Arsenova T. An. Boris Ryzhy in Nizhny Novgorod (An Episode from the Last Year of the Poet’s Life)

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Arsenova T. An. Boris Ryzhy in Nizhny Novgorod (An Episode from the Last Year of the Poet’s Life)

Tatiana An. Arsenova
Institute of History and Archaeology of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Russia, Еkaterinburg)
ORCID: 0000-0001-9561-2445
E-mail: chelovekmira@mail.ru

Download | Back to the Content № 2. 2025

UDC 929
DOI: 10.58529/2782-6511-2025-4-2-60-83

ABSTRACT. The article presents an attempt to reconstruct one episode from the biography of the poet Boris Ryzhy in the context of the last year of his life — his only trip to Nizhny Novgorod. It took place in May 2000 (a year before his suicide) and was timed to coincide with the literary festival with the conference “Another Province”. The festival’s objectives included a revision of the state of contemporary literature and the position of authors in Russian regions at the end of the first post-Soviet decade; the issue of creative prospects of a “provincial” writer, resources and limitations imposed on his activities by geographical and socio-cultural remoteness from the capital’s literary process with its infrastructural advantages was problematized. The article shows that the festival’s agenda was relevant for B. Ryzhy in the last year of his life as it concerned the pressing issue of planning for the near future: to stay in Yekaterinburg or to look for an opportunity to move to one of the capitals. The author puts forward a hypothesis that the answer to this question — the decision to stay in his hometown — came to Ryzhy after his trip to Rotterdam (it took place a month after Nizhny Novgorod). To reconstruct the episode, the author collected recollections and photographs of festival participants; clarified the circumstances of the festival, its agents and approximate agenda, as well as details of Ryzhy’s stay in Nizhny Novgorod, including exact addresses in the city he visited (materials for possible literary excursions around the city); identified newspaper and online periodical publications dedicated to the festival; analyzed verbal portraits of Boris Ryzhy in Nizhny Novgorod, compiled by Sergei Kostyrko, Alexey Golitsyn, Kirill Kobrin, Dmitry Zernov, Maria Kuznetsova, as well as Ryzhy’s self-portrait in the setting of the Nizhny Novgorod festival from his prose “Rotterdam Diary”; made conclusions about the poet’s style of creative behavior and his psychological state in 2000.

KEYWORDS: Boris Ryzhy, literary Nizhny Novgorod, festival “Another Province”, creative behavior, poet’s image, literary process, province and the capital, Dutch theme in the works of Boris Ryzhy, Boris Ryzhy’s Nizhny Novgorod addresses, Boris Ryzhy’s wardrobe

For citation: Arsenova T. An. [Boris Ryzhy in Nizhny Novgorod (An Episode from the Last Year of the Poet’s Life)]. Istoriko-geograficheskiy zhurnal [Historical Geography Journal], 2025, vol. 4, no. 2, pp. 60–83. DOI: 10.58529/2782-6511-2024-4-1-60-83 (In Russian).

Received 10 October 2024
Accepted 15 May 2024

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