi literature, The Kalevala, Finnish literature, literary translation, author’s interpretation, origins of creativity

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