THE TRADITION OF DANSE MACABRE AND THE WORKS BY M.YU. LERMONTOV

The article studies the transformation of a particularly important plot of the European culture in the texts by M.Yu. Lermontov. It is stated that the Russian poet appeals to the problematics and stylistics of the ‘religious’ Danse Macabre in a number of his works following the European Romanticists. A series of his poems written in 1830 reveals direct plot and view-of-the-world references to the popular macabre text of the 14 -15th centuries ‘The Argument of Body and Soul’. It is demonstrated that Lermontov also develops the tradition of the ‘secular’ Danse Macabre, in the first place, with the help of the concept of ‘the living dead’.