From the Rock to the Grave Plate: Image of the Stone in V. Shalamov’s Lyrics

Abstract

Purpose. The article detects and examines the main directions of interpreting the image of the stone in V. Shalamov’s poetic heritage. Results. This image acquires the significance of one of the most important symbols reflecting key features of the world outlook of the “Kolyma Notebooks” author. Using the hermeneutic and comparative analysis methods, we distinguish in a wide range of ontological interpretations of the image of the stone in Shalamov’s lyrics two opposite vectors. One is connected with the paradoxical convergence of the image of stone and the image of man, when the stone turns out to be a kind of projection of personality, endowed with thoughts and feelings, and sometimes the lyrical hero perceives the stone as his double, his “second self”. Another vector is characterized by a sharp contrast between the “human nature” and “the stone” as something dead and frozen, hostile to person and to life as a whole. Conclusion. To sum up, the image of the stone belongs to the core of Shalamov’s poetic world and has a great worldview meaning. The essential features of Shalamov’s poetic thinking are revealed through the prism of this image: objectivity, certainty of images, perception of reality objects in their integrity and clarity of faces. These features connect Shalamov’s consciousness with the acmeistic tradition. The work is based on the materials stored in the Russian State Archive of Literature and Arts besides Shalamov's published texts.