“Knot,” the Book of Poems by O. F. Bergholz as an Artistic Whole: Poetics of the Title, Composition, and Meta-Plot

The book of poems by O. F. Bergholz “Knot” has not been examined before as a polycyclic microgenre formation. The book’s metaphorical title, which sets the vector of the reader’s pre-understanding in line with dictionary meanings, has an additional connotation in Bergholz’s work notes: knot=prison=trial. The “Knot” contains four sections (“Trial,” “Memory,” “From Leningrad Diaries,” “Years”) and has the structure of a composition book. The author defended the structure of “Knot” when preparing the manuscript for publication and insisted that the book open with the “Trial” section, a narrative about the years of Stalinist repressions. In “Knot” Bergholz implemented a creative program — to “inextricably solder the prison with the blockade” of Leningrad, tying the trials of the pre-war and blockade years into one “knot.” Through the actualization in the book of a “foreign word” (epigraphs), the concept of “memory,” a supporting metaphor (“desert”), key lexemes (“trial,” “loss”) and the confessional intonation of the lyrical heroine that permeates the texts of the book, the poems interact with each other on an associative semantic level, forming a single artistic whole. “Knot” creates a poetic model of life as a “desert” with a biblical allusion (“You sent me to the desert…”): after going through a chain of spiritual trials, a person comes out of them transformed and must live anew (“Poems about the Horseshoe of Chersonesos,” “The Answer”). The biographic nature, manifested in the system of initiations, appeals to friends and foes, existential issues and understanding of the creative path, allows us to consider “Knot” as the final book of poetry.