Artistic features of Sabine Sicaud’s poetry
The article is devoted to life and works of Sabine Sicaud, a young French poet who lived at the beginning of the XX century and died at the age of 15. Many of her contemporaries praised her talent, considering Sabine Sicaud as a child genius, a prodigy. However, her poetry, which possesses an indisputable artistic value, has never been the subject of a philological research, neither in France nor in Russia. The present article attempts to explore the young poet’s biography, to outline the themes of her poems, and to analyze the distinctive features of her language and style. All poems by Sabine Sicaud express her great love for the nature that constitutes the main theme of her poetry. As child, she sees and describes things that adults do not usually notice in their everyday life. Close contact with nature in her parents’ picturesque estate enabled Sabine’s poems to acquire a characteristic lightness and figurativeness. Her poetry is rich in original metaphors, comparisons, rhetorical questions and exclamations. Another striking feature is the complex strophic organization of her poems. They are characterized by a considerable length, elaborate rhyme schemes, shifting rhythms and peculiar syntax. The “childish maturity” typical for Sabine Sicaud’s poems does not only reveal to us the beauty of the world, but also lets us penetrate the complex and profound inner world of this talented young poet.