The Burning Word : History and Myth in Maximilian Voloshin's Neopalimaia Kupina

The first decades of the twentieth century shook Russia to the core with war, revolution, and terror. This transformation of society is reflected in the literature of the times. One such work is the book Neopalimaia Kupina: Stikhi o voine i revoliutsii (The Burning Bush: Poems about War and Revolution) by Maximilian Voloshin (1877–1932). Containing poems written from 1905 to 1924, it is a work which depicts the war years and revolutionary period as one of many turning points in Russian history. This dissertation shows how Voloshin, a poet closely affiliated with the Russian Symbolists who had a profound interest in anthroposophy and occultism, used poetry not only to document the events of his times, but also to attempt to create theurgic art which could initiate a national revival. The dissertation examines the book’s compositional history, and outlines resurrection through death as the book’s underlying model.

Emma-Lina Löflund is a specialist in Russian poetry. She is affiliated with the Department of
Slavic and Baltic Studies, Finnish, Dutch and German at Stockholm University.

This is a doctoral thesis in Slavic Languages at Stockholm University, Sweden 2021.