Неизвестные стихотворения Василия Рубана

This paper discusses unknown poems of Vasilii Ruban written in the last three years of his life. These texts exemplify the so-called “poetry of the mundane” (bytovaia poeziia), dealing with the author’s everyday affairs. This study seeks to tie together the commodified, communicative, and aesthetic aspects of the mundane in Ruban’s poetry. The author proposes shifting the emphasis from these texts’ literary merits to the circumstances of their creation and their immediate function. They were not written for posterity, nor to exceed the boundaries of local interest. Ruban’s patrons were the real implicit readers of his poems; they understood his communicative strategy and accepted it as such. This poetry thus constitutes a remarkable source of information about the social and private life of Ruban’s patrons and the connections between them. Analyzing patrons’ relationships with the poet and responses to his requests, the article contextualizes Ruban’s poetry of the mundane within communicative conventions extant at the time.