Happiness as an object of epithetation in Marina Tsvetaeva’s texts

The topicality and significance of the research are substantiated by the need to update the methodology for studying the epithet complex in modern linguistics. The novelty of the scientific research consists of the fact that epithetation is considered as a cognitive-semantic process of blending nature. In this article our purpose is to identify the specifics of epithetation directions in Marina Tsvetaeva’s texts. For this purpose, it is necessary to explain the following main tasks: to consider the role of epithetation in the context of the Marina Tsvetaeva’s individual style and idiolect, to identify the main strategies of epithetation based on Marina Tsvetaeva’s texts, to determine the specifics of the epithetation of happiness in her texts. This research is based on the combination of cognitive methods of analyzing linguistic facts – cognitive-semantic, blending and lexical-semantic – component, lexicographic; the method of quantitative analysis of linguistic data is also used. The involvement of lexicographic sources makes it possible to compare the speech use of attributive words with the concept under consideration and the individual author’s, which reveals the specificity of the epithet of happiness in the Russian linguistic consciousness and Marina Tsvetaeva’s language. All of the poet’s works, including prose texts, were involved in the analysis. The understanding of happiness in Marina Tsvetaeva’s texts occupies a prominent place and acquires attributes traditionally associated with this concept and entrenched in usage (childish, maternal), but the poet departs from tradition quite early. The epithet of happiness is associated primarily with the feeling of love. Awareness of the contradictory nature of happiness is realized through the opposition, first of bookish and everyday, and then of earthly and extraterrestrial happiness, spiritual unity with another person, creativity. The fleeting nature of happiness, its material side, the desire to embody the ideal – these directions of understanding the phenomenon of happiness are realized in an epithetical way. It is proved that the specificity of the epithetation of happiness is based on the associative similarity of adjacent conceptual areas of anthropocentric nature, as a result of which an epithet complex of the metonymic type is formed. Epithetation is an imposition of attributes, the creation of a temporary common mental space and the formation of a blended attribute. The subjective, emotional perception of the world by Marina Tsvetaeva determines the actualization of the peripheral attributes of objects, which leads to the creation of its occasional characteristics: this tendency is reflected in the understanding of happiness as struggle, pride, obedience and many other entities. In conclusion, epithetation a central role in the Marina Tsvetaeva’s idiolect.