Download PDF

DOI 10.52172/2587-6945_2021_18_4_138

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to explore traditional and individual author's ways of presenting the concept of "happiness" in N. Gumilyov’s works through the method of conceptual analysis. The features of Gumilyov’s felicitarian model representation, initially rejected the pessimism of the symbolists in their striving for the future and in relation to the world as a whole, are considered. The author of the article analyzes the motive of ephemerality and unattainability of happiness, which the lyrical hero of N. Gumilyov's early work seeks in dreams, promised or exotic worlds, beyond the earthly life. The importance of negative experience in communicating with the "beyond" is emphasized in the emergence of new aspects of the perception of other variants of happiness (the happiness of the "daring path" of the discoverer, warrior, navigator, magician, priest; love happiness, the guarantee of which is the closeness of the inner world of the beloved, the determination and courage of the lyrical hero). It is noted that the peculiarities of understanding happiness in the mature N. Gumilyov’s work are associated with the acceptance of the path destined by the fate of the poet. The mission of the "knight of happiness", as N. Gumilyov’s lyrical hero now calls himself, is the happiness of new existence perception, overcoming the resistance of "enemies", the content of the word, in faith and hope conveyance to those who take an anxious and pessimistic view of what is happening. The conclusion is made about the refraction of a number of principles of Acmeist aesthetics and poetics in the Gumilyov felicitarian concept. These include the rejection of theurgism, the use of a subject detail that allowed revealing the peculiarities of the psychology of the hero, the synthetics of images, a verified system of oppositions, among which the antinomy of existence / non-existence becomes the foundation stone in Gumilyov's polemic with symbolists.

Keywords

N. Gumilyov, Silver Age, happiness, acmeism, dream, daring path, love, creativity.