Profile of a classical poet in the social network as a form of literary knowledge adoption and interpretation. Analysis of Nikolay Gumilyov’s digital personality

The aim of the research is to study the creation in social networks of digital profiles and, as a consequence, of virtual personalities based on the biographic material and legacy of representatives of classical Russian literature. Within the framework of the research, two accounts created on behalf of the Russian poet Nikolay Gumilyov in the Instagram social network were analyzed using the method of comparative analysis. The hypothesis that the analyzed phenomena should be classified as a “digital/virtual personality” was confirmed during the study. The theoretical basis of this study are works investigating people’s behavior in virtual environment and digital/virtual personalities (E.V. Gorny, O.V. Lutovinova, D.A. Popova, R.I. Zekeryaev), as well as literary sources on the poet’s works (L. Ryzhkova, L.V. Selezneva, O.A. Ovcharenko, A.G. Gribkov) and biographical works (R. Dutli, A. Akhmatova). The originality of the work lies in the fact that the concept “digital personality” is applied to the literary material for the first time. In addition, the work raises the problem of transformation of the ways of adoption of cultural knowledge under the influence of technology. The selected accounts are investigated according to several parameters: what biographical material is selected for publications on Instagram, how Gumilyov’s poems are presented, what features of Gumilyov’s character are attractive to our contemporaries. The strategies of visualization of information about the poet are also analyzed. In the accounts, the information is mostly visual, biographical facts and poems are presented selectively and fragmentarily. The image of the warrior, romantic, poet and dandy, embodied in the image of Gumilyov, is attractive to our contemporaries. The article contains conclusions about how the perception of authors and texts of classical literature is transformed under the influence of communication and visual technologies. The main conclusions are the following: the analyzed profiles on Instagram are variants of subjective perceptions of Gumilyov; such projects create a wide field for interpretation. This is one of the ways of interaction between the reader and the poet, adoption of culture and knowledge, which is connected with the practice of mythologization of knowledge, various distortions and fragmentation. The development of technologies makes knowledge publicly available, but it negatively affects the quality of knowledge, its expert character. The digital personality, including the one created on the basis of the biography and work of the famous poet of classical Russian literature, acquires new qualities in the virtual space, simulates activity, and structures new social meanings. This trend differs from the traditional way of adoption and assimilation of cultural information and leads to the transformation of the relationship between culture and literature. The author declares no conflicts of interests.

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