The semantics of sea imagery in R. I. Rozhdestvensky’s poem "Czar Peter House in Zaandam" (to the 90th anniversary of the birth)

Abstract

The article presents a linguo-stylistic and poetic-philosophical analysis of R. I. Rozhdestvensky’s poem "Czar Peter House in Zaandam". This piece of poetry is one of the key texts in the ideological and artistic structure of the "City’s Voice" collection of poems as it links the present with the landmarks in our national history in a single artistic continuum. The paper aims to identify the potential of the imagery in the poem for representing sociocultural and historiosophical problems of a twentieth-century person’s state and personal existence. The study also seeks to reveal the formal and semantic system of the realisation of the figures of speech and expressive means employed to represent sea imagery as a cultural and semantic marker of the poet’s world, which is seamlessly integrated into the national semiosphere. To accomplish the declared aim, the research used cognitive-semantic, systemic-holistic, structural-typological, and historical-functional methods and approaches. Additionally, elements of mythopoetic literary text analysis were employed in the unity of paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations. The sea imagery in the poem by R. I. Rozhdestvensky is not only a poetic leitmotif that constitutes the lyrical plot of the piece, but it also integrates the concepts associated with natural phenomena symbolising the space of freedom, irrational impulses, and creative life. The key image-symbol of the poem, i. e. the ship – has been identified. The artist envisaged that both "Czar Peter House in Zaandam" and Russia rushing to its great future were a ship.