Linguistic organization of the duality of mythological worlds in B. Pasternak’s poem "Wind" ("Veter")

Abstract

This article presents a linguopoetic analysis of Boris Pasternak’s poem "Wind" ("Veter") from the position of the lingual embodiment of the duality of mythological worlds. This research focuses on the symbol of "the wind as a spirit", upon which the poem’s whole mystical idea relies. The purpose of this article is to reveal which the linguistic means used to translate the duality of mythological worlds, as well as how this cognition merges with the author’s experience and determines the poem’s figurative system and idea. The understanding of the duality of mythological worlds requires the law of participation (L. L vy-Bruhl) – the identification of the mental, emotional, and physical properties of a person and nature. In Pasternak’s poem, the suffering and rushing "I" of the deceased lyrical hero becomes the wind. In this study, the word-symbol "wind" is studied in the semantic and semiotic aspect as a sign. Its signifier is the lexeme wind meaning 'perceptual idea of an air flow'; signified – the symbolic meaning of 'spirit, soul, immortality', due to the etymological meaning of the word and pagan mythology. The results reveal that the symbol "wind" is the carrier of the duality of mythological worlds, and it programs the fictional world of the poem: on the one hand, these are the actual world of the lyrical heroine, the house, and the wind, which swings pine trees; on the other hand – the imaginary world of the spirit of the dead lyrical hero. The lexical resources of the poetic text translate this opposition in the ratio of the words I and wind, personal pronouns I and you, as well as the words ended and alive. At the grammatical level, the duality is expressed by the contrast of the verbal forms of the past and present time, as well as by the passage from the indirect thought (the lyrical hero’s mental monologue) to the 3rd person narrative about the wind and the pine trees and by the return of the poem to the lyrical hero’s indirect thought at the end. This is how Pasternak implements one of the main ideas of his novel "Doctor Zhivago" – the idea of immortality, which is confirmed in the article by referring to the novel’s macro context and biographical materials.