Stefano Aloe is Full Professor of Slavistics at the University of Verona. He specialises in the history of Russian literature and Slavic-Italian cultural relations. He is the president of the International Dostoevsky Society and the Assistant Editor of the journal “Dostoevsky Studies”. To date, he has authored four monographs and over 150 scientific publications.
The article analyses some of the chronotopes that characterise the lyrics of the songs by Boris Grebenshchikov, leader of the Soviet rock group Akvarium, in the first half of the 1980s. The high degree of literariness and intertextuality of the lyrics is emphasised, and the cultural context in which they were written is discussed. In particular, chronotopes relating to meditation, estrangement, and solitude (with the keywords ‘river’, ‘shore’, ‘hill’) are analysed, as well as those that, on the contrary, imply a confrontation with Soviet society and claim belonging to a non-conformist community (with the keywords ‘night’, ‘thresholds’, ‘jazz’).