Acute thirst for beauty and ambivalence of colour in Innokentiy Annensky's book Cypress Box

The article discusses the semantics of color in the book of poems The Cypress Chest by Innokenty Annensky as a reflection of the eternal search for beauty by the poet. It presents a general review of all color images and reveals the most frequent of them - the ones that have a special meaning. The main colors in the poems by Annensky are gold (yellow), blue (cyan), violet, black, purple (red) and white. The author examines in detail each of the poet's "favorite" colors by analyzing corresponding poems in the levels of mythopoetics and phonosemantics. In addition, colors in the poetry of Annensky are associated with different symbols, e.g., precious stones, flowers or plants, celestial bodies. Thus, each color is reinforced in the mind of the reader by some specific image from the earthy or celestial worlds. That is the reason of frequent ambivalence in the poet's perception of color: the same color in different verses can symbolize opposite feelings and ideas. For example, yellow can be perceived as the color of melancholy or a disease and death, but golden has the meaning of holiness, warmth and memories of childhood. White, which is commonly accepted as the color of innocence and purity owing to the image of a bride, from poem to poem gains more shades of deadness and coldness in its semantic field and becomes the color of death, mourning, sadness and hopelessness in the last poems of Annensky. Color in his poems can be conventionally referred to one of categories which are based on its nature. The color can be a synonym of coloration, that is simple, non-transparent, dense color. Alternatively, color can be conceived of being imbued with light. This color is disembodied, related with fire and air; it discovers another, wonderful world for us. The role of context of a poem is significant, as the meanings of colors are changeable and cannot be reduced to an abstract meaning accepted in the culture. All this allows speaking about specifically brightened Annensky's universe, where each color is perceived as a natural part of the world, as the air sometimes dissolved in environment and in its parts: in stones, frozen flames, the reflection of water, the shimmering sky. These are not just bright color spots; this is a harmonious picture, refracted through the prism of feelings of the poet. And each color, showing beauty of the world, can bring enlightenment or torture, depending on its belonging to the realm of earthly or heavenly.

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