THE CONCEPTS OF “WANDERING” AND “WANDERER” IN THE LYRICS OF M. VOLOSHIN AND IN THE MIRROR OF ASSOCIATIVE EXPERIMENTS

Introduction. The appeal of representatives of the literary creativity of the Silver Age to the problem of wandering is due to concern for the fate of Russia and the search for opportunities to transform the world, as well as ways of self-determination. For the thinker, poet, artist M. A. Voloshin, the concept of “wandering” is the key. The purpose of this article is to identify the linguistic features of the embodiment of the concepts “wandering”, “wanderer” in the lyrical texts of M. Voloshin.Material and methods. The article presents the data of free associative and directed associative experiments aimed at revealing the perception of the concept of “wandering” by modern native speakers of the Russian language; data from various dictionaries reflecting the meaning of the lexemes “wandering”, “wanderer”; the results of the analysis of M. Voloshin’s poems of different years, reflecting the concept of “wanderer”.The methods of experiment, semantic-stylistic, contextological, motivic analysis are used, which allow revealing the features of the content and perception of the concepts “wandering”, “wanderer”, reflected in the lyrical texts of M. Voloshin.Results and discussion. Associative experiments conducted to identify the signs of the concept of “wandering” showed a broader understanding of the respondents about this phenomenon than is reflected in the explanatory dictionaries. The experiment made it possible to identify the attitude of modern native speakers to the phenomenon of wandering and compare it with the understanding of this phenomenon by the author, judging by the representation in the lyrics of M. A. Voloshin.Unsettledness, anxiety for the future of the country at the turn of the 19th–20th centuries determined the interest of representatives of the creative intelligentsia in the problem of wandering. The thematic zone “wandering”, including the concepts “path”, “wanderer”, “spiritual wanderings”, occupies a central place in M. Voloshin’s lyrics. The lyrical hero is an eternal wanderer, inquisitive, thirsty for knowledge, filially attached to Mother Earth; Odysseus, cut off from his native shores, wandering and restless; experiencing the pain of separation lover; a person who, as a result of trials, came to a higher understanding of life – gratitude to her for the persistence of pain, the bitterness of earthly herbs, the causticity of salt; finally, the chosen one, who renounced the joys of earthly life in the name of a higher destiny.Conclusion. An analysis of the linguistic and artistic features of the lyrical texts of M. Voloshin, containing the concept of “wandering”, which is central in the poet’s lyrics, made it possible to identify the main features of the lyrical wanderer hero (restlessness, inquisitiveness in knowing the world, unity with Mother Earth, the search for one’s destiny), and to draw a conclusion about the originality of M. Voloshin’s concept sphere.

M. A. Voloshin, concept, conceptual picture of the world, wanderer, wandering, associative experiment, Silver Age