The image of raven as a connecting thanatopoeic element in the ballads “Three Massacres” by Aleksey Tolstoy and “The Battlefield of Hastings” by Heinrich Heine

The purpose of the presented article is to consider the specifics of the implementation of the thanatological motifs and images in the Aleksey Tolstoy's ballad “Three Massacres”; to identify the influence of the German romanticism on the Tolstoy's ballad work, comparing the ballad “Three Massacres” with Нeinrich Heine's ballad “«The Battlefield of Hastings”; to prove the typological similarities of the two works. The research focuses on the image of raven, which is supposed to serve a key poetical element providing a link between the two works. The analysis showed that the image of raven, which traditionally carries a thanatological load, is realized differently in the two ballads: in the one written by Heine, it appears as a part of an ominous landscape, as an observer of the battle, while in the ballad by Tolstoy, the raven is endowed with the proactive role of the narrator conveying information about the events. It not only bears the witness of the death, but also continues the narrative that Heine began. The author of the study concludes that Tolstoy does not just borrow the image of raven, but rethinks it, endowing it with new functions and making it the key element in the shaping of the overall poetic idea. The study revealed the existence of the typological similarities between the ballads, where the image of raven, transforming and expanding its functions, becomes an integral part of the inter-literary connection between the two works.