Gorod pyšnyj, gorod bednyj i ego rodstvenniki

The initial formula of Pushkin’s poem Splendid city, beggared city, applied to St. Petersburg, became a model for constructing other local texts, and all later descriptions of different cities are built according to this formula, parodied in the statement „New York / Istanbul – the city of contrasts” in the film The Diamond Arm. A.S. Khomyakov (Island, „The lush island, the wonderful island”, 1836) criticized the West from the Slavophile positions; F.N. Glinka (Moscow, „The wonderful city, the ancient city”, 1840) praised Moscow from positions close to the Slavophiles. Later authors criticized their cities as a remote province: I.I. Lazhechnikov (The Sad City, the sleepy city, 1854), I.A. Kuratov (Ust-Sysolsk, The Vulgar City, the dirty city!, 1865), an unknown author from the city of Staritsa (The gloomy city, the ancient city, before 1917), A.V. Novikov (The Ancient city, „The Ancient city, the long city”, 1983). Pushkin’s model is based on contrast (lush vs. poor) and easily applied to St. Petersburg. The authors, inheriting this construction, remove the contrast: vulgar and dirty; gloomy and ancient; ancient and long. A.A. Akhmatova in her poem Somewhere there is a simple life and a world (1915) was the only author to retain the contrast. Nevertheless she left the construction of Pushkin: „This splendid / Granite city of fame and calamity”. This leads us to the question of what is more productive for describing a local text: strict adherence to a canon or free development in the name of clarifying the content?