Poems by Don Amateur Poets Related to the November Uprising of 1830–1831: Substituting Reality with Literary Clichés

Abstract

This article and the accompanying historical sources — two epistles by an anonymous Cossack author written in Polish captivity in 1831 and addressed to a fellow captive, I. S. Ulyanov, and a poem by an anonymous Don author about a clash between Cossacks and Poles at Macierzysz on August 5, 1831 — examine the influence of 19th-century Russian poetry on provincial amateur writers. Both Ulyanov’s own works and the epistles addressed to him demonstrate the authors’ clear familiarity with contemporary Russian literature and their active attempts to incorporate its characteristic imagery, ideas, and direct poetic citations into their own writing. At the same time, these borrowed elements tend to be simplified into commonplaces, often applied inappropriately. Consequently, the published poems illustrate a model of interaction between the periphery and the core of the semiosphere: actors at the periphery attempt to utilize concepts from the core to describe new and relevant subjects, yet prove unable to either adapt existing imagery or create original ideas. The resulting texts consist of secondary clichés, many of which do not correspond to the reality described (for example, the Don steppe is depicted as a land of “fluffy mountains”).

Acknowledgements
The research was supported by the Strategic Academic Leadership Program of the Southern Federal University (“Priority 2030”).

Received: 01.10.2024.
Revised: 06.03.2025.
Accepted: 17.03.2026.

Citation
Peretyatko A. Yu. Poems by Don Amateur Poets Related to the November Uprising of 1830–1831: Substituting Reality with Literary Clichés // Slavic Almanac. 2026. No 1–2. P. 388–409 (in Russian). DOI: 10.31168/2073-5731.2026.1-2.22