Human Document Strategy in Anatoly Shteiger’s Later Lyrics

Anatoly Shteiger (1907–1944) was a Russian poet of the first wave of Russian emigration, whose poetry expressed the aesthetics of the Parisian Note. This émigré literary movement sought to preserve the viability of Russian poetry amidst the pan-European spiritual crisis by making it more intimate. Shteiger applied a diary strategy to his last collections of verses Ingratitude and 2 × 2 = 4, where he overcame the monology of consciousness. The ego- and literary-centrism of his early poetry gave way to dialogue as a means of integration into the contemporary socio-cultural reality. Shteiger’s diary strategy evolved together with his personal and creative development as self-observation turned into a way of world cognition, and the formal features of diary entries became artistic devices. The figure of the Other affected the subjective organization of the lyrics, resulting in a lyrical us-voice, a lyrical personage, a certain subjective syncretism, and an explicit addressee figure. The themes of the pursuit of happiness, mutual understanding, flesh-and-spirit relations, and purposeful creativity reflected the biographical and cultural context. In Shteiger’s last poetic collections, the diary perspective was the fundamental principle of artistic world modeling while the diary poetics was the method for selecting and organizing empirical material.

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