Russian Literary Criticism Research Articles

Пространственное измерение бытия в поэзии Инны Кашежевой

The work examines the features of the construction of space and the role of its individual details at different stages of Inna Kashezheva’s poetic creativity. In view of the ideas that have become entrenched in Russian literary criticism, the “spatial-ethical field” of the poetic “I”. Kashezheva’s poetic “I” has been explored. The importance of visual perceptions in her work is highlighted. Nu-ances of perception of Caucasian geography are exposed, as are the expressive features of the spa-tial pictures she depicts: sound, light, movement, and their modifications throughout time, as well as the influence of time on the semantics of space. Landscape and interior space-related episodes are examined, and spatial aspects associated with the intimate and personal experiences of the po-etic “I” are highlighted. The image of silence plays an active role in adult creativity. Conclusions are formed about the type of space that best fits the worldview of I. Kashezheva’s lyrical “I”.

Вопросы развития национального литературоведения и его понятийно-терминологического аппарата

The purpose of the research is to actualize the problem of formation of the conceptual and terminological apparatus of the Chuvash literary criticism in the national language. Since its inception (the late 1920s) Chuvash literary criticism has relied on advanced ideas, discoveries and concepts of Russian literary criticism. Chuvash researchers (except for P. N. Metin, A. I. Mefodiev - the authors of the "School Dictionary of Terms of Literary Criticism and Folkloristics") were not concerned with the systematization of their own concepts, which reflect the national characteristics of Chuvash literature. Today, the practice of using Russian-language terms in Chuvash literary criticism has been fixed even in cases when there are synonyms for them in the Chuvash language. The scientific novelty of the research is that it analyzes for the first time the basic methods of term formation in Chuvash literary criticism. Actualization of this issue in the Chuvash scientific community should contribute to the development of Chuvash literary criticism (more broadly - the entire philological science) in the field of national aesthetics. The results obtained showed that in Chuvash literary criticism the conceptual and terminological apparatus in the Chuvash language has not been fully formed, it is dominated by Russian-language terms that do not obey either phonetic or orthographic laws of the Chuvash language.

ONEGIN AND MANAS, VALIKHANOV AND BELINSKY; RUSSIAN LITERARY CRITICISM AND KYRGYZ ORAL POETRY

This paper examines the original context of the words ‘encyclopaedia’ and ‘epic’ concerning Manas. A New Historicism approach to the origin of this association, an 1861 Russian-language publication by Chokan Valikhanov, illuminates his likely use of a formulation - both verbal and conceptual - of literary critic Vissarion Belinsky, and placing Valikhanov’s interest in epics in pan-European (and Russian) early-nineteenth century socio-political context. Valikhanov’s comments display the placing of an interpretative framework from Russian literary criticism onto Kyrgyz oral poetry. This paper questions the continued use of the terminology related to nineteenth-century Russian colonialism and its significant impact on the Manas interpretation and valueing.

Features of subtext in E. Hemingway and R. Carver’s dialogues (based on the analysis of their short stories)

The article provides a comparative analysis of the implication features used in the dialogues of the stories by Ernest Hemingway and Raymond Carver, his follower of the second half of the 20th century. Our analysis is based on their texts written in different years. Employing specific examples, we analyzed the authors’ work on the use of the main subtext elements: A pause or silence, incompleteness and repetitions. The highlighted elements of the implication allow us to make conclusions about the direct influence of Hemingway on the poetics of Raymond Carver’s stories. The comparison of the presented techniques illustrates the authors’ strategies used for the emotional involvement of the reader in the process of deciphering the text, as well as the desire to compress the text without losing its semantic depth.The relevance of the article is determined by the growing interest in the realistic short story, in particular, in the creative legacy of Raymond Carver. The articles and works, devoted to his prose and poetic works, continue to appear in foreign and Russian literary criticism. The analysis of the subtext peculiarities in dialogues allows us to contribute to the study of dialogue strategies, which in the 20th-century literature perform the plot-moving function and disclose psychological characteristics of the character. In addition, the comparative analysis of the writers’ stories helps understand the features of Raymond Carver’s creative method.The methodological basis of the article is the cultural-historical and comparative methods.

Poetics and topics of the medieval English romance “Sir Isumbras” (14<sup>th</sup> century)

The article considers poetic, thematic and compositional features of the early English chivalric romance “Sir Isumbras”. This is a pilot study for Russian literary criticism, and its relevance is due to the insufficient research into this medieval poem in English-language literary criticism. The objectives of the study are to describe the strophic organization of the text variants of the romance found in different manuscripts, its correlation with the strophic organization of the poetic hagiography sample “The Life of Saint Eustache”, presented together with “Sir Isumbras” in MS Ashmole 61, and to consider plot motifs common to this novel and the works of various genres including the indicated hagiography and the chivalric romance “Sir Gowther”, as well as the composition specifics of plot scenes, the features of narrative techniques and the placement of plot accents. In the process of analysis, we have established that the main unit of strophic organization is the twelve-line tail-rhyme stanza of chivalric romances, however, the six-line stanza, usual for lives of the saints in verse, also has a large share; the plot of the novel is connected with different genres and subgenres and includes their characteristic motifs; the composition of the plot scenes is distinguished by two types of symmetry - both mirror and stepped; the forms of psychologism are still absent, but there are heroes’ stereotyped actions characteristic of folklore and associated with their emotional state whose verbal expression is similar to oral poetry formulas; finally, the emphasis of the final battle scene determines the meaning of the novel and gives it the features of a certain subgenre.

Representation of the lyrical "I" in the poetry by A. Podgornova

The multidimensional study of women's poetry is one of the promising strategies of modern Russian literary criticism, which allows us to reveal not only the tools of women's writing, but also the female mentality, feminine identity, and the peculiarities of reflection by a female author of the natural and social world. Among the female authors, a special place is occupied by the Erzya poet Alina Podgornova, whose works trace postmodern trends. The subject of the research in the article is the means of representing the lyrical "I" in the poet's poems. The purpose of the work is to analyze a number of the author's works, to determine the system of images through which the lyrical "I" is represented, to trace their conditioning by the postmodern worldview of the poetess. The material was composed of poems from the collections "Except rhymes", "Stranded" ("Thought"). The methodological basis of the work is determined by the structural and semantic analysis of the lyrical text, through which the structural components of the poetic image, its semantic organization, and symbolic semantics are described. The scientific novelty of the study is determined by the fact that, in the stated aspect, A. Podgornova's lyrics are for the first time considered and introduced into the context of Russian literary criticism. The article argues that the emotional and psychological state of the lyrical heroine A. Podgornova is due to the author's worldview and axiological concept, his perception of the world as chaos, moral apocalypse. The poetess's worldview is filled with negative social manifestations that destroy the spiritual and moral essence of a person, leveling universal values. The conclusions and provisions presented in the article expand the understanding of the state and development of modern Mordovian literature.

THE SILENT LETTER IN H. MELVILLE’S MOBY DICK, OR THE WHALE

The article analyzes the role of the unpronounceable (silent) consonant ‘h’ and the image of the mute letter in Herman Melville’s poetics, especially in Moby-Dick, or The Whale. The paper discusses the indistinction of textual objects (the word ‘whale’, the title of the novel The Whale) and images (white sperm whale Moby Dick, pale characters in Melville’s short stories), which is key for characterizing Melville’s works as autometatexts. The common characteristics that unite both layers - the graphic, auditory existence of the text and the fictional world of the novel - are ‘silence’ and ‘visibility’. The article examines the structure-forming role of these concepts for the system of the images and motifs and their conceptualization within the framework of Melville’s philosophy of creativity and the paradox of the genius who is able to tell the Truth in fiction. The act of creating and reading a text is identified with the process of drawing and seeing a silent letter; the novel then is a transformation field for both the writer and the reader into an architect and a stonemason on the way to comprehending the secret knowledge through the matter of language. The article takes into account the interpretations of the role of the letter ‘h’ in the novel that are classical in Anglophone Melville studies; the methodology of the French philosophers, who wrote about Melville’s work; and modern interpretations from Russian literary criticism.

«Очень по-русски, скажут французы... Очень по-французски, скажут русские»: метаморфозы романа «Тело» Е. Бакуниной во французской и русской литературной критике

The article is devoted to the reception of the novel “The Body” (1933) by emigré writer E.V. Bakunina in French and Russian literary criticism in the early 1930s. A number of researchers have already analyzed the responses of Russian critics to the publication of the novel but have not paid enough attention to a cross-sectional view of the perception of the writer’s work. This question is of interest insofar as it allows us to identify weaknesses and strengths of Bakunina’s work and rethink the literary and cultural norms established in the early 20th century. One of the article’s crucial questions is critics’ reaction to the verbalization of the female character’s body experience. In France, the literary context of the 1920s and 1930s, the presence of progressive journals, and some trends in the history of French literature contributed to the fleeting but genuine interest of critics in the novel. At the same time, the focus on preserving the best traditions of Russian literature in exile, the historical “memory of culture,” and the requirement to observe the artistic measure led to a sharp rejection of body discourse among emigré critics. The conclusion focuses on the stereotypical perception of the novel by French and Russian literary criticism, and emphasizes the importance of studying the creative heritage of “minor” authors. If French literary criticism often perceived Bakunina’s novel through the prism of the distinctive features of the “Slavic soul,” then Russian criticism judged the writer’s novel through an established grid of artistic criteria (measure, taste, femininity).

Harlequinade Grotesque in the Works of Isak Dinesen (Based on the Novellas «The Poet» and «Carnival»)

The article is devoted to the study of the harlequinade grotesque in the novellas by the Danish writer Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen) «The Poet» and «Carnival». The study proves relevant due to the following factors: 1) the current revival in foreign literary criticism of interest in the aesthetics of commedia dell’arte, as well as the role it played in the art of the 20th century; 2) growing interest in Dinesen’s work in Russian literary criticism. This article is the first to highlight both the presence of the harlequinade grotesque in Dinesen’s work and its originality. The authors of the article show how Dinesen’s passion for Italian popular comedy and harlequinade, typical of Scandinavian literature of her era, grew into a special worldview and writing style that synthesized the tragic and the comic. The article aims at revealing the features of the harlequinade grotesque in Dinesen’s work. The leading method in the study is the method of intertextual analysis: the characters and plots of the short stories are analyzed for their similarity with classical images (Harlequin, Pantaloon, Columbine, etc.) and collisions of the harlequinade (the flight of lovers from oppressive old men). The article reveals the features of the representation of the harlequinade plot and the functions of the harlequinade grotesque that evolve from them. The results presented in the article allow us to say that the harlequinade grotesque in Dinesen’s work was realized at the character and plot level, being the mouthpiece of the writer’s worldview, transmitting her aesthetic principles and moral principles. Also, the presence of the harlequinade grotesque in Dinesen’s prose suggests the presence of a similar technique in the work of other Scandinavian writers and confirms the status of this type of grotesque as a pan-European one.

Metatextual Commentary to the Heroic Poem Suvoroida by I. I. Zavalishin: Authorial Manifestation and Understanding of the Genre

Issues concerning the emergence and decline of the epic poem are fairly well researched in Russian literary criticism. Irinarkh Ivanovich Zavalishin was the second author who successfully completed works of this genre following in the footsteps of M. M. Kheraskov. Yet, this author’s poems are often considered superficially as having had no serious influence on the literary process or the consciousness of contemporaries. This article looks at the unique aspect of his poem, Suvoroida, its extensive metatextual and paratextual structure, its relation to the core text and impact on the further development of the genre. The article demonstrates how in his commentary on the poem, the author expresses a new approach to the genre itself, i.e. a decisive rejection of classical fantastic elements of the traditional epic poem of the eighteenth century, postulating the value of historical accuracy and personal attitude to historical events. The article considers the immediate features of historical commentary, noting that, first of all, the author seeks to convey accurate historical information about the obstacles overcome by Suvorov and the losses of the enemy, which serves to formalize the image of the invincible hero. Finally, attention is drawn to the conceptual tension between the text of the poem and the author’s commentary on it, manifesting an active authorial presence in the text. From this tension comes the complexity in the interpretation of Suvorov’s image. As a character of the poetic text, he appears in the image of a classicist hero, sublime, magnificent, formidable, and gracious. The Suvorov of the metatext is down-to-earth, surrounded by everyday details and realities, and easy to deal with.

Эссе “E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction” Д. Ф. Уоллеса как ключ к пониманию американской культуры и общества: анализ основных тем в контексте романов “Infinite Jest” (1996) и “The Pale King” (2011)

The article analyzes the main ideas of the essay E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction (1993) written by the American writer David Foster Wallace (1962–2008). According to scholars and researchers studying the writer’s oeuvre, this essay reflects his worldview and serves as the basis of most of his literary works. In E Unibus Pluram, D. F. Wallace considered the following issues as characterizing modern American culture and society: addictions of American people caused by their loneliness and dissatisfaction with life; consumerism as an unproductive activity; individualism as the embodiment of selfishness and unwillingness to pursue communal well-being; the contradictory nature of freedom and the illusion of choice. In addition, D. F. Wallace examined cynicism and irony of postmodernism cultivated by commercial art that, in turn, distort American writers’ perception of reality: they are basing their works on the fiction presented by television, which they perceive as realistic material. The researchers believe that the analyzed essay largely marked the transition from American postmodernism to metamodernism (the concepts such as ‘New Sincerity’ ‘postirony’, etc. are also used as related or synonymous) in the 20th–21st centuries; Wallace’s statement about the exhaustion of postmodern irony and his call for sincerity are considered to lie at the heart of reflections on the place of the writer in the modern literary context. The issues stated above are discussed in the article in the context of the D. F. Wallace’s magnum opus Infinite Jest (1996) and his unfinished novel The Pale King (2011): it is concluded that they are central to understanding these novels and reveal meanings and ideas conveyed in the texts. This is the novelty of this article: there have been numerous research papers about the personality and works of the author published abroad; however, in Russian literary criticism, these aspects are insufficiently studied or have not been considered yet.

Образ Ильи Муромца в сравнительно-историческом и историко-функциональном аспектах

Introduction. Bylina is an ancient Russian epic song about the life and heroic deeds of Russian heroes, as well as about events or remarkable episodes in the national history of the 11th–16th centuries. Cycles of epics about Ilya Muromets are formed on the basis of ancient legends, united by the origin and character of the main character. It is not the name of the hero, but artistic plots inherited from the distant past that form the basis on which the historical epic develops. The purpose of the article is to identify the conditions for the formation and transformation of epic stories about Ilya Muromets. Material and methods. Classic works of Russian literary criticism and folkloristics, individual plots of the Russian epic and the epic of neighboring peoples are analyzed. Comparative-historical and historical-functional research methods were used. Results. The scientific work examines the history of the development of the image of the Russian hero Ilya Muromets as a gradual “democratization” of the hero of the ancient Russian epic. A wide range of works of Russian, Belarusian, Serbian, Adyghe, Georgian, Ossetian folklore is analyzed. The points of view of folklorists of the 19th–20th centuries on the history, existence, methods and means of broadcasting the poetic biography of Ilya Muromets are presented and interpreted.; their scientific methods and approaches. Epic plots are traced, united by the name of Ilya and having not only an “external” but also a deep internal connection, determined by folk ideas about the hero, his entire appearance, growing on the basis of the entire set of artistic plots. The Conclusion is drawn about the “reworking” in Russian epics of the motifs of magical-heroic fairy tales, the heroic epic of the peoples of the North Caucasus, Transcaucasia and other ethnic groups.

The functions of Buddhist practices in the works of L. Yuzefovich

The aim of the research is to analyze the features and functions of L. Yuzefovich's appeal to Buddhist religious practices in the book “The Autocrat of the Desert. Baron R.F. Ungern-Sternberg and the World in Which he Lived", the novel “Prince of the Wind”, the story “The Murderer” and the poem “Burkhan”. This topic has not previously been in the spotlight of Russian literary criticism, which determines the scientific novelty of this study. The Buddhist practices in the works of Yuzefovich within the framework of the concept of the “Buddhist text” of modern literature are comprehended. The results showed that the writer uses the practice of visualizing a dokshit, or Buddhist protector, appearing in the plot as one of the ways to characterize characters who outwardly coincide with the frightening deity, but internally diverge from him in terms of motivation. Buddhist meditation on impurity reveals in Yuzefovich the problem of the opposition of creative and religious intentions: the hero of the novel “Prince of the Wind” chooses the path of asceticism, closing for himself the possibility of literary creation, which inherently multiplies samsaric images. Meditation associated with the figure of the Bodhisattva of compassion allows the writer to designate in his works a transcendent reality that enlightens the landscape and transforms the suffering world, bringing harmony to the plot of life's tragedy and catastrophe.

MUKHTAR AUEZOV’S ROLE IN PRESENTING ABAI’S POETIC HERITAGE IN THE CULTURAL SPACE

The article will focus on the life and fiction of Mukhtar Auezov, as well as on the course of writing and translating into Russian the epic of the novel “The Way of Abai”, reflection in the literary, cultural, artistic criticism of the state of Russia, which is our neighboring state, about the media space of the world. Russian publication of the novel “The Way of Abai”, written by the great man M. Auezov, is hotly discussed in Russian literature. A theoretical analysis of the views of Russian literary critics on the professional requirements of literary criticism was also carried out. To date, this topic is one of the most relevant, which has been little studied. In recent years, especially during the period of independence, Russian literary studies have been considering various scientific studies and historical cognitive works, new materials based on other archival documents, new approaches to texts, opportunities for new examinations. Numerous research papers and scientific books, historical documents, etc. have been published about Mukhtar Auezov's “The Way of Abai”. Currently, up-to-date information in social networks, electronic channels, M. Auezov was considered in comparison with scientific conclusions, historical data related to the established Abai studies. Mukhtar Auezov is a classic of Kazakh literature in his research work. The evaluation of the poet's artistic image in the novel “The Way of Abai”, given in Russian literature, was analyzed in a comparative form from today's point of view.

Философские константы в творческом самоопределении песенных поэтов

The article compares the views of foreign philosophers on the nature of creativity, their reception in the Russian literary criticism and the creative implementation of some points in the Russian songwriting. The works of W. Benjamin (1892–1940) The Task of the Translator (1923), M. Blanchot (1907–2003) The Space of Literature (1955), P. Valery (1871–1945) Poetry and Abstract Thought (19390, S. Mallarme (1842–1898) The Crisis of Verse (1896), M. Heidegger (1889–1976) Hölderlin and the Essence of Poetry (1936), K. G. Jung (1875–1961) Archetype and Symbol (1934–1961) are used as a theoretical basis. Song texts of the representatives of the author’s song tradition A. Galich, A. Bashlachev, whose work is usually attributed to bard rock, and E. Letov, one of the main representatives of Russian punk rock, are used as research material. The choice of the authors is determined by the concept of the work, which seeks to show the universality of the constants identified in the process of research for various song and poetic traditions and philosophical systems. As such constants, the utopian concepts of “a single discourse”, a single “conversation” of poetry, and “pure art”, which is a “goal-in-itself”, stand out. Other constants relate to the inner state of the poet, techniques aimed at achieving inspiration – we are talking about the concepts of “removal”, or, according to Shklovsky, “estrangement”, as well as “silence”. The central constant is the concept of the “inexpressible”, “elusive”, which is the essential goal of every poet, clearly seen, but always unattainable. In thinking about each of the constants of philosophical thoughts about creativity, we find confirmation or discrepancies in the creative practice of song poets. It leads us to the conclusion that song poetry, following traditional poetry, accepts and transmits the experience of the Russian and Western philosophical and poetic thoughts about the essence of creativity. Typological overlaps are of a supranational, cosmopolitan nature, which indicates the universality of the constants we have identified. The work contributes to the study of song poetry, which confirms its status as the next stage in the existence of poetic discourse, which proves the legitimacy and necessity of studying song texts from a philological standpoint.

Biography of the Artist as an Artistic and Aesthetic Category

The study of the problem of a creative personality and an artistic hero allows us to find a solution to a number of poetic issues, such as a work of art, the history of its creation, an aesthetic ideal, a hero, an image. In the first case, attention was paid to this concept from the point of view of sociality, and in a later period it is observed that the mental state and spiritual vibrations of a human personality are illuminated on the basis of literary sources (creativity, literary text, its roots). The main principles of the biographical method in the world literature are studied in many theoretical sources in general, during this period in the West, the synthesis of a work of art with the character, talent and psychological states of its author, an individual approach to the creative process, became a form of tradition. Since the identity of the creator is full of mysteries, it is difficult to organize his biography according to strict rules. That is why in Russian literary criticism the writer's biography was called "a genre that does not obey the rules" In a biographical work, one of the main issues of the biographical method is the integration and study of different aspects of a person's life.

Terminological Thesaurus of the Gospel Text by Dostoevsky: Сorpus Analysis and Interpretation Results

The article presents the integrated results of the corpus analysis and interpretation of the terminological dictionary from 700 articles published in the “Problems of Historical Poetics” journal from 1990 to 2021 Based on this data and taking into account the rich lexicographic tradition that reflects the author’s original or thematic terminology — from Antony Khrapovitsky’s “Dictionary to the works of Dostoevsky” (1921) to recent thesaurus-type dictionaries, a thesaurus of the gospel text by F. M. Dostoevsky is compiled. It is a conceptual apparatus that representatively reflects the current state of the study of the writer’s gospel text using terms and concepts that belong to the spheres of general historical poetics and ethnopoetics, theology and philosophy. Dictionary entries devoted to such key concepts of Russian literary criticism of the 21st century as “historical poetics,” “ethnopoetics,” “gospel text,” etc. are given as illustrative examples. The article concludes that this dictionary has promising applied value for solving educational and scientific problems.

Symbolism of Classical Color Triad in Siegfried Lipiner’s Poem “Freed Prometheus”

The question of the relationship between the motive series of the poem “Freed Prometheus” (1876) by the Austrian writer Siegfried Lipiner (1856—1911) and the symbolism of the classical color triad is considered. The novelty of the study is seen in the fact that the analysis of the symbolism of color in Lipiner’s lyrics is carried out for the first time in Russian literary criticism. It is noted that the Austrian context of the 1870—1880s correlates with the symbolism of color in world literature. A selective review of the evolution of color and motif from the early Middle Ages to the turn of the 19th—20th centuries is made. Particular attention is paid to the comparative analysis of the color symbols of Lipiner’s poem with the elements of the color triad in Dante’s Divine Comedy, as well as the treatise “Theory of Colours” by Goethe. Red and yellow (golden) tones of the color triad are presented as dominant. It is shown that the symbolism of the red color in the poem “Freed Prometheus” is interconnected, first of all, with the leitmotif of the Promethean fire, which determines the relevance of the study: the theme of the Promethean fire is actively studied in modern Western literary criticism. It is proved that the symbolism of the classical color triad has a significant impact on the motifs of Lipiner’s lyrical work.

Образ китайской поэзии в переводах В. Перелешина

The research aims to determine how the image of Chinese poetry is created in V. Pereleshin’s translations and to identify the key features of his cultural dialogue with China. The paper is devoted to the analysis of the image of Chinese poetry in translations by V. Pereleshin, mainly involving the materials of his anthology of translations of Chinese classical poetry “Poems on the Fan” and autographs of translations of Chinese poems. The peculiarities of Pereleshin’s translations are revealed in terms of the poetic form, translation adequacy, the manifestation of the creative individuality of the translator and in terms of the range of themes of Chinese poetry. The paper substantiates that the compliance with the miniature genre of Chinese poetry and the strict rhyming of Russian poetry is a distinctive feature of Pereleshin’s poetic translations. The scientific novelty lies in the fact that the paper is the first to conduct a detailed comparative study of the image of Chinese poetry in translations by V. Pereleshin as a representative of the Far Eastern branch of Russian literature in the synthesis of two scientific approaches: Russian literary criticism and studies of the Chinese literary tradition. As a result, it has been proved that the vivid image of Chinese classical poetry created by Pereleshin gives a general view of the form, content and range of themes of shi and ci poems and leads to the understanding of the cultural dialogue of Russian émigré poets with China.

«Шум и гам, суматоха и кутерьма»: специфика композиции Первой части шотландского комического эпоса «Colkelbie Sow»

The article deals with «Colkelbie Sow», the epic poem of the 15th century, created by an anonymous author in Middle Scots. The Anglo-Scottish publishers of this mock-epic perceived the poem as strange, incomprehensible, with a bizarre composition. Therefore, its plot and narrative structure became the subject of our study. The research methods are historical poetics, versification and linguopoetics. The main attention was focused on the vaguest part of the poem - Pars Prima. The study revealed significant differences between this part and the Proemium and the following parts. The differences are manifested in its plot inconsistency with the rest of the parts, in its special verse forms, the special tone of the narration and the position of the narrator regarding the subject of the narration, as well as in the frame text. Their discovery made it possible to assume the early existence of Pars Prima as a separate and complete work in relation to the full multi-part text of the poem that is known today. The secondary subjects of the research were the compositional device of the enumeration, which outgrew the functions of form and turned into the core and purpose of the plot, and the euphony of nominations, achieved by combining them into pairs of words with a common initial. This poem is underestimated and therefore little studied even by English philologists, and in Russian literary criticism this article is its pilot study.