Studia Slavica
Volume/Issue:
Volume 70: Issue 1
“Париж обитая, низок был бы я, кабы…”: V. F. Hodasevič and the (Parisian) European Night
Author:
Angelica Fascella Department of Humanities, Università di Pavia, Pavia, Italia

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https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7621-5230
Pages:
39–52
Online Publication Date:
25 Mar 2025
Publication Date:
19 May 2025
Article Category:
Research Article
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1556/060.2025.00184
Keywords:
Hodasevič; Paris; poetry; emigration; Europe; Russia
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This article aims to reconstruct the relationship between the poet and literary critic Vladislav Felicianovič Hodasevič (1886–1939) and the city of Paris, where he spent the final years of his life. The French capital was his ultimate residence as an émigré and the primary centre of Russian emigration following the 1917 Russian Revolution. Hodasevič’s status as an émigré, along with his time in Paris – where he settled permanently in 1925 after wandering across the European continent – profoundly influenced the final phase of his literary career and ultimately led him to cease writing poetry.

Hodasevič emigrated to Europe with his third wife, the poet Nina Aleksandrovna Berberova (1901–1993), in order to escape the repressive policies and cultural environment of the newly formed Soviet Union, which regarded art merely as a tool of propaganda and systematically silenced artists who either did not support the regime or avoided political themes in their work. However, Hodasevič never fully adapted to the European literary and social scene, of which Paris was one of the most prominent representatives. Indeed, as Western culture itself faced the threats of modernity and the violence of emerging political powers, the European cultural landscape only heightened the poet’s sense of rootlessness and pessimism.

Having fled the “darkness” of the Soviet regime, Hodasevič found himself trapped in the “European night.” Evropejskaâ noč (European Night) is, in fact, the title of his last collection of poems, published in Paris in 1927 as part of the collection Sobranie Stihov (Collection of Poems). In this work, he underscores the impossibility of writing poetry in modern Europe.

To fully explore Hodasevič’s relationship with Paris, the first part of this article provides a brief account of his life in Europe, highlighting the difficulties that ultimately led him to abandon poetry. The second part examines some of the most significant poems he wrote in Paris and its suburbs. Many of these are included in Evropejskaâ noč, while others, composed between 1925 and 1938, were published posthumously.

Through a thematic analysis of the most significant examples, it becomes evident that the poems written during Hodasevič’s émigré period vividly reflect the stylistic evolution marking the final phase of his poetic career. These poems represent his last attempt to reconstruct his identity after the trauma of emigration fractured his self-image, conveying his despair, loss of faith in art, and profound inability to adapt to Western customs and values.

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Cover Studia Slavica
Studia Slavica
Print ISSN:
0039-3363
Online ISSN:
1588-290X

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Editor-in-Chief: Róbert KISS SZEMÁN (Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, HU)

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  • Krisztina MENYHÁRT (Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, HU)
  • Péter PÁTROVICS (Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, HU)
  • Kata JURACSEK (Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, HU)

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  • Kazimierz WOLNY-ZMORZYŃSKI (University of Silesia in Katowice, PL)
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Studia Slavica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae
Language Slavic languages
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ISSN 0039-3363 (Print)
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