Poetics of the epitaph “On the Death of Alexander Druzhinin, January 19, 1864ˮ by Afanasy Fet: genre attributes

Abstract

The article examines the poetics of an epitaph “On the Death...ˮ on the example of the work of the same name proposed for analysis by the poem “On the Death of Alexander Druzhinin, January 19, 1864ˮ by Afanasy Fet. The purpose of the analysis is to determine the genre of the poem, which still remains unclear. The novelty of the author's approach is due to the fact that the discovery through analysis of such genre-forming attributes as genesis dating back to the epicedium (a kind of mourning elegy), genre “concept of personality”, burial portrait, the characteristic principle of figurative visualisation, dating of writing, that allows us to reveal the independent genre status of the poem. It is the genetic heredity of the epicidium, around which other considered genre attributes are concentrated, that helps to define the poem “On the Death...ˮ as a special genre form associated with mortal and memorial genres – the epitaph and the poem “In Memoriam...ˮ. Since the set of genre attributes, the composition of which may vary depending on the object of research, is ideally modelling in nature, the method of its application can be used in the future when studying both the genre poem “In Memoriam...ˮ and other lyric genres.