Literary Mask of Angelika Safyanova: Genesis and Literary Context

Abstract

The article analyzes the poetic mask of Angelika Safyanova — a literary mystification by Lev Nikulin — in the context of other famous literary hoaxes of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Nikulin’s experience is compared with the literary masks of Kozma Prutkov, G.P. Danilevsky (who created the mask of Evgenia Sarafanova), and V. Bryusov, who published the collection “Poems of Nelly” in 1913 — a collection that reflected various types of women’s poetry at the turn of the 1910s — as well as with the hoax of the French poet Pierre Louÿs “Les Chansons de Bilitis” (1894). It can be argued that Nikulin continues the game of his predecessors and, obviously, is largely guided by their experience. He also creates pseudo-feminine poetry, but significantly enhances the parody-ironic aspect. “Angelika Safyanova’s Poems”, like “Poems of Nelly”, are a catalog of the most relevant topics and problems of mass women’s poetry of the 1910s (love, travel, big city, signs of modernity, entertainment, reflections on life, etc.). If Bryusov rather objectifies women’s poetic discourse and marks it as a new significant phenomenon in the literary world, then Nikulin is already ironic about its clichés and patterns, but also expresses sadness about the passing era. The analysis demonstrates that Angelica’s author took into account the findings of her predecessors to create a successful image of the young poetess during the period of his literary emergence, and later revealed and debunked the hoax.