APOPHATICISM OF RUSSIAN CULTURE: TRADITIONS OF BUFFOONERY IN S.A. YESENIN’S POEM “I WILL NOT DECEIVE MYSELF...”

Abstract

The object of the article is the tradition of buffoonery in Russian culture. The subject of the research is the ambivalent image of dusk, the phenomenon of twilight in Russian poetry, which is associated with inverted reality, the antithetic world. The material for this article is represented by the creative heritage of S.A. Yesenin who is rightfully considered to be one of the best folklore poets of the early 20th century. The cultural-philosophical analysis is centred on a poem from the cycle “Moskva Kabatskaya” [Moscow of Taverns], namely “I will not deceive myself...”. This poem is internally structured according to the principle of interaction between two types of reality in art – the phenomenal and the noumenal, the rational and the spontaneous. Much attention is paid to the problem of transformation of the buffoonery tradition in the poet’s works, the latter being associated with the image of murky heart, nocturnal light denoting the inverted reality, the ritual chaos. The paper explores the phenomena of gloom, of vespertinal and unfading light which are linked with the antithetic world, i.e. with inverted reality and the thanatological text of culture. The research methodology involves the holistic ontological-hermeneutic analysis of S.A. Yesenin’s poetic texts. The research results may be of interest for philologists tending to include literature in the space of a great dialogue of cultures and may also be used in courses on cultural studies and Russian philosophy.