Actualization of the Pushkin myth in Alexander Galich’s poem intended for singing, A Study in Nostalgia [Opyt nostalgii]

This study explores the patterns defining Galich’s artistic self-identification with the ideal of Pushkin’s fate. The scholar shows that declarations of filial loyalty to Russia disguise an apocryphal interpretation of the ‘inner’ Pushkin theme. An example of such а statement can be found in A Study in Nostalgia [ Opyt nostalgii ] (1973), a poem intended to be sung. The poem’s reconstructed subtexts allow for the following interpretation: the exiled poet believes to have strayed from the poet’s ideal fate — a trip to the Black River, a Russian Calvary. During the period immediately before his emigration, when his status of a persecuted poet suited the actualization of the tragic version of the Pushkin myth, Galich realized that any symbolic identification with Pushkin had become forbidden. The contrast between the two poets, both Alexanders, is only somewhat attenuated in another sung poem, When I Come Back [ Kogda ya vernus ].