Space and Time in Evgeny A. Boratynsky's Collection of Verses "Sumerki"
Russian poetry of the Golden Age was the object of heightened interest of Western Slavic Studies in the mid-20th century. Today, interest in it is almost absent. In Russia in the 21st century, interest in the Russian romantic poetry of Pushkin's circle is going through a renaissance. However, many topics remain outside the focus of the research. Thus, problem of images of space and time in Evgeny Boratynsky's poetry and its spatial-temporal organization did not receive a due attention of scholars. The subject of my study is categories of artistic space and time in Boratynsky's collection of verses “Sumerki” (“Twilight”). In studying the text, I used technique of contextual analysis, and also examined semantics of lexical items with a value of space (in this paper, I call them "toposes") and with the value of time. In my article, I have shown the main spatial oppositions in Boratynsky's verses are as follows: ‘earth' vs. ‘heaven', and ‘civilization' vs. ‘nature'. The most significant categories of the time are ‘present' and ‘past'. Baratynsky's lyrical hero cannot overcome the boundary between the past, which he conceived as an ideal era, on the one hand, and imperfect modernity, which is alien to the romantic ideals, and therefore is alien to poet himself, on the other hand. Only creativity, symbol of which becomes the rhyme as heiress of traditions, is able to return to both world and poet the lost sense of harmony. Through poetry, like through the biblical ‘Good News', it is possible to find the saving link of times. I conclude spatial-temporal relations are structured Boratynsky's book, turn the book into an indivisible cycle, motivate the sequence of the texts and facilitate an understanding of Boratinskiy's attitude to the history, contemporary culture and fate of a man in the world.