Buddhism in the Poetic Works of Innokenty Annensky

Abstract

The importance of the work is determined by the place which I. Annensky occupies in Russian poetry and his unrelenting influence on generations of readers. The purpose of the work is to reveal the presence and linguistic ways of implementing the semantics of the Buddhist understanding of the world in the poetic heritage of I. Annensky. The material for the study is all original poems of the poet. The main methods are semantic, comparative and intertextual analysis. From the days of his study at the university, the poet was well acquainted with the basics of Buddhism and demonstrated obsession with it throughout his life. Several poems undoubtedly present semantic complexes that are directly referred to Buddhism, refurbishing its major provisions. The ways of translating Buddhist semantics are diverse and they are always organically interwoven into an artistic whole. The language of the poet is consistently focused on ambiguity, uncertainty and ambivalence, which is manifested at various text levels. The work lists the main language transformations used by the poet. It is illustrated on the example of the poem "", which mysteriousness steadily draws the attention of readers and researchers. The author shows that the poem realizes the Buddhist conception of the ratio of extremely small and infinitely large quantities, implying their identity. The authors draw a parallel between the lines of I. Annensky and W. Blake which implement identical Buddhist ideas. The conclusion outlines the prospects for a detailed analysis of other texts.

Keywords

• poetic text
• linguapoetics
• Innokenty Annensky
• Buddhism
• semantics of Buddhism
• semantics of infinity and instant
• language transformations