Transformation of the philosophical and religious discourse of modernism in the poetry of Igor Severyanin

The aim of the article is to analyze the transformation of symbolism poetics into post-symbolist avant-garde poetics. Philosophical and religious discourse was one of the specific features of Russian symbolism; it reflected the spiritual quest of the era. The aspiration to comprehend the transcendent led to the creation of a special style within the literary language of the epoch. The characteristic verbal formulas of this style, repeating themselves from text to text, eventually formed a modern philosophical and religious discourse: a special way of writing and speaking about God, religious and philosophical problems. Its basic word concepts were: God and the Devil, Christ and Antichrist, Father and Son, the Cross, Calvary, the Spirit and the Flesh, the transcendental Genesis, the Apocalypse and the Kingdom of God on earth, Sophia, the Wisdom of God, the God-Man and the Man-God, etc. Despite the seriousness of the problem, such poetry and prose became the object of reflection, reinterpretation and parody in the 1900s. The material of the study is the works of Konstantin Balmont and Igor Severyanin, which reflected the philosophical and religious discourse of the era. Excerpts from the works of D. Merezhkovsky, A. Bely, Vyach. Ivanov, A. Izmailov, E. Viensky are also used for comparison. Methods of research are comparative, typological and historical-cultural analysis, and the theory of parody. The study revealed that Balmont's poem "Dalyokim blizkim" ^o Distant Close Ones] (1903) is one of the first attempts to reflect on the philosophical and religious discourse of symbolism. His key concepts (Christ, the Antichrist, the Devil, God) are objectified; they acquire an ironic touch, but do not lose their meaning. In Severyanin's "Shampanskiy polonez" [Champagne Polonaise], the binary straightforward thinking and addiction to antitheses are shown, which are specific features, for example, for Merezhkovsky's novel trilogy Christ and Antichrist. In "Poeza ne dlya pechati" [Poesa not for Publication], the irony and the stylistic game with language stamps are enhanced. They appear in new stylistic contexts, lose meaning, form absurd combinations. Severyanin's "Konechnoe nicho" [The Final Nothing] (1918) sums up the philosophical and religious searches of the era, listing their figurative-ideological and lexical arsenal. The tangible focus on the "second plan", someone else's style, and ironic coloring allow classifying Severyanin's poems as parodies in their mechanism. The main conclusion of the article is that Severyanin distances himself from the legacy of symbolism, discredits it by travesty, exaggeration, hyperbole, grotesque and alogism, and, at the same time, uses its linguistic material to create poetry of a new type. Thus, symbolism as an artistic method and worldview is overcome. In return, a different world-view, aimed only at earthly existence, and the parodying game stylistics of a literary text are approved.

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