Color designation semantics in S.A. Esenin and E. Verhaeren’s lyric

Abstract

We consider the color designation features in the poetic texts of Russian and French poets. An appeal to the lyric poetry of great writers from a chosen perspective expands and concretizes the existing ideas about the individual features of the authors’ style. Analysis object is the language units of poetry by S.A. Esenin and E. Verhaeren, containing color semantics. A comparative analysis of several works representative within the framework of the declared theme reveals the similarities and differences in the color palette of Esenin and Verhaeren’s lyrics. We consider the semantics of blue, white, yellow, red colors and their shades in poems of poets. Special attention is paid to the golden color poetics, the use of which is also focused on religious symbolism. We designate the vectors of changes in the set of colors in different periods of Esenin and Verhaeren’s creative activity, the dependence of the changes in the color scale on the general pathos of the poets and the events of their personal biography is determined. We clarify the reasons for the differences in color solutions in the landscape and philosophical poetry, explained by the authors’ belonging to different literary trends and national traditions. We provide examples of discrepancies in existing Russian translations of E. Verhaeren’s works with the provision of our own translations.