On the question of the form and genre of M. Yu. Lermontov’s lyrical miniature “Blue mountains of Caucasus, greetings to you!”

The author analyzes the text of M. Yu. Lermontov’s “Blue mountains of Caucasus, greetings to you!”, which is significant for Russian culture. The study shows that, by its genre, this text is an encomium – a eulogy in honor of a deity or hero, originally in a verse form. The genre of the text determines its eloquent form, in particular periodic and foot rhythmization, which bring this miniature closer to the sound of the verse. Foot rhythmization gives the text the form of rhythmic prose; the interpretation of this text as a “poem in prose” (e. g.: V. V. Litvinov, A. M. Ranchin) is difficult to accept, since a poem in prose as a speech genre is not subjected to either colometric or a fortiori end-to-end foot rhythmization. The text is written in dactyl; dactyl, as a descending meter, gives the miniature an emotional minor. The text is prosaic in its form, since there is no writing “in a column” and, consequently, obligatory terminal pauses in it. In this regard, attempts to interpret this text as a poem are questionable, as well as the opinion that the rhythm in this text changes from phrase to phrase (S. N. Durylin, B. I. Yarkho, S. I. Kormilov, etc.). Terminal, in particular phrasal pauses are inappropriate here, since they break: a) the dactylic structure of the text, changing the minor descending rhythm to the major ascending one; b) the monotonous flow of speech corresponding to the melody of prayer.

poetics, poetry studies, genre, encomium, metrical prose