PUSHKIN&ACUTE;S "FEAST IN TIME OF PLAGUE" IN A. V. TIMOFFEV&ACUTE;S "POETIC SCENE" "THE FINAL DAY"
The article takes a close look at the mysteria “The Final Day” by Aleksey Timofeev, a Romantic epigone, who as early as 1835 articulated a poetic response to Pushkin´s “Feast in Time of Plague”. The exposition in Timofeev´s mysteria reproduces with almost complete exactitude the beginning of the ´little tragedy´, but, as the plot goes on, other literary sources appear to be of more significance, notably Byron´s mysteria “Heaven and Earth” and the christian eschatology. Contrasting themes of life-feast and catastrophe, entwined within Pushkin´s drama, along with the problem of facing death, must have seemed particularly appealing to Timofeev, but his concept is largely polemic: a feast in Time of Plague turns to a feast on Last Jugment´s eve. Timofeev attempted to reveal the apocalyptical potential of Pushkin´s text, not unfolded in the original (he supposed) by transposing it into another genre, a mysteria, and presumably augmenting its philosophical dimensions.