Abstract:
In the poetic descriptions of different pictures of the world, binary
oppositions are observed – a number of binary features opposed to each
other, every one of which, respectively, has a positive or negative value.
These oppositions can be spatial (up-down, sky-earth), color (white-black), social-categorical (male-female, older-younger), temporal (day-night,
summer-winter), etc. “The role of binary oppositions, discovered
in the 20th century, knows no boundaries: they are used in the range
from poetic rhythm, which is built on the binary alternation of the
smallest units of the language (stressed syllable – unstressed syllable),
to the biological rhythms of day and night, winter and summer, and
also cultural rhythms: idealistic culture – materialistic culture”. The
duality of the poetic perception of the world, the simultaneous binary
representation of opposite concepts, one of which affirms some quality,
and the other denies, can be traced in two poems by A. S. Pushkin,
in which Georgia is mentioned: “Do not sing, beauty, in my presence
the songs of sad Georgia ...” (1828) and “On the hills of Georgia lies
the darkness of the night ...” (1829). These two poems were written at
different times, in different places and under different circumstances,
dedicated to different addressees, but they are united by the word
“Georgia”. With the coincidence of the main meaning of ‘country’,
the nomination “Georgia” in Pushkin’s texts expresses different
semantics. In the first case, the synecdoche of “songs of sad Georgia”
is by no means synonymous with the adjective-substantive phrase “sad
Georgian songs”. Here the word “Georgia”, on the one hand, performs
a definitive function, and, on the other hand, receives connotative
expressive coverage. In the second case, in a genitive phrase with the
preposition “on” – “On the hills of Georgia”, this nomination expresses
a spatial relationship, a place of action. In the first case, the nomination
“Georgia” is connotatively charged, it is sad, in the second – there is no
such connotation. It should be noted that “sad Georgia” from the poem
“Do not sing, beauty, in my presence ...” enters into binary opposition
with “happy Georgia” in the poem “Prisoner of the Caucasus” of 1820-
1821, in which a Circassian woman in love with a Russian captive “..
sings to him both the songs of the mountains and the songs of happy
Georgia”. A. S. Pushkin so liked the melody of the Georgian song brought from the Caucasus to Russia by A. S. Griboyedov and the musical work
by M. I. Glinka that he wrote for him the text of an elegy address to Anna
Olenina, who sang beautifully. The mysteriousness and romanticism of
surprisingly pure and tender “Georgian” poems by A. S. Pushkin are
created by a special selection of words that merge, for all their binarity,
into a single unique integrity.