The article is devoted to the images and motives of the East in the poetry of the author of the
Eastern emigration Boris Volkov (1894, Ekaterinburg – 1954, San Francisco). The work of
this poet, writer, publicist is still unknown to the domestic reader, although during his lifetime
he had a fairly wide publication geography: from Harbin to San Francisco. However, his
works were never reprinted, and the manuscript of the novel “The Kingdom of the Golden
Buddhas” is considered lost. The analysis involved Volkov’s book of poems “In the dust of
foreign roads”, published in Berlin in 1934. Of its four parts, the oriental flavor is especially
distinct in the first. Individual works of this part constituted the object of study of this article.
The autobiographical substrate of Volkov’s poetry is revealed, the intersection of motives and
imagery with the poetic world of Gumilyov is shown. The influence of the Eastern world, its
philosophical teachings on the creative worldview of Volkov is investigated. In his poetic
thinking, traces of Sufism, Islam, and the philosophy of Lao Tzu are palpable. Exotic images
of China and Mongolia weave an intricate pattern in the first cycles of the book, integrating
into the depicted biographical circumstances and expanding their semantic palette. “Alien” is
trying hard to become “ours” at the level of a philosophical attitude to the world and the fate
of the poet himself. He is close to the poetic attitude of the inhabitants of the East to life and
death, based on ancient traditions and customs. The poems reflect the confusion of the
experiences of the lyrical hero, warrior and wanderer, who has found a place in life as a result
of an action-packed duel with fate.
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