SOURCE: "Bagritsky's 'February'," in Lot's Wife and the Venus ofMilo: Conflicting Attitudes to the Cultural Heritage in Modern Russia, Cambridge University Press, 1978, pp. 77-97.

In the following excerpt, which was originally published as a section of the chapter "The Secret of Art: Two Soviet Myths" in Lot's Wife and the Venus of Milo, Thomson argues that Bagritsky's autobiographical "February," his final work, expresses a surprisingly ambivalent attitude toward the pre-Revolutionary past.

In the early part of his career Bagritsky was known as an ardent advocate of the continuity of poetic culture, with a reputation for a detailed knowledge of even the most recondite and unfashionable poets of the preceding epoch. In his later years, however, partly as a consequence of his hardening political attitudes, he seems to have moved towards a total repudiation of the past. His last poem, 'February,' presents a strange synthesis of these contradictory...