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Garden as Identification Space (In the Polish and Russian Literature of the 1980-ies)

Abstract

The paper is concentrated on the cognitive-artistic potential of garden as a spatial model, able to represent not only the universal but also national and individual world images. The data for study were the texts of the Russian and Polish literature written at the end of the 20-th century. In all the texts, garden is the title, the genre, the compositional principle and the character. All the authors are using the circle of symbolic meanings associated with garden as a spatial locus, a cultural text and cultural memory. It’s been known that in the Slavic literature of the 20- th century there are various ways of using the model: garden as a memory map (Iwaszkiewicz and the individual’s self-identification) or as a map of intellectual space (Miłosz and self-identification with culture), garden as the historical space of a country (Korolyov and national identification). The type of identification is directly connected with the poetry of modeling the garden area (the degree of its orderliness). Polish authors tend to present the garden as mostly organized though semantically open environment. In the Russian literature, the borders of the park exist only formally while its symbolic potential is more important. When actualizing the spatial model of the garden the principle of double coding is used: the combination of verbal and visual codes. When representing the mental and intellectual dimensions all three authors used index-symbolical signs. However, realization of the garden metaphor as well as of the metaphor of the life and history themselves put forward the iconic images.

Abasheva MP and Brazgovskaya EE

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