To the analysis of M.A. Voloshin's cycle of poems War

This article attempts to anayze M.A. Voloshin's poetic cycle War ("Voyna") with the aim of revealing its macroplot, which is composed of the micro-plots of individual poems. The methodological basis for the analysis of this cycle of poems was provided by the already classic works on the theory and history of the lyrical cycle: M. N. Darwin, I. V. Fomenko, R. Vroon, in which it is convincingly proven that the Symbolists and poets of the near-Symbolist circle thought not in terms of individual poems, but in cycles and books of poems. As a result of analyzing the cycle's poems, the author concludes that the unifying theme of War is the portents and omens of catastrophes yet to come, prophecies of impending disasters and the arrival of a chiliastic end. The poems are interconnected through motifs that migrate from one poem to the next. A chain-like connection can be traced: words and images mentioned in one poem are developed in the subsequent one. For example, if in the first poem the lyrical hero yearns to partake in the anguish of his land ("Tvoyey toske prichastit'sya" [To partake in your anguish]), the image of the next poem becomes the flesh of the world, seized by a universal anguish in which the hero himself partakes ("Vse vo mne i ya vo vsekh: odnoy / I odna - toskoyu plot' ob'yata" [All is within me and I am in all: one / And united - the flesh is seized by anguish]). In the following poem, the hero, "tormented by dreams," takes shelter from the "approaching storm" in a saving ark. Later, the image of the "storm" unfolds as the image of impending military action, whose approach the hero hears as "the seething, muffled bile and blood of the earth." The image of the earth seething with blood gives rise in the next poem to the image of the Evil Sower, linked to the image of the "devilish sowing" in the subsequent poem, where the hero's striving to escape the "tares' seeds" is later realized as salvation from the "vortex of battles" ("Vo sne menya volnoyu smylo" [A wave washed me away in my dream]) onto a peaceful shore. Finding himself far from the military actions, the hero becomes a chosen one to whom the meaning and further course of events is revealed (the poems "Prologue" and "Armageddon"). The final poem, "Weariness," foretells the finale of the unfolding events and expresses the hero's faith in a benevolent end and the fulfillment of chiliastic hopes. Thus, the cycle reveals the development of a plotline connected to the image of the lyrical hero, who journeys from an intention to comprehend the essence of his homeland ("Grant me words to pray for you, / To understand your existence") to receiving a revelation about the consequences and finale of the unfolding events. The cycle's integrity is also based on recurring leitmotif images. These include the motifs of anguish, seeds and tares, devilish sowing, unquenched faith, and the hero's impulse to save himself from the influence of the trichinae leading to spiritual death. The unifying theme of the cycle is war; all poems represent the hero's contemplation of warfare, his striving to uncover the spiritual causes of war, to learn of its consequences, and to discover where the "great martial clamors" lead. The author declares no conflicts of interests.

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