Visual Code and Cultural Memory in Lev Loseff’s Cycle of Ekphrases

Abstract

The article provides a comprehensive analysis of Lev Loseff’s cycle Podpisi k vidennym v detstve kartinkam (Captions for Pictures Seen in Childhood), which is a unique phenomenon in Russian poetry of the second half of the 20th century. The article proposes a new approach to analyzing ekphrasis as a technology of meaning generation, where the visual image becomes a node connecting personal experience, cultural memory, and philosophical reflection. The cycle is examined as a holistic metatext that models the formation of artistic consciousness through the reconstruction of personal visual experience. The innovative aspect of the research lies in revealing the structural unity of the cycle, organized according to the principle of a five-part dramaturgy, where each poem represents a stage in the formation of artistic consciousness. The central hypothesis of the work is the concept of a ‘machine of non-oblivion’ – a special mechanism of memory aimed at preserving the marginal, private, and technological aspects of the experience of encountering art. It is proven that the visual imagery of the cycle stems from a contamination of classical engraving (Gustave Doré, Albrecht Dürer) and the Soviet children's book of the 1940s–1950s. The methodological basis of the study is a holistic structural analysis, supplemented by intertextual and cultural-historical approaches. The conclusion is made about the democratic nature of the poet's gaze, shifted from the peaks of the canon to peripheral details, which forms a special poetic optics akin to children's perception. The article demonstrates how the poetics of the "stroke" in Loseff's cycle becomes not only a formal device but also a metaphor for poetic creativity based on work with absence and void. The cycle demonstrates the democratization of the very idea of the classic, which appears not as a frozen monument, but as a living organism that generates a complex ecosystem of cultural connections.