Review: “Dictionary of the Language of the Twentieth Century Russian Poetry”. Volume VIII: Smola — Tolsch

The eighth volume of the “Dictionary of the Language of the Twentieth Century Russian Poetry” contains over 3,500 entries. The entries include poetic lines from the sources of the Dictionary — the works of ten prominent
poets of the Silver Age: I. Annensky, A. Akhmatova, A. Blok, S. Yesenin, M. Kuzmin, O. Mandelstam, V. Mayakovsky, B. Pasternak, V. Khlebnikov, M. Tsvetaeva. The lines are chronologically ordered and make it possible to
understand both the rhythm of the surroundings of the head word, and the “increments of meaning” in the word itself as well as the history of the word in the poetic language of the era. All context lines are followed by numbers:
Ann909, Ahm912, AB914, Es915, Kuz916, OM918, P921, Chl921, Tsv935. In some cases, headlines and contexts are supplemented with labels and other comments. The dictionary demonstrates diversity and expressiveness
of the poetic language and the “artistic memory” of its words. Enriching our aesthetic horizons, the dictionary helps to clarify the meaning of the famous lines and to think about their connection with many less well-known ones. The dictionary is addressed to philologists — linguists and literary critics, cultural scientists, as well as a wide circle of Russian poetry lovers.