The article investigates the consequences of the author's genre designation -elegy?, using the example of Elegies O. Sedakova, written from 1987 to 2004. Although in these elegies there are traditional from antiquity for the genre motives of regret, fleeting time, catastrophic life and denunciation of the townsfolk, they do not determine own content of these works based on numerous quotes from the Old and New Testaments, Church Slavonic liturgical poetry and Russian poetry. Therefore, there is still no agreement of researchers whether the word -elegy? can be considered a genre designation, even if it is an author‘s one, or only the principle of thematic cyclization. The latter assumption contradicts the author‘s division of the book -Elegies? into two, presented in the authorized electronic collected works. In the course of the study, it was possible to reconstruct those polemical contexts that influenced the formation of elegy as a genre. Firstly, this is a polemic correspondence with the Russian intellectual Victor Aksjychits, who understood Dostoevsky as an ideologist of the revival of Russia in the spirit of Solzhenitsyn, while Sedakova insists on the metaphysical nature of Dostoevsky‘s novels. According to Sedakova, Dostoevsky‘s novels do not have a direct pragmatic task, but represent a story about a metaphysical hero, similar to biblical narratives. Sedakova finds the same lack of direct pragmatics in liturgical chants in the Church Slavonic language, indicating that their translation into Russian strengthens pragmatics. Thus, the Bible, the poetry of Triodion, Dostoevsky and Khlebnikov are present in Sedakova‘s Elegies not only in the form of open or hidden quotes, but also as a principle for organizing the narrative. All elegies are united by the image of the return of the prodigal son, understood through reflection on Rembrandt‘s version as intertextual and intermedial, and supporting the open character of the elegiac narrative and the open organization of their symbolic space. In contrast to direct lyrical utterance, intention in an elegy must be detached, observing what is happening from the side. Thus, the genre affiliation of Sedakova‘s elegy is quite certain. The main result obtained is that Sedakova understands Bible books, liturgical chants, Dostoevsky‘s novels and Khlebnikov‘s poems as open texts not for immedial use in social life, but primarily for other texts, so she constructed her elegies in the same mood, while the pragmatic task of these poems is carried out thanks to linguistic shifts, special in each elegy.
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