“The Star of Venusˮ in Russian poetry of the 20th century: mythopoetic symbolism

Abstract

Being a part of the astronomical, temporal, anthropomorphic linguocultural codes, Venus as a celestial body has a significant place in the Russian verbal culture. This statement can be proved not only when analysing linguistic units, but also when referring to literary works, in particular to Russian lyric poetry. Twenty four poetic contexts, which include the image of Venus, have been analysed in the article (the works by Alexander Pushkin, Georgy Adamovich, Pavel Antokolsky, Leonid Martynov, Mikhail Zenkevich, Alexander Blok, Vyacheslav Ivanov, Nikolay Gumilyov, Marina Tsvetaeva, Fyodor Sologub, Mikhail Kuzmin, Georgy Shengeli, Ilya Selvinsky, Konstantin Simonov, Anatoliy Demyanov). The authors focus on the Russian 20th century lyric poetry because it is there that Venus appears as a star rather than a planet, and this corresponds to the archaic notions of this celestial body. Mercury and Mars are also called 'stars' in the 20th century poetry, but in a much smaller number of contexts than Venus. The authors come to the conclusion that Venus in Russian poets’ works can symbolise the onset of morning / evening, love, paradise, loneliness, fate, youth, old age, life journey. Moreover, Venus is included into poetic conceptions (it corresponds to the image of the Beautiful Lady in Alexander Blok’s poetry). The set of the above-mentioned symbolic meanings correlates with the archaic notions of Venus, widens them and makes the image of this celestial body mythopoetic.