The cultural meaning of the concept of "will" in the poetry of K.D. Balmont

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to reveal the cultural meanings that for the poet were associated with the concept of "will". To achieve this goal, we trace the evolution of the poet's work, in which the cultural meaning of the concept of "will" is revealed through a chain of interrelated and complementary meanings: the boundless desire of the symbolist poet, a rush into the distance and upward, gaining freedom, admiration for the free world and the discovery of the supreme Divine - creative principle in nature. It is shown that the concept of "will" embodies in Balmont's poetry the essence of God's world, turns to the foundations of the Russian cultural mentality, reveals the convergence of Divine and human, free and creative principles as the dominant cultural worldview of the poet of the Silver Age. It is necessary to reveal the many cultural meanings that for the poet were associated with the concept of "will". The methodology of the research is based on synchronic, structural-functional, biographical, historical and cultural methods. Thus, the concept of "will" in Balmont's poetry combines the aspiration to space, breadth and height – to infinity, freedom, the poet's kinship with the Divinely free and eternally changeable elements of God's world and the creative principle as comprehension of the soul of the world and his own "free-spirited" soul. The cultural meaning of the concept "will" embodies the essence of God's world and the poet's soul. The concept of "will" in its versatility is one of the key ones in Balmont's poetry and turns to the basics of the Russian mentality, as well as reveals the convergence of the Divine and human, free and creative principles as the dominant worldview of the poet of the Silver Age. The thirst for will and freedom is inseparable from the formation of the Balmont symbolist with his aspiration from external reality to internal realities and is also connected with the rush into the distance "thirst for will and space".