Mandelshtam’s "Ode": The Principle of "genre memory" in the Poetry of the XX<sup>th</sup> Century 165
The article discusses the existence of the solemn ode genre in the 20th century poetry. The classicism genre canon smears, the genre is transformed: obligatory genre features become optional, the genre core allows variations, too. The genre transformation principle can be shown in O. Mandelstam’s “Ode” which has been analyzed many times and interpreted in many different ways. It is the ode genre principle analysis that not only allows its interpretation clarifying, but reveals general ode genre modification tendencies. First the genre peculiarities change, then changes the very genre core. The ode, ceasing to glorify, illustrates the principle of the genre work in the 20th century lyrics: the canon is destroyed, but the genre memory remains. And this very fact proves that the genre still determines the ways the text is read. The lyrics genres transformation in the 20th century has its own regularities. First, obligatory genre features become optional. Besides, the more “formal”, the more rigorous the feature was, the more often it is broken. Second, the very genre core is modified: the ode does not glorify, but turns the object of glorifying inside out, it shows praise boundaries, which is confirmed by other texts of the 20th century.