The Mode of Mortal Consciousness in 19th-Century Russian Poetry: Genesis and Ethnocultural Peculiarities
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15826/qr.2019.4.428Keywords:
A. Pushkin; E. Boratynsky; M. Lermontov; W. Shakespeare; A. Chénier; G. G. Byron; mode of consciousness; ethno-poeticsAbstract
This article considers the genesis of death-related themes and the formation of the mode of mortal consciousness in the individual practice of modern Russian poets. The phenomenon of mortal consciousness, along with the understanding of the existential tragedy of man as a mortal being, emphasises special forms of overcoming the tragic state. The author substantiates the three most widely used concepts of immortality found in the works of Russian poets: 1) the concept of social immortality, dating back to Horace’s Exegi monumentum aere perennius…; 2) the concept of poetic immortality, based on the mythological topos of Elysium (originating in the works of Batyushkov and Zhukovsky); and 3) the concept of personalistic (existential) immortality. It is proved that, unlike the first two, the third concept of immortality is deeply personal and individually variable by nature, directly connected with the mode of mortal consciousness. Referring to the methods of contemporary ethnopoetics and contemporary historical and intertextual analysis, the author compares works by Derzhavin, Zhukovsky, Pushkin, Boratynsky, and Lermontov with non-Russian sources (Jung, Gray, Shakespeare, Chénier, and Byron), which makes it possible to reveal the evolution of foreign influences in Russian space and clarify the nature of the national reception of precedent texts as a result of ethnocultural factors. The most significant determinants of national culture are death, sleep, and love for a deceased lover. The texts of the Russian poetic tradition, considered in terms of ethnocultural peculiarities, are combined into supertext unities comparable to receptive cycles. Such supertext unities may be limited to the work of one author, as is confirmed with reference to Lermontov’s poems May 16, 1830, Night I, Death, The Last House-Warming, Dead Man’s Love, Sleep, Alone I Set out on the Road… At the same time, such unities may go beyond the boundaries of an individual oeuvre and into an intertextual dialogue between contemporaries, i. e. Pushkin’s elegy Breathing Youthfully with Sweet Hope…, The Vanished Joy of My Crazy Years… and Boratynsky’s poem From Chénier, in their appeal to Shakespeare’s precedent texts (monologue To be or not to be…) and those by Chénier (Elegy XXXVI).
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