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Abstract: The article analyzes Inna Lisnyanskaya’s book “A Casket with a Triple Bottom” (1995), considered as one of the final links in the evolution of modernist poetology. The study focuses on the genre features of this text, which combines literary analysis of Anna Akhmatova’s “Poem without a Hero” with metaliterary reflection. The theme of the work is the transformation of poetological essayistics into a multi-genre metanovel narrative. The aim of the article is to prove that Lisnyanskaya’s analytical method is not borrowed from academic literary criticism but is immanent to her own poetics, primarily the collection “Rains and Mirrors” (1983). The research methodology is based on a combination of historico-literary, genre and intertextual analysis with the concept of metanovel. The analysis identifies four genre codes organizing the narrative: detective (the author is an investigator examining the “evidence” and “false trails” left by Akhmatova), psychological (the love-hate story of Akhmatova and Tsvetaeva, interpreted through P. A. Florensky’s concept of ontological jealousy), historiosophical (the fate of the poetic generation as a saga of Retribution) and biblical (interpretation of the poem according to the model of four-level exegesis). The “Zaknizhie” (“Afterbook”) is examined separately as a constructive element of the metanovel structure, introducing the voice of an opponent (M. Kralin) and turning the book’s finale into an open dialogue. It is shown that the key elements of Lisnyanskaya’s poetic world – the optics of a “mirror without reflection”, the grammatical drama of personal pronouns, the dreamlike chronotope of memory – become a research toolkit that transforms the interpretation of a classical text into an act of co-creation. In the context of the modernist metanovel, Lisnyanskaya’s book shows a fundamental difference: the material for metanovel reflection in Lisnyanskaya’s work is neither a fictional plot nor a biblical myth, but a poetic text by a contemporary, which creates a triple reflexive frame. The results can be applied in the research of modernist poetology, metanovel theory, as well as the creative activity of Akhmatova, Tsvetaeva and Lisnyanskaya. The conclusion substantiates that the synthesis of genre strategies turns the “Casket” into a unique case of metanovel poetology, where the interpretation of a classical text becomes an ongoing act of co-creation of meaning.

About the author(s) :

Tatiana V. Zvereva

Udmurt State University (Izhevsk, Russian Federation)

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0485-7664

Alexander V. Markov

Russian State University for the Humanities (Moscow, Russian Federation)

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6874-1073

Publication Timeline:

Date of receipt: 20.07.2026; date of publication: 31.10.2026

References:

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