“The Heavy Lyre”

The essay is dedicated to the caricature of Nikolai Zabolotsky by the famous Leningrad graphic artist Bronislav Malakhovsky (1902–1937), the author of numerous “writer’s caricatures.” The development of this genre in the Soviet press of the 1930s is related to the artistic practices of the pre-revolutionary magazine “Satyricon,” where caricatures also served as an artistic expression of corresponding epigrams or literary parodies. In the Soviet times, this genre was used for the purposes of ideological assessment of any type of artistic creativity, giving “writer’s caricatures” an ominous meaning. An example of such work was Anatoly Spesivtsev’s imaginary portrait “Zabolotsky through the Eyes of an Artist.” On the contrary, Malakhovsky’s drawing is distinguished by sympathy and deep knowledge of the poetry of Zabolotsky. The authors of the essay restore the context of the caricature against the cultural background of the era, in particular, the so-called “Discussion about Formalism” of 1936. They demonstrate the connection of this drawing with Zabolotsky’s poetry, and also with tragic events in his and Malakhovsky’s lives in the late 1930s

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