J.P. POLONSKY’S "TRADITION CLAIMS": SOCIAL AND POLITICAL ASPECTS
The article analyzes social and political aspects of J.P. Polonsky’s unfinished verse novel “Tradition Claims”, taking into account the plan of unwritten chapters. The author singles out the following components: the idea of freedom and protests against serfdom, the ideology of the 1840s and its influence on other generations, theories of the 1840s and the 1860s. The author underlines similarities with works by other Russian poets and writers of the 19<sup>th</sup> century, such as A.S. Pushkin, I.S. Turgenev, F.M. Dostoyevsky. The author focuses on the image of a superfluous man and a prototype of Kamkov, the protagonist of the verse novel. The author analyzes such characters as the narrator, Kamkov, Lora, Uliana Ivanovna, prince Taptygin, and the baroness, who are crucial to the understanding of social and political aspects of the work. The author analyzes opinions expressed by J.P. Polonsky’s contemporaries regarding the verse novel and opinions expressed by his critics and researchers of his work. The paper maintains that J.P. Polonsky’s novel verse focuses on social and political problems, while love and everyday routine serve as a kind of background which allows the poet to highlight the ideology of the middle of the 19<sup>th</sup> century.