“The old doctor in a decrepit toga...”: оn an “unfinished” poem of Georgy Shengeli

This small article is an addition to the commentaries included in the first volume of the two volume edition of rhymes and poems by Georgy Shengeli published in 2017. We show that the quatrain “Старый доктор в обветшалой тоге...” (“The old doctor in the decrepit toga...” ) written in August 1943, which the compiler of the volume regards as unfinished, is in a fact a quite holistic extempore rhyme – the remake of a final strophe of Nikolay Gumilyov's rhyme “Bologna”. We bring forward the hypothesis that the first line of the Shengeli's quatrain contains an allusion to the first line of another Gumilyov's rhyme – “The spell” and we examine the connection between this quatrain and the rhyme “В шаге легком и упругом...” (“In the light and springy stride...”) written a month and a half later.