The Metaphor “Book Is Food” in Letters, Diaries and Memories of the Decembrists: Semantic Variants and Axiological Gradation

Modern bibliological research is characterized by an integrative approach to the phenomenon of the book: factual and statistical data are supplemented with philological observations, socio-cultural, historical and semiotic information. In this context, the appeal to book metaphors seems very productive: metaphor is a fundamental category of literary thinking, it conceptualizes the value of the book for the person and the cultural era, the semantic options of book metaphors reflect the dynamics of the person's attitude to print media. The subject of this study was the metaphor “book is food” and its semantic variations (“text is food for the mind / juicy food / dainty / light and pleasant food”). The material for the study was the diary entries and the epistolary and memoir legacy of the Decembrists of the 1820s-1840s, first of all, the memories of the Bestuzhev brothers and the diary of W.K. Kuchelbecker. Numerous works of historical literary and historical cultural nature provide statistical data on the reading of the Decembrists. These facts testify to the diverse topics and issues of print media, the wide range of the Decembrists' reading interests, including ancient texts and literary novelties. However, in the author's opinion, the “book is food” metaphor speaks artistically vividly and axiologically specifically on the need for a book culture for readers in prison. On the pages of memories and diaries, this book metaphor is endowed with several semantic overtones: “book is spiritual food”, “book is juicy food for the mind / treat / pleasant and light food”. These metaphors and metaphoric expressions are located on a peculiar value “scale”. The highest position on it belongs to the “book is spiritual food”, its genesis goes back to the old Russian book metaphor “book is food”, religious in the spirit, and the speech of prisoners preserves religious allusions. M.A. Bestuzhev and W.K. Kuchelbecker positively evaluate the “book is healthy food / juicy food / food for the mind”; these semantic versions of the book metaphor are most often found in the Decembrists' texts. In addition, W.K. Kuchelbecker's diary has emotional metaphorical statements about a refined “dainty book” - a poetic text; there are judgments about “pleasant and light food” less valuable for a thoughtful reader. The negative evaluation of the book, in this case of the novels, is due to the stereotyped style and author's intention. The metaphorical “scale” demonstrated the intellectual and aesthetic preferences of people in the Decembrist circle, for whom reading was a need - food, but the quality of this food was necessarily evaluated by a free reader, subjected to judgments of mind and taste. The book metaphor became an expression of the value of the book in the Decembrist circle and demonstrated the axiological gradation of the print media.

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