Poetry as metamorphosis: Aleksander Pushkin's 'Ekho' and the reshaping of the Echo myth

One of Pushkin's more intriguing exercises in the art of metamorphosis is 'Ekho', a two-stanza poem which is justly regarded as a key lyric in his oeuvre. The article examines the intertextual resonances of the Echo myth and demonstrates the ways in which Pushkin's lyric represents a crucial reshaping or metamorphosis of the European poetic subject. In particular, two works are examined in detail: Gavrila Derzhavin's 'Ekho' and two poems by the minor English Romantic poet Barry Cornwall. Pushkin's poem radically reverses the conventional expectations associated with Echo's voice, particularly the assumption of weakness and plaintiveness, and its hollow, imitative qualities.