Motive of the music of the moon in the poetry by K. D. Balmont

Abstract

In the article the motive of the music of the moon in K. D. Balmont’s poetry is researched on the material of his poems, prose and aesthetic articles. Its symbolic value and evolution in books of the early, mature and late periods are explored. The following conclusions are drawn. In the early lyric poetry of Balmont the moon is associated with the oxymoronic motive of the ‘sounding silence’. This motive is determined by the principal role of psychologism in the early poems of the symbolist, the ‘sounding silence’ emphasizes the state of the inner world of the hero, who is always detached from reality and is refl ecting on the essence of life and death. The connection of the motive of the ‘sounding silence’ with gothic symbolic range is considered, which is characteristic for the fi rst books by Balmont. In his mature lyrical poetry, the moon is associated with the theme of music, which has a lot of connotations. Firstly, the music of the moon correlates with the traditional motives of poetry and art. In the book Let’s be Like the Sun the world is on the line between lunar silence and melody of strings, which the poet uses to play his odes to the orb of the night. But in mature poetry in the books Only Love. Seven-color Flower, Liturgy of the Beauty. Hymns of the Elements and Sonnets of Sun, Honey and Moon. The song of worlds lunar music is connected with themes of fairy tale, magic, love, dream and phantasy, but at the same time with motives of the illusion, unfeasible reveries, death, specularity and ghostliness. Particular attention is paid to the connection between the motive of lunar music and the philosophy of music of the senior symbolist and his spontaneous mythol ogy. No less important is the functioning of this motive in the poem The Moon, dedicated to the cosmogonic myth of the creation of the world, where moon music is related to the themes of archaic mythology and the motives of initiation, death, rebirth and transformation into a deity.

Keywords

• k. balmont
• senior symbolism
• music
• silence
• lyric
• symbol
• lunar mythology
• synthesis