Symbolics of the Soul in the «Black and Blue» Book of Poems 
 by A. Ladinsky (On the Question of the Artistic World Specifics)

Abstract

The article considers a representation of the soul and its symbolism in the 
 «Black and Blue» (1930), the first book of poems by A. Ladinsky in the aspect of 
 poetic anthropology. As a representative of the Parisian poetic branch of the first 
 emigration wave, A. Ladinsky constructs a unique artistic universe based on the 
 opposition of the earthly and heavenly aspects of human existence. The poet’s 
 work reflects the conceptual understanding of the dichotomy, expressed by the 
 physical-material «bottom» and the divine-spiritual «top», produces the actual-
 ization of the «soul» microcosm as a value-semantic center of the depicted world. 
 The analysis of A. Ladinsky’s poems, based on the combination of anthro-
 pological, semiotic, and mythopoetic approaches to the artistic text, shows that in 
 the poetics of the «Black and Blue» the idea of the soul is revealed in a system of 
 interrelated, but not identical to each other personifications and symbolic signs. 
 The article indicates four key parameters of the soul representation: 1) its objec-
 tification in the mythological images of the Muse and Psyche; 2) actualization of 
 «flight» and «lamentation» motifs symbolizing and universalizing the views of the 
 exiled human fate and the experience of death; 3) the contact of the earthly and heavenly existence dimensions realized through such symbols of the soul as a 
 «butterfly», «breath», «smoke», a «heart»; 4) the endowment of the soul with the 
 status of «eternal femininity» embodying the beloved who is ideal and therefore 
 inaccessible to the male lyric «self». 
 It is concluded that in A. Ladinsky’s mythopoetic universe the soul embod-
 ies the indelibility of the vital movement of the opposed microcosm and macro-
 cosm. Therefore, in the conception of the «Black and Blue» the myth of the im-
 mortal human soul becomes the main line assisting to understand the deep 
 antinomies of the universe.