“Revealed” sources and hidden intertextual dialog in Sologub's Pobeda smerti

As he did with several of his dramas, Fedor Sologub prefaced Pobeda smerti (1908) with a note indicating a text that supposedly influenced his work, in this case Potanin's Vostočnye motivy v srednevekovom evropejskom ėpose. A close reading of Sologub's note, however, reveals that it is deceptively worded and in fact does not link Pobeda smerti with Potanin's book; by the same token a reading of both works reveals almost no similarities. Archival drafts of Pobeda smerti show that Sologub considered mentioning contemporary literary sources in his note, namely Blok's Korol' na ploščadi and Przybyszewski's Večnaja skazka, both of which frequently echo throughout Pobeda smerti. Sologub's drama takes issue with these well-known works' treatment of the relationships among the poet, the Eternal Feminine, and masses, and can be considered a “correction” of each. Whereas for Przybyszewski the Symbolist ideal is achieved by the end of the work, and for Blok the search for it is hopeless, even dangerous folly, Sologub returns to the standard modernist paradigm, convinced the ideal exists but that she has yet to be discovered by a human world unable to see her and what she represents.