V. Ivanov’s poem «Infancy» («Mladenchestvo») in the context of the symbolist life-creation

Abstract

Aim. The article is devoted to the analysis of V. Ivanov's poem «Infancy» («Mladenchestvo») in the light of the symbolist interpretation of the notion of life-creation. The purpose of the work is to reveal the theurgic and life-creating intensions in the author's strategy of this work. Methods. Analyzing this work, we used the method of integral analysis, developed by the Donetsk Philological School, as well as the method of hermeneutic analysis, based on H.-G. Gadamer’s concepts, expressed in the article «Truth and Method» – that is, the reproduction of the semantic perspective, characteristic of the given author. Results. The article consistently examines the specific nature of the author’s consciousness, the main images and motifs of the work. The article also describes in detail the process of the inner transformation of the personality to achieve mutual directedness of man and the artist in the process of artistic creation, as well as life-creation. The conclusion is made that the author finds himself between two realities: the reality of the sacred in the most general sense and the reality of life, which, in the system of modernist worldview, is perceived as chaos. V. Ivanov’s poem «Infancy» is an attempt to understand the life’s chaos with the help of the religious cosmos, to turn them to each other in the interpenetrating light, bringing religion closer to a specific person with his or her spiritual problems. Scientific novelty. Thanks to studying V. Ivanov’s poems in the context of symbolist life-creation, we have established for the first time the systematic and mutually enriching connections between the poetics of word and philosophy of word within V. Ivanov’s creative experience. Practical value. The results of this research can be used in the lecture courses and practical studies on the history of Russian literature of the late ХІХ – early ХХ centuries, in the development of new textbooks on the literature of this period.