OVERCOMING OF TRIVIAL SEMANTICS: THE VOCABULARY AND SYNTAX IN THE POEM BY AFANASY FET “WHISPER, TIMID BREATHING…”

The article discusses the poem by Afanasy Fet “Whisper, timid breathing…” in the edition of 1856, which became a classic. The poetic dictionary of the poem is more than rather banal. Such lexemes as nightingale, stream, kiss, tears, became more than trivial to the Fet’s time. Moreover, the connection between these lexemes and the theme of love and night landscape is quite predictable in this poem. Meanwhile, the poem was perceived by the contemporaries of its author as the most famous poetic written by Fet — as a kind of “motto” and a sign of his lyrics, This fact is evidenced by numerous references in literary criticism and by parodies. Two features give this text the distinct personality. Firstly, the author updates connotative meanings of lexemes, giving them the character of trope (nightingale — lover, breath — an attribute not only of the heroine, but also of spiritualized nature, dawn refers not only to real dawn in the morning nature, but also to the “flash” in the souls of lovers) or metaphorical semantics of “the second row” (in the general context with nightingale, rose, being a metaphor of the dawn, is associated with lthe heroine — compare these images with the nightingale and the rose in Persian poetry, familiar to Fet). The text reveals connotative language capabilities. Soб the two plans of the poem — the world of lovers and the world of nature — discover the similarities and merge with each other. Secondly, the absolutely nontrivial character of the poem is determined by the use of the impersonal sentences: usually fixing the static situation, in Fet’s text they acquire the ability to describe the dynamics, the sequence of actions. Semantics comes into fruitful conflict with the syntax: each part in the complex sentence captures a static picture. But as as whole they represent the movement — from a quiet conversation to an emotional outburst, from night to morning.