"Dark Kinship" and "Red Hum": The Symbolics of Blood in M. A. Zenkevich’s Adamistic Universe

The article examines the figurative-motivic and value-semantic aspects of the symbolics of “blood” in the artistic world of first book of poetry Wild Porphyry (1912) by M. A. Zenkevich, conceptually realizing the adamistic ideas of the poet. The image of “blood” appears here as a kind of foundation of the modeled poetic universe, in which the existential “omnipotence” of matter and the triumph of natural instincts over human rationality are postulated and multiple embodiments of material and natural phenomena are revealed. The analysis of the poems shows that in the poetics of Wild Porphyry the symbolics of “blood”, firstly, explicates the naturalistic and physiological foundations of the modeled being, secondly, actualizes the sacrificial-liminal conjugations of earthly and otherworldly principles, thirdly, reveals a peculiar “historiosophical” potential, representing the author’s vision of the logic of human self-movement (in particular, Russian) history. At the same time, the key motif-figurative embodiments of “blood” as the value-semantic essence of the depicted world are “dark kinship” and “red hum”, through which Zenkevich’s lyrical subject conceptualizes the idea of a spontaneous manifestation of material primitiveness in the existence of the human “the self”. It is concluded that the individual-author’s version of M. Zenkevich’s acmeistic adamism can be defined as a poetic manifestation of “blood”, affirming the metaphysical triumph of matter over the mental chimeras of humanity.