I analyze the poetic and pictorial heritage of Leonard Daniltsev, one of the central figures of independent Moscow art, and reconstruct the general principle behind his artistic and poetic work. I combine in my analysis E. Rutten's concept of sincerity after communism, which allowed to fit non-conformist poetry into the organization of literary production as a craft, and the interpretation of chiasmus as rhetorical figure, converting sense and sensibility. Both sincerity and chiasmus are based on the convergence of phrase and visual gesture accepted as is, while an acceptance of the authenticity of rhetorically abundant art transforms the constructive elements into meanings. Unlike many non-conformist figures, Daniltsev did not seek to use the rhetoric of personal gestures that destroy the system of official signs and topoi, but rather depersonalized gestures that question the subjective foundations of romantic pathos as appropriative. I prove that Daniltsev grounded the sense of reality as an intersubjective sense of dignity, and used pictorial images in poetry not as allusions, but as propositions within the adapted rhetorical chiasm, confirming the necessary experience of the unity and contingency of the world. In this sense, his legacy echoes both Prigov’s “new sincerity” and the renewed by G. Aigi language framework of poetry, as well as anticipates today theories of contingency and the status of reality.
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