THE IMAGE OF THE FLYING DUTCHMAN IN THE POETRY OF O.A. OKHAPKIN: THE LYRICAL CYCLE “THE ROARING FORTIES”
The plot of the ghost ship “The Flying Dutchman” is not coincidentally end-to-end for the poetry of O.A. Okhapkin, found in texts of different genres and time periods. In the poet’s creative worldview, the fate of the ship’s captain and his crew is associated with the difficult and sometimes dramatic fates of the creative intelligentsia of Leningrad in the 1960s and 70s. The plot of the ghost ship embodies the fate of the poet of the Leningrad samizdat, the conditions and circumstances that accompanied the creative process. In this article, for the first time, the subject of special analysis is the unpublished and previously unknown lyrical cycle “The Roaring Forties”, written by the poet in the period 1977-78. The manuscript of the work is kept in the personal archive of the poet’s widow T.I. Kovalkova. The image of the Flying Dutchman, created by Okhapkin in the Roaring Forties, is considered in the context of the poet’s own work and the context of the previous cultural tradition.