A CASE STUDY INTO AFANASY FET’S POEM ‘MIRROR MOON IS FLOATING IN AZURE DESERT...’
The article explores the famous poem by Afanasy Fet “Месяц зеркальный плывет по лазурной пустыне” (Mirror moon is oating in azure desert…). Special emphasis is laid upon the composition features in their correlation with the motives, composition of space, opposition of romantic origin, shaping the semantics of the text, functions of tropes, including the metaphorical epithet mirror, verbal repetitions with variations, alliteration, and rhymes. Focus is on a complex relationship between the rst quatrain and two subsequent quatrains. The rst verse of the quatrain describes the sky, while the second describes the earth, and therefore the upper and lower worlds seem to be isomorphic: in the sky - a mirror, translucent, shiny like water, moon; on the ground - grass, humbled by drops of water (dew) - drops, obviously shiny, re ecting the moonlight, otherwise they would not have been visible to the observer, the lyrical self. The second stanza is almost entirely, except for part of the rst verse, is devoted to the world of feelings of the lyrical self, but it establishes a correspondence between external and internal. The rst and third stanzas forming a compositional ring are clearly opposed to the second, middle. The second and third stanzas correlate with the rst as its re ections. The motive of re ection (mirror), a hint of which is given in the epithet of the moon as a mirror, determines the composition of the text. In the second quatrain, such motives of the initial quatrain are repeated, such as light and shadows, but now light and shadows become characteristics of the experiences of the lyrical self; at the end of the third quatrain the rst lines of the initial quatrain are re ected as if. The principle of re ection seems to subjugate both the inner world of the lyrical self and the structure of the text. It is traced on the example of the analyzed poem of his impressionistic, associative («musical») installation. It is shown how the author originally reinterprets the motifs traditional for romantic poetry, creating a semantically multidimensional text with unbanal poetics.