Functions of the antique pre-text in the lyrics by A. Kushner

The article studies the role of the antique pre-text in the lyrics by A. Kushner. In his poetry and essays Kushner interprets the creativity and life ways of a wide range of predecessors. The lyrical texts of the poet are full of names of the Greek and Roman writers (Homer, Alcaeus, Euripides, Catullus, Ovid, Horace, Petronius, Virgil, Pliny, Martial, Plautus, Tacitus, Juvenal). Kushner refers to the writings of Tacitus, Suetonius, Pliny's letters, and poems of Catullus as his favorite books. In his interviews and essays when reflecting on the tragic nature of life he mentions the names of Seneca and Marcus Aurelius. His appeal to the works of ancient authors, active use of allusions and reminiscences associated with the Antiquity in the lyrics by Kushner allow understanding the reasons for the poet's appeal to the Antiquity. The aim of the paper is to identify the reasons for the inclusion of the Antiquity in the artistic world of Kushner's poetry and define the functions of the antique pre-text in his lyrics. In Kushner's conception, a feature of historical time is repeatable events: all empires have similar stages of development: their flourishing inevitably ends in decline and decay. Time lapse between the past and the present as well as the integrity, completeness, and maturity of the Antiquity, noninvolvement in the era described allow the poet to completely and objectively analyze the social, historical, political, and cultural events that are identical to the events of today. The Antiquity with a completed full cycle of development is a means to conceptualize the modernity, fluid and changeable. In Kushner's artistic conception of the world there are no strict time boundaries between the past and the present, people of the past and the poet's contemporaries (including the lyrical hero) exist in one art space simultaneously and communicate through poetry. When writing Kushner is cautious of his predecessors as they assess his work. The present and the past co-exist in his art picture of the world. The dialogue of the poets of the past and the present continues in the field of poetic texts. Thus the times meet to create vertical time where all the times communicate in poetry. The concept of repeated times and Kushner's attitude similar to the Roman Stoics conditioned the appeal to the Antiquity and the heritage of Roman authors. The poet's image of the world is rooted in the philosophy of the late Roman Stoics, i.e. the antique pre-text performs the world modeling function in his poetry and allows constructing a model of the real world and the aesthetic reality, developing such an important topic as the fate of the poet and his poetry, revealing the essence of such categories as "glory", "immortality", "death", and "soul".

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