"THERE LIKE VAST WATERS HAVE COME TOGETHER SEA AND SKY": "FINLAND" AND FINLAND IN THE POETRY OF E. A. BARATYNSKY

For the Russian poet E. A. Baratynsky (1800-1844) Finland was both the place of his exile and the place where he first made a serious mark as a poet. It is thus filling that his poem "Finland" ("Finliandiia") is one of the few textual spaces in his oeuvre where this deeply conflicted poet is able to transcend the antitheses prevalent in his poetry and achieve a synthesis of the oppositional forces that tormented his poetic persona. Composed in 1820, when Baratynsky was barely out of his teens, "Finland" bears the Romantic cliches common to his early work, while at the same time foreshadowing the development of his most mature, metaphysical speculations. Here, Clark provides a close structural and thematic reading of the poem, which will be connected to a broader discussion of the position "Finland" and Finland hold in Baratynsky's creative consciousness.