Anatomy of the sonnet "Don Juan" by N. S. Gumilev

Abstract

The purpose of the study is to establish the concept of the image of Don Juan in the works of N. S. Gumilev through the prism of affirming and clarifying the aesthetics of acmeism and the dynamics of the poet's axiology and ontology. The scientific novelty of this research lies in two main aspects: firstly, we identify the image of Don Juan in N. S. Gumilev's work and place it in the context of various interpretations of the eternal image; secondly, we apply the methodology of level analysis of a poem, which was proposed by Gumilev himself in his article "Anatomy of a Poem," to our interpretation of the eternal image in the sonnet "Don Juan." This approach serves as a starting point for further readings of the image in other forms of literature, such as lyrics, drama (in the case of "Don Juan in Egypt"), and journalism (as seen in "The Reader"). The mythological genesis of the image of Don Juan actualizes the diachronic decoding of archaic meanings in the interpretation of N. S. Gumilev, which are harmoniously embedded in the architecture of the classical sonnet. At the same time, Don Juan, in accordance with the role concept of the collection "Pearls", acts as one of the hypostases of a person in general, which dictates the need for an ethical assessment of the hero's life path. As a result of the study, it was found that the grammatical structure and poetic language of the sonnet "Don Juan" form the concept of an image polemically opposed to both the romantic rehabilitation of Don Juan and his acmeistic interpretation in the one-act drama in verse "Don Juan in Egypt".