A narrative analysis: tragic images of the Aral Sea in the Russophone ecopoems

ABSTRACT This study examines contemporary poems on the Aral Sea crisis. Labelling them Russophone, the authors argue that the Russian language holds its status of lingua franca for the poets concerned about the environmental disaster in Central Asia. In these poems, the Aral Sea has become a central metaphor for the catastrophe that transcends the original case. The depiction of the diverse environmental issues caused by expanded irrigation policies in Soviet Central Asia provides favourable conditions to study these verses primarily from an ecopoetic perspective. Though these poems address one problem, the narrative form remains diverse: some authors apply various images; others personify the Aral Sea. In these verses the desert image acquires an unorthodox interpretation, while the personification of the Aral Sea in the poems reinforces the prior ecopoetry studies. This article investigates the poems’ content, historical background and anthropogenic effects on nature that pushed their authors to write them.