THE VERBAL IMAGE OF «CLOUDS ARE MOVING» IN THE TEXTS OF M. M. PRISHVIN’S WORKS AND DIARIES

Aim. We describe the semantic realization of the background figurative constant in Prishvin’s prose. Methodology. A plethora of superlative contexts containing the verbal image “clouds / black clouds are moving” are analyzed. The interdependence of three categories of a literary text is revealed: “the image of the author”, perceptivity, and imagery. Statistical analysis clarifies the frequency of the verbal image in Prishvin’s prose and the totality of its meaningful forms: axiological, figurative, symbolic, and conceptual. Using a descriptive intertextual and linguoconceptual analysis, the semantic polyfunctionality of the figurative‒perceptual unit is presented; it is proved that the landscape as a “text in general” is built on the principle of reflecting the author’s picture of the world, rather than on a real reference space. A method of linguistic analysis of the category of imagery of a prose text is developed using figura-tive constants associated with the study of stable and reproducible linguistic structures of the writer’s artistic thinking.