THE IMAGE OF THE OLD MAN IN ALEXANDER BLOK’S POETRY OF THE 1900S

Abstract

The article makes a certain contribution to the study of the typology of Alexander Blok’s characters, which arose as a result of the “theatricalisation” of the lyrical subject. We examine examples of some lyrical monologues written on behalf of the old man. Their aesthetic nature is revealed, poetics and functions are characterised. It is proved that the lyrical monologues of the old men” created in Alexander Blok’s poems of the 1900s (“Under old age, forgetting the sacred...”, “When I began to grow decrepit and get cold...”, “Years have passed, but you are still the same...”, “The Double”) form a special local artistic integrity within his poetic “trilogy”. It is shown that in the spontaneously formed ensemble unity, the image of the old man turns out to be Alexander Blok’s “lyrical mask“, his tragic double and in many respects expresses autopsychological experiences associated with the idea of “betrayal“ of the mystical ideal of Eternal Femininity. The article emphasises that the poems (“Under old age, forgetting the sacred...”, “When I began to grow decrepit and get cold...”, “Years have passed, but you are still the same..” form an intersubjective paradigm. In these works, the image of the old men correlates not only with the personality of Alexander Blok and Dmitry Merezhkovsky, but also allows us to perceive the character as a completely independent hero with a unique character. The paper concludes that the “theatricality” of poetics is most clearly and clearly manifested in the poem “When I began to grow decrepit and get cold...”, as if oriented towards oral pronunciation and stage incarnation.