Syria in O.I. Senkovsky's mythopoetics

In the paper the mythopoetic image of Syria in O.I. Senkovsky's works is analysed. Senkovsky is a famous founder and promoter of the genre of ''Oriental tales'' in the Russian literature of the 19th century, and the analysis of oriental myths in his work allows us to understand the depth and scope of Russian romantic Orientalism. The main aim of this paper is to present the Syrian field in the works by Senkovsky as a mythological construct. For O.I. Senkovsky Syria is one of the meaningful parts of the Orient, which he mythologized for many years of his life by different sides of his talent (scientific, artistic and journalistic). At the same time, united in the field of irony and self-irony, different approaches of Senkovsky formed a mythopoetic model of Syria as an Oriental country, which for many centuries had conceptual importance for the development of Russian culture. The concept of Syria is most clearly reflected in two Senkovsky's texts: Antar (1832) and Memories of Syria (1834). In Memories of Syria Senkovsky positions himself as an enlightened European yearning to learn the Arabic language and having a real prestige among the Syrian natives, who call him ''Frank'' or ''Khawaja Yusuf'. In describing the nature of Syria Senkovsky is consistent in forming a mythopoetic space that influences human consciousness. The oriental tale Antar seems to us the most representative for Syrian mythopoetics. The main structural elements of the Syrian construct in Antar include: a) mythopoetics and mystification of character names, b) formation of ''qasida'' discourse, and c) Biblical and Quranic context of the mythologems of the Great Queen and the King-Founder. Senkovsky consciously plays with the reader as a professional orientalist, he reduces historical and literary facts to the level of mass consciousness and represents Antar as a text of his oriental mytholo-gizing. But for the archaeological value the ruins of Tadmor (Palmyra) represent mainly the cultural and mythological value for Senkovsky, related to the sphere of Russian culture in connection with the metaphor of St. Petersburg as Northern Palmyra. In addition to the ancient context, the image of Tadmor should be considered in the context of mytho-poetics of the Bible and the Quran, because there are allusions in Antar that refer to the image of King Solomon, the Biblical myth of Tadmor's founding and the Quranic myth about the love between King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba Balqis. Syrian desert was not an entourage in the Oriental tales of Senkovsky. The main function of Senkovsky's mythopoetics of Syria was to form a rich in meanings reasoning field of Russia and of the contemporary Russian Romantic literature in the context of Russian and Western European Orientalism in the 19th century.

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