Poetics and aesthetics of library space in N.I. Gnedich's poem “What if you, immortal shades…”

Context and relevance. The relevance of this study is determined, firstly, by the high significance of the legacy of N.I. Gnedich, who presented, at a high artistic level, the ideas and sensibilities of a man of traditional Russian culture; and, secondly, by the need to understand the place of the library as a spiritual and intellectual center in the past, present, and future of national culture. The aim of the study is to identify the genre originality and specific features of the visual poetics of N.I. Gnedich's poem "What if you, immortal shadows…", which for the first time creates a multi-level visual image of the library, as well as to determine its place in the movement of Russian poetry from Classicism to Romanticism. Methods and materials. The material for the study is the manuscript of N.I. Gnedich's poem "What if you, immortal shadows…" (NIOR RGB, Fund 211, box 10, item 12, 1 sheet). Results. The results of the study are the identified features of N.I. Gnedich's visual poetics, which preserve the ode's soaring flight and admiration for the sublime subject while endowing the aesthetic experience with deeply personal emotions. Conclusions. N.I. Gnedich combines two genres, emphasizing the coexistence of enthusiastic rapture and philosophical reflection, panegyric and civic address. The genre synthesis also determines the renewal of visualization principles, which reinforce the shift of emphasis from the state to the fate of the individual. The visual world of the poem is divided into the real and the unreal and is endowed with a sculptural and architectural character. By constructing before the reader a wondrous palace in which the statues of the geniuses of the past come to life, the poem renders visible an imaginary space in which the emphasis shifts from the fate of the state to the fate of the individual. The very admission of the impossibility of such reflections in the present serves as an apotheosis of the glorification of the sciences, Emperor Alexander I, and the greatness of Russia.

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