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Abstract: The article deals with the cultural codes that influenced the composition of both the system of images and the construction of the poetic plot of Arseny Tarkovsky’s poem To Poems (1960). The formation of the system of the images of Tarkovsky’s poetic text was significantly influenced by the biblical code, as pointed out by the researcher Svetlana Kekova in her article Metamorphoses of the Biblical Code in Arseny Tarkovsky’s Poem “To Poems”. This article argues that the origin of the images of Tarkovsky’s poem is polygenetic and has more than one source. The study states that a row of rubaiyat by the medieval Persian poet Omar Khayyam, who “invented” and originally developed the system of images: potter – potter’s wheel – clay – jug (bowl) can be considered one of these sources. In the process of comparison, it was found that Tarkovsky in the plot of his poem To Poems uses all Khayyam’s images of this system. In the course of a detailed comparative analysis, the similarities and differences in the functioning of the images of the author of the article’s interest were revealed. Particular attention is paid to the image of the potter, who remained unnamed in Tarkovsky’s poem. Referring to the text of the undated note “I wrote these poems”, as well as identifying a similar interpretation of the image by Khayyam, has led to the conclusion that the potter in Tarkovsky’s poem To Poems is the time in whose hands the formation of the poet’s personality takes place.

About the author(s) :

Tatyana V. Igosheva
Institute of Russian Literature (Pushkin House) of the Russian Academy of Sciences
(Saint Petersburg, Russia)
ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7988-204X

Publication Timeline:

Date of receipt: 11.10.2023; date of publication: 31.03.2024

References:

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