Barker, G; (2017) Polina Barskova’s ‘Daphnis and Chloe’: a Russian pastoral. Classical Receptions Journal , 9 (3) pp. 307-330. 10.1093/crj/clw020.

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Abstract

Russian poet Polina Barskova renders Longus’ novel Daphnis and Chloe into a poem of the same name. The poem takes scenes from throughout the novel, as well as some of the novel’s attributes, and works them into a strange new form: an intimate ‘epithalamion’ featuring only Daphnis and Chloe, situated in a bubble of time at the novel’s close. This article explores Barskova’s reception of Longus: the specific moments from the novel which she distorts or magnifies; and how she inscribes Longus’ allusiveness and poeticness, his novel’s artefactuality, textuality, and antiquity, into the poem. It places Barskova’s response to Daphnis and Chloe in ‘Dafnis i Khloia’ in the context of her four other poems referring to pastoral, half of which also have links with Daphnis and Chloe. This uncovers a markedly ominous aesthetic at work in all Barskova’s reception of ancient pastoral. Finally, the article discusses the ‘anti-pastoral’ tendencies peculiar to Russian literature’s reception of Western pastoral, and particularly the pastorals of Joseph Brodsky, which inform the ominous notes of decay in Barskova’s pastoral.

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