BESTIARY IN THE POETRY OF GENRIKH SAPGIR

The article draws attention to the bestiary as a genre of medieval literature, which is a collection of descriptions of animals, real or fictional, usually having folklore or mythological roots. Of particular interest is the author’s bestiary, which provides no parallels to the existing mythological system. One of the examples of author’s bestiary is the poetry of G.V. Sapgir, in which bestiary images are frequent and marked in the titles and are quite independent from folklore and mythological semiotic codes. In this case we can speak of author’s bestiary both at the level of naming and description. In the cycle “Meeting” there are several such author’s bestiary images, and their names are included in the titles of the poems. In Sapgir’s poem “Zhurkha”, sound play creates the atmosphere of an “other”world inhabited by bestiaries (or a di erent view of the familiar world). The world of Zhurkha becomes a point of reference for a non-human view of the world. Such a declaration of an outside view can be compared “with the point of view of a crow” or “with the point of view of a mosquito” in the poetry of Joseph Brodsky. But Sapgir goes further, describing the exotic beast, its insect-like nature and its hostility to man. The hero looks at himself with the gaze of an extremely alien “stranger”. When creating a bestiary image, the poet actively uses the technique of “half-word poetics”. In this case “half-words” can be considered as a kind of occasional words, which are used to describe the bestiary. Here it is impossible to draw a line between the original non-existent world and the subject’s original view of the existing world. However, wordplay is not the only reason why Sapgir’s bestiary is original. Children’s literature, to which Sapgir turns, provided the author with a wide field for experimentation, as well as an unlimited opportunity to fantasise. Strictly speaking, on the example of Sapgir’s poems, the division of “children’s” and “adult” poems is impossible, and even irrelevant. Thus, in the cycle “Smeyanets” the same principle of naming and describing non-existent living beings is realised. As a result of this work, it becomes obvious that Henrik Sapgir’s bestiary images are not anthropomorphic, lack a stable reference to literature and culture, and represent the author’s bestiary, generally characteristic of the poetry of the late twentieth century.