Motifs of Light in Pushkin's Poetry: A Perspective on the Poet's Worldview

Abstract

This study attempts to approach Pushkin's characteristically elusive philosophical attitude from a semantic point of view, through a statistical analysis of four semantic fields in Pushkin's poetry - those of light, darkness, fire and cold. Setting the frequency and the manner in which those motifs figure in Pushkin's text against their respective symbolic significance leads to conclude that Pushkin's worldview was fundamentally optimistic and full of compassion despite the poet's lucidity. For the sake of illustration, the approach is also used to provide an alternative reading of several well-known poems.