«The city is quiet, silvery, swaying in the cradle of vision» (epithet characteristics of the city in the Ukrainian poetic language of ХХ century)

Abstract

The noun city is an actively epithetized image of Ukrainian poetry of the twentieth century. Around it are definitions with direct, descriptive meaning (autological) and with figurative, figurative-evaluative (metalogical). Autologous definitions include characteristics of size (large, giant, small), age (new, old, ancient, ancient, ancient, eternal, young), location relative to the administrative center (central, provincial), distance from the location of the lyrical hero. close), time (morning, evening, night). Also traditional for the Ukrainian poetic language is the use of the nomination city and specific names of cities with epithets beautiful, abandoned, unfamiliar, with possessive pronouns my, our. In many epithets to the image of the city material-subject plan is inferior to the emotional-expressive, metaphorical, associative-figurative word usage prevails over the direct, nominative. The semantic structure of such constructions is dominated by seven ‘visual perception’, ‘audio perception’, ‘psychological perception’, ‘historical assessment’. Among the artistic definitions with the sema ‘visual perception’ the most branched color-epithet series – white, yellow, green, blue, gray, gray, black, gold. Carriers with a color sign (golden-topped, silver-haired, white-winged) are carriers of complicated semantics and value. The aesthetics of definitions with the dominant family ‘psychological perception’ (suffering, torn, exhausted, tired, tragic, etc.) is determined by their imagery and emotional coloring. Anthropomorphic epithets transfer to the image of the city signs of psycho-emotional states (fatigue, suffering), character traits (pride, tenderness, kindness, insecurity), morality or immorality (innocence, sinfulness), as well as external portrait traits or signs of human physical condition. Characteristic epithet microparadigms develop realities that structure the city space, specify its social and cultural infrastructure. In general, epithetization reflects both realistic and figurative-symbolic, philosophical-generalized meaning of the image of the city. It is both a geographical object and an aestheticized artistic space in which lyrical heroes self-identify. Such a complex nature of the image opens up prospects for its broad interpretation.