The Mystery of Lexical Coincidences in the Works of Yuri Tynianov and Osip Mandelstam

Abstract

The essay explores lexical coincidences in the works of Yuri
Tynianov and Osip Mandelshtam — coincidences which appeared in different
time periods, independently of each other.
In the second half of the 1920s, Tynianov wrote the novel Death of the Vazir-
Mukhtar which, while dealing with events of the 1820s, anticipated the soon-to-
be disappearance of free artistic speech.
Ten years later, Tynianov's anticipation became a reality — reflected in
Mandelstam's poem “Lamarck”. Freedom of creative activity did not disappear
completely but became, in many respects, a thing of the past. Even if the hope
for the return of free expression still existed, no one imagined when this event
would take place. Loyalty to the regime and assentation were the signs of the
times. Studies of Soviet artistic life in that period reveal the extreme degree of
the unnatural selection aimed at creating unwavering servants of the regime.
One of such servants wrote: “In today's situation, genius and villainy are two
compatible things: the killing of a Mozart may assist history”.
Such “assistance to history” became a Soviet norm and, according to
independent Russian émigré observers, led to a situation in which Soviet
literature lost the position within world literature obtained by the Russian
classical literature of the 19th century and acquired unmistakably provincial
traits. As Shigalev declared in Dostoyevsky's Demons, “All are slaves and equal
in their slavery”.
Analogous processes were taking place in cinema, where pro-regime
servilism — due to cinema's ability to influence the audience more rapidly and
more powerfully than literature — acquired its most dangerous form. This was
fully understood by the Bolshevik regime which held cinema in high regard.
“Creating art? No, doing what you were told to do”, — this was how Soviet
filmmaker Leonid Trauberg later described those times.