“And the dragonfly will gaily spread my love…” (the insect motives in M. Kuzmin’s love poetry in 1910–1920)

Abstract

The images of winged insects as a motif of flight manifestation in Kuzmin’s poetry are considered. The flight is represented as an essential way to transfer from the real to unreal world. Special attention is devoted to the concept of mysterious world in which the lyric hero is staying and the contamination of ancient Greek and Slavic traditions in the image of wings realization. The main images of winged insects (butterfly, moth, bee) which is significant for Kuzmin’s poetry of 1910–1920 are defined. The image of winged ancient Greek goddess Psyche is contrastively analyzed in the poems “Angel evangelizing” (1919) and “Fidesapostolica” (1921). The variants of this image represent the manifestation of “capricious syncretism” in Kuzin’s poetry. The motif of insect’s movement and stopping, correlating with the human soul’s motion and achievement the emotional aim, is analyzed in poems basing on the examples of poems “Come to me quickly, Teodor and Conrad…” (1924) and “On the ground children dance…” (1921). Phonetic peculiarities in the poem “To the black rainbow of fly’s wing” (1921) are considered, the role of different kinds of rhyme in the text structure is defined. The metaphoric capability to fly is denoted as one of the main characters of amorous man in M.A. Kuzmin’s prose and poetry.