Ancient thanatology images and motives in Arseny Tarkovsky's poetry

This article investigates how ancient thanatology art images and motives function in Arseny Tarkovsky's poetry. As the mortal theme penetrates Arseny Tarkovsky's poetry, the ways of perceiving and interpreting of the "death" category evolve. The poet leaves both the childish non-recognition of death as an irreversible act and the later view of death as an oblivion opposed to the cultural memory for the discovery of its second, unnatural and violent kind of a war-begotten victim state followed by disgust and fear of death, and then for vision of death as a final metamorphosis and for belief in the soul immortality. In order to elaborate on the topic of death the poet refers to the ancient afterlife notions: ancient myths, infernal images, symbols and motives. The article aims to identify the reasons of Tarkovsky's resort to ancient thanatology art images and motives as well as his interpretation of the "death" category in the coordinates of antiquity. Inability to clearly distinguish oneself from the surrounding natural world underlies the mythological thinking features also immanent for childish mentality, such as space-time syncretism, poor abstract thinking and nature anthropomorphism, which Tarkovsky's memory fixes and later his verse reflects as natural world anthropomorphism followed by the lyric hero's metamorphosis and also develops the theme of death and soul immortality by resorting to concrete object images of ancient Greek mythology. Arseny Tarkovsky refers to ancient thanatology artistic figures and motives in order to reveal the topic of death, as the variety of ancient afterlife myths provides a wide range of thanatological mythologems (the boat, the river of forgetful-ness, the ferryman, swallows, pines, shades in the underworld, Queen Core, the myth of Phaeton and Actaeon) as well as the hero's ability to break the rules established by gods. Ancient myth challenges eternal oblivion by offering a variety of both further developments after death and ways of immortality theme elaboration, therefore Tarkovsky's poetry portrays death as a process of the physical body metamorphosis and immortal soul's rebirth, but not as an active force, personified (Hades, Thanatos) and terrifying. Dualism of body and soul comprehends physical death as the last metamorphosis predetermined both by the natural world anthropomorphism and the idea of the universal reversibility. The interpretation of death as the final metamorphosis serves to disclose the ideas of time and space overcoming as well as a victory over death and oblivion. Tarkovsky's artistic world contains no idyllic place of Elysium, as a rebirth of an immortal soul denies the concept of a long afterlife.

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