The universe in us": "Hamlet" by Boris Pasternak in the light of German romantic philosophy
The article is devoted to the analysis of Boris Pasternak's "Hamlet" with the help of some of the key concepts of the philosophy and motives of German romanticism, such as the theater, the night, the world soul, the microcosm and the macrocosm. The author also refers to the concepts of Mikhail Bak-htin's chronotope and polyphony and to the concept of intertextuality, referring to the influence of German romantic poets on Boris Pasternak's work. The poem "Hamlet" was written by Boris Pasternak in 1946 and is part of a cycle of Yuri Zhivago's poems from the novel Doctor Zhivago, being one of the central texts not only in this cycle but also in the whole work of the poet. The idea to read a poem "armed with" categories of the philosophy of German romanticism is not accidental. It is known that Pasternak felt a strong influence of German-speaking culture; his translations of poems by Rilke, drafts of his own works are evidence of this fact. In his published works, we can also see quotes and reminiscences of N. Lenau, H. Heine, E. T. A. Hoffmann; Goethe plays a very important role in his work. Such an analysis of the poem, relying on some of the key concepts of the philosophy and motives of German romanticism, allows seeing some interesting aspects. First, it helps to explore the intertex-tual richness of the text, not only on the syntagmatic level, the level of citations, but also on the paradigmatic level, the level of the author's reflections on various topics, a range of issues, his attitude to the culture and the determination of his own place in the world of this culture. Secondly, the text of the poem shows again the importance of the German romantic philosophy for Pasternak's work. The theatrical metaphor, the metonymical intertextual elements, an unusual organization of the time-spatial structure of the text, the overcoming of all boundaries within the narrator and the overcoming of borders in the universe as a result, experienced in a certain moment, show the author's attitude to the historical time, which brings us back again to the context of German romanticism, because time is one of the key issues that interested scientists and artists of the epoch. The most important thing is that despite the complexity and multi-layered content of the poem, it is incredibly simple in its structure; it is a clear text architectural model of the universe in which different cultural codes harmoniously coexist, the model of the poetic universe of Boris Pasternak.
Keywords
intertextuality, macrocosm and microcosm, theatre, metaphor, philosophy of German romanticism, chronotope, интертекстуальность, метафора, макрокосм и микрокосм, театр, хронотоп, философия немецкого романтизмаAuthors
Name | Organization | |
Pasko Yulia V. | National Research University Higher School of Economics (Moscow) | juliapasko@inbox.ru |
References

The universe in us": "Hamlet" by Boris Pasternak in the light of German romantic philosophy | Vestnik Tomskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta. Filologiya – Tomsk State University Journal of Philology. 2016. № 1 (39). DOI: 10.17223/19986645/39/11