Children’s literature in writings of Timur Kibirov: the multifaced arguments of the post-modern discussion

Abstract

The article by Marion Rutz “Children’s literature in writings of Timur Kibirov: the multifaced arguments of the post-modern discussion” about values is devoted to the problem of “embedding” the experience of children's reading in the texts of a mature poet. In the poems of the contemporary Russian poet Timur Kibirov (*1955) intertextuality is one of the most significant characteristics of his poetry. This article analyses the numerous references to children’s literature up to 2009 and explores their conceptual functions. Referring to highly ideological texts for children, Kibirov’s early writing deconstructs Soviet mythology. In the later periods of his work, Russian and international children’s classics are, on the contrary, used to construct and legitimize the poet’s own ideological space. The manifesto poem “Just to read children’s books...” playfully elevates the mean-
ing of children’s literature above the works of Vladimir Nabokov and
James Joyce.
Key words: Timur Kibirov; poetry; postmodernism; intertextuality; “Neznaika”; A. S. Pushkin; Anton Makarenko; Kornei Chukovsky; “Kara-baras”; Hans Christian Andersen; C. S. Lewis.