“The Demon” by Eugene Milkeev: Text and Context (To the Phenomenon of the Minor Poets in National Literature)

About the authors:

Sergey A. Komarov, Dr. Sci. (Philol.), Professor, Department of Russian and Foreign Literature, University of Tyumen; vitmark14@yandex.ru; ORCID: 0000-0003-4506-4027

Sergey S. Pyatkov, Postgraduate Student, Department of Russian and Foreign Literature, University of Tyumen; eLibrary AuthorID, sergey-spirit72@yandex.ru

Abstract:

The research of the evolution and correlation of the phenomena of different types of authors within the national literature is one of the primary aims of contemporary philology. It requires searching for the methodological tools. A Siberian poet Eugene Milkeev (1815-1845), whose literary heritage is only beginning to be researched, in his poem “The Demon” (1842) fixes the demonic complex, focusing on the development of this theme in the poetry, adding to the poetics of his text a number of individual artistic decisions.

This article analyzes literary phenomena that denote the genesis of demonic elements in the text of Siberian poet. It is found that, while in search of individual imagery and unconsciously guided by the artistic and aesthetic findings of Pushkin and Lermontov, Milkeev creates a heterogeneous image of the demon in his text. It combines the demon’s objectification as the bearer of a certain consciousness (the biblical tradition) and its immanence to the inner world of the object, the bearer of another consciousness (ancient tradition).

This article fixes the correlation of the processes taking place in the subject-object structure of the verse and prose texts of Russian writers of the 19^th century generation.

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