Oriental motifs and images in the works of K.D. Balmont: a cultural aspect.

Shashneva Ekaterina Nikolaevna ORCID: 0000-0002-2896-9863 PhD in Cultural Studies Senior Lecturer of the Department of Russian Language and Teaching Methods of the Shuisky Branch of the Ivanovo State University 155900, Russia, Ivanovo region, Shuya, ul. Cooperative, 24 liliya0601@mail.ru Other publications by this author     Val'kevich Svetlana Ivanovna Doctor of Cultural Studies Associate Professor of the Department of Cultural Studies and Fine Arts of the Ivanovo State University 155900, Russia, Ivanovo region, Shuya, ul. Cooperative, 24 svalkevich@yandex.ru Other publications by this author     Maslov Viktor Georgievich Doctor of Philology Professor of the Department of Russian Language and Teaching Methods of the Shuisky Branch of the Ivanovo State University 155900, Russia, Ivanovo region, Shuya, ul. Cooperative, 24 vgmas@mail.ru Other publications by this author     Mihailov Aleksei Aleksandrovich ORCID: 0000-0002-2222-5708 Doctor of Pedagogy Professor, Director of the Shuisky branch of the Ivanovo State University, Honorary Worker of Higher Professional Education of the Russian Federation, Honorary Worker of Education of the Ivanovo Region 24, Cooperativnaya str., Shuya, Ivanovo region, 155900, Russia fairytail@mail.ru Other publications by this author     Ershova Lyudmila Viktorovna Doctor of Pedagogy Professor of the Department of Cultural Studies and Fine Arts of the Shuisky Branch of the Ivanovo State University 24, Cooperativnaya str., Shuya, Ivanovo region, 155900, Russia ershova_l@bk.ru Astakhov Oleg Yur'evich ORCID: 0000-0002-2764-7686 Doctor of Cultural Studies Professor, Head of the Department of Cultural Studies, Philosophy and Art History of the Kemerovo State Institute of Culture 650056, Russia, Kemerovo region, Kemerovo, Voroshilova str., 17 Astahov_oleg@mail.ru Romanova Karine Evgen'evna Doctor of Pedagogy Professor of the Department of Technology, Economics and Service, Shuisky branch of the Ivanovo State University 24, Cooperativnaya str., Shuya, Ivanovo region, 155900, Russia rectorat@mail.ru

Okeanskaya Zhanna Leonidovna Doctor of Cultural Studies Professor, Department of Foreign Languages and Professional Communications, Ivanovo Fire and Rescue Academy of the Ministry of Emergency Situations of Russia 33 Stroiteley str., Ivanovo, Ivanovo region, 153040, Russia ocean_2004@mail.ru

Introduction. The idea of the East is connected with the civilizations and cultures of Asia: for example, Egypt, Mesopotamia, India and China, Zoroastrian Persia, Muslim countries. Writers and poets who were interested in Oriental culture, religious texts and translations created the Orientalism trend. The poet, traveler, translator, art critic, a bright representative of the Silver Age, K.D. Balmont, was also an admirer of Oriental culture and not by chance. He traveled around the world to the countries of the East, visiting Egypt, India, Japan, China, and Asia. Deeply studying the religion of these countries and their language, the poet became imbued with the beauty of temples, cultural monuments, sarcophagi and pyramids. Subsequently, his essays, poems and travel notes will be filled with oriental motifs and images. Having studied the religion and culture of the countries of the East, the poet writes a collection of essays about a trip to Egypt, The Land of Osiris. Also, after his visit to India, the poet makes a translation from Sanskrit "Ashvaghosha. The Life of the Buddha", Kalidasa's drama "Sakuntala", "Malyavika and Agnimitra" and "Courage Obtained by Urvashi" and other translations. Folklore and mythology of India, China, Japan, and Iran are collected in the collection "Calls of Antiquity". Such collections as "Burning Buildings, "Silence", "Pearl Rug" were the poetic works of K. Balmont, inspired by the study of Oriental culture.

Researchers of Balmont's biography P.V. Kuprianovsky and N.A. Molchanova describe in detail the journey of K.D. Balmont to the East. On November 24, 1909, Balmont sailed from Marseille to Egypt by steamer. There he studied the Egyptian language, got acquainted with Egyptian translators and scientists, worked with some materials of the National Museum, studied papyri and cultural monuments, pyramids, sarcophagi, mummies. After visiting Egypt, the poet writes essays "The Land of Osiris". "The first 12 essays are devoted to various aspects of the life and religion of Ancient Egypt. The essay contains such metaphysical images as: the sun, the gods, the elements of the world, the cult of the mummy, the worship of the dead, the pyramids, Osiris, the Nile and the Nile Valley, in which water plays a special role. The rest of the essays contain translations of songs from the Egyptian language, legends: "Forgotten Treasures" and "Egyptian Turtledove" contain love lyrics, "The Word of the Egyptian Elder" consists of 42 instructions from the father to the son from the book "Book of the Dead" of ancient Egypt, which was written on papyrus, as well as "The Glorification of the Sun and Moon"^[1].

We have analyzed Balmont's poem "The Sphinx" from the collection "Silence":

"Among the sands of the century-old desert,
The silent Sphinx reigns against the background of the night,
In the rays of the moon with a giant head
He gets up, grows, and his eyes look without seeing.
With the desperation of the living dead,
Resurrected in an untimely grave,
A slave struggled here, languished endlessly, —
Slaves embodied a nightmare in granite.
And the idea of a monstrous dream,
In the midst of Eternity, always monotonous,
Rebelled as an enemy of ordinary beauty,
Like a dream, blind, dumb, and ugly."^[2]

Oriental images of a disembodied desert, pyramids, and sphinx are motifs of Balmont's Egyptian writings. The desert at Balmont symbolizes death. According to S.A.M. Abdelhamid: "The desert, which is a vast area of land, has a special symbolic context. It is associated with a prison, whereas the sea evokes a sense of freedom. The linguistic image of the silent Sphinx created by K. D. Balmont appears to be the lord of secrets, the keeper of Egyptian riddles, silent about something untold, supernatural: as "the plan of a monstrous dream"; "with the despair of the living dead, resurrected in an untimely grave", as "an enemy of ordinary beauty, like a dream". On the other hand, silence is also wisdom. With his gaze fixed into the distance, the Sphinx is the guardian of the Pyramids" ^[3].  

The uniqueness of Eastern culture is that it is resistant to external shocks, and there is also a connection with nature. "Careful attitude to traditions implies careful attitude and respect for the old, the elderly, parents, family traditions. This attitude has been taking place in the countries of the East for centuries, the culture of the East is the culture of the heart" ^[4]. E.A. Torchinov, a Russian scholar of religion, sinologist, Buddhologist, historian of philosophy and culture of China, drew attention to this. He noted that "the sephirah of Tiferet (Beauty), being the central sephirah of the tree in the microcosm of the body corresponds to the heart. In Tantric Buddhism, the heart chakra (paraphysiological center) is also considered central and correlates with the absolute body of the Buddha (dharmakaya). In the Chinese tradition, the heart (Xin) as an organ not only and not so much of feeling, but of consciousness and thinking, it also connects to the center of the body and is localized at the central point of the chest" ^{[4, p. 335]}.

Researcher of K.D. Balmont's work G.M. Bongard-Levin writes about Indian motifs in his work.  According to the author, India occupied a prominent place in Balmont's work. Those translations from Sanskrit into Russian that the poet made are of undoubted cultural value. Ashwaghosha's poem "The Life of the Buddha", translations from the Rigveda, Upanishads, Atharvaveda hymns, Bhagavat Gita introduce readers to the religious culture and philosophy of India ^[5]. In our study, we wrote that in the collection "Burning Buildings" there are such poems: "Maya", "Indian motif", "Indian Sage", "Like a spider", "Life", "Evening Prayer", etc. Most of them were included in the cycle called "Indian Herbs". "Balmont also turned to the drama of Shudraki, the Hindu poet, "The Clay Cart", in addition, he began to study the work of Kalidasa, the famous playwright and poet of Ancient India, and began translating the texts of Ashwaghosha "The Life of the Buddha". The poet believed that Indian culture is closer to Russian than to Western European. Even in early collections of poetry, Balmont compared Indian culture with Slavic culture. In Balmont's life, the Indian theme was very important, he even wrote about his "Indian thinking""^[6].

In her research, E.V. Fiskovets made a small dictionary of Indian words that are found in Balmont's work: "The poet's dictionary includes many Indian names, names and toponyms: yogi, Maya, mantra, yoni, lingam, Agni, Indra, Brahma, Vishnu, Siva, Upanishads, Benares, champaka and many others. In addition to individual poems such as "Three Countries", "Hymn to the Sun", "Roses", "Tricolor", "Lonely", "Yonilingam", "Saraswati", "Fire" and others, where India is mentioned in one way or another, Balmont devoted a whole cycle of poems "Indian herbs" (collection "Burning Buildings" 1900). The epigraph to it is the statement of the Indian philosopher Shankaracharya "He who knows the essence has become above sadness" ^[7]. But still, "nirvana" and "the enlightened Buddha" become the main images.

         K.D. Balmont in 1911 from Britain wrote to the editor of the newspaper "Russian Word" F.I. Blagov that at the end of November or in December of the same year he was leaving for a trip around the world. The route has already been planned, and he wants to visit India - Indo-China - the Indian Archipelago – Australia – Oceania - California - Mexico. Also in the letter, the poet informs that his travel essays will not look like Egyptian ones, they will be less burdened with erudition and there will be more artistic words ^[8].

 Balmont spends the next months in Ceylon in India. He traveled from Tuticorin to Agra, and Delhi. There he stopped in Java, passed the island of Celebas, then was in Ceylon, and then to Sumatra in India. The poet traveled all over India from Bernares and Agra to Bombay. He really liked the ancient Hindu temples. Even before the trip, K.D. Balmont studied Sanskrit. When he translated Ashwaghosha's poem "The Life of the Buddha", he consulted with the scholar S. Levy, a specialist in the field of ancient Indian literature. The photographs that the poet took on trips were organically included in the 1913 edition of the poem "The Life of the Buddha". There were pictures of temples, architectural monuments, cities, sculptures. Among Balmont's photographs was the largest Buddhist temple in the world, Borobudur, which is located on the island of Java in Indonesia. The Thousand Buddha Temple complex delighted readers with its bell-shaped shape. The temple also has a spiritual significance. Having eight tiers, as steps to enlightenment from bodily desires to spiritual enlightenment – nirvana. Here is a poem by Balmont about the temple of Buddha "Boro-Budur", written by him in the collection "The White Architect":

"In a smoldering stone frowning

Faces – thousands-choirs.

Their eyes are still watching.

Near Boro Budura

Grey-brown mountains"

From there to here

The peaks stretched out,

Like huge backs

The giant camel,

The hunchback is a miracle.

But in the height of the inflamed

Above Nature and the Temple,

Above the cheering din,

Multiple-posted,

The Enlightened One is alive forever"^[9].

A prominent place in his translation work is occupied by the translation of monuments of Indian culture. He translated Kalidasa's Indian drama Sakuntala, Malyavika and Agnimitra and Urvashi's Courage from Sanskrit.

"Referring to the "eastern wisdom", K.D. Balmont focuses on the intuitive moments of cognition, which are associated with motives: dazzle, enlightenment, election, which, in turn, underlies the symbolist model "artist – creativity – art"^{[10, p.89]}. "He sees beauty as the goal, the meaning, and the pathos of his life. Let's pay attention to the fact that beauty and dream are the essential rhyme for Balmont. And devotion to a dream, even the most distant from reality, was the most stable in the poet"^{[11, p. 127]}. In an article published in the magazine "Around the World", it said: "From the whole journey, Balmont made the conviction that humanity in its history is moving from mistake to mistake, and that his current mistake – "severing ties with the earth and union with the sun – is the most deplorable and ugly of all his mistakes"^[12]. It was important for the poet to have roots where he could draw strength for future travels and creations. "The poet's worldview is unthinkable without the visible or invisible presence of the image of his native home, but it changes with spiritual maturation. The meaning of Balmont's life path has always been connected with the idea of home, and a single image of home grew, first of all, from childhood memories" ^{[13, p. 122]}.

Muslim motifs are also inherent in Balmont's work. Researcher Yu.A. Gavrilov reports that K.D. Balmont, on his trip around the world through Egypt, became acquainted with the Koran in 1909. The poems of the Koran cycle were published in the Moskovskaya Mysl magazine, which are an arrangement of 12 surahs from the Koran. Yu.A. Gavrilov and A.G. Shevchenko in their work "Islam in the History and Culture of the peoples of Russia" note: "For his poetic interpretations, Balmont chooses mainly surahs of the Meccan period. This is a prophetic proclamation of God's greatness: the poems “I swear“ (Sura 100 ”Rushing“), ”Merciful“ (Sura 55 ”Merciful“), ”Great News" (Sura 78 “News"); denunciation of the wicked and proclamation of God's judgment: “Blow" (Sura 101 “Striking"), “Oh, the Prophet" (Sura 73 “Wrapped up"), “The Rich" (Sura 83 “Hanging"); eschatological prophecies: "Trumpet sound", "Then", "Smoke" (Surah 44 "Smoke"); posthumous retribution to sinners and the righteous: "Al-Hotama", "Event", "Do not forget""^[14].

Earlier in our research, we have already touched on the topic of the end of the world, which is very important in the Quran. "The eschatological theme in the Quran touches on the culturally important theme of the end of the world and life after death. In the poem "Don't forget" by K.D. Balmont, the truth of the Koran is the path, the direction in which a believer needs to move. The Quran was written by scribes, and angels in heaven read it, and people should follow the scriptures of the Quran, pray and gather the fruits that will grow from the grain of prayer and reading the Quran"^[15].  In the poem "The Great News" K.D. Balmont describes heaven and hell. Paradise supposedly has a blooming garden and houri maidens who are innocent, pure and delight the eyes of believers. The garden in Islam is symbolic: green color, abundance of flowers and plants, lots of water, running streams, coolness – in the hot countries of the East, all this is not enough. In Islam, there is a ban on the image of a person, so Muslim art consists of inscriptions in Arabic (arabesques) and images of greenery and flowers" ^[15].

However, the main idea of the Koran is monotheism: "The creed of Islam is expressed by the short formula "There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is his prophet", this is the first of its five pillars, the rest relate mainly to ritual prescriptions: daily five–fold prayer – namaz, fasting in the month of Ramadan, tax for the benefit of the poor – Zakat, pilgrimage to Mecca – Hajj."

 "The Quran repeats the main religious tenets of these faiths: about the immortality of the soul, about heaven and hell, about the end of the world, about the Last Judgment, etc. The Quranic and biblical stories about the creation of the world and man, the fall of the first people – Adam and Eve (among the Arabs – Adam and Hawwa), the flood, the punishment for the sins of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, etc. coincide in basic features. Only when carefully comparing the corresponding texts of the Koran and the Bible, separate discrepancies are found in these stories"^[16].

In the collection "Pearl Rug" there is a poem "Merciful":

"He, the Merciful One, taught

The Guiding Quran,

The azure filled with the brilliance of forces,

He let the fog rise to the clouds.

Both the sun and the moon are coming,

The dimensional numbers correspond to,

The double crown is high

The dawn is red, the stars are diamond.

There is a hidden grain in the ground

Raises an emerald from the ashes,

Everywhere a link goes to a link,

Fragrant plants are blooming.

He created spirits out of fire,

He created them from fire without smoke,

He created the stars and me,

My soul is kept by fire....."^[17].

In the poem "The Merciful" K.D. Balmont writes about the creation of the world, the mercy of Allah, that he created the sun, moon, stars, fragrant plants, sea, land, spirits created from fire, and man as the crown of creation. The creation of all things inspired K.D. Balmont. The motif of fire as a creative principle and the echoes of fire from the collection "Burning Buildings" will captivate the reader's imagination. The poet plays with the meanings and polyphonic images of the Koran. The guiding Quran leads to the Merciful, plants and all living things on earth grow. This poem is a praise and thanksgiving to Allah.                                     

 "The East of Balmont is embodied in the images of the "charming" East (associated with ancient civilizations), idyllic primitiveness and modern oriental realities repulsive to the poet (the description of which is usually given as a contrast to the image of their legendary past). This Otherness, which he often described through comparisons with the phenomena of European culture, helped Balmont to feel and define his identity. In him, as in a mirror, he saw himself as a European and a Christian, saw his culture and its place in the world. Russian russians sought their roots in the phenomena of ancient Eastern civilizations, sought to understand, feel the spirit of the ancient East, to find in it something close, something from which the contemporary phenomena of Russian culture and Russian consciousness grew"^{[18, p. 170]}.

Conclusion. Such oriental ideas and motifs were formed, new images in his work as: the enlightened Buddha, Nirvana, pyramids, desert, Sphinx, motifs of the Koran, Allah, the Merciful, etc.  In 1909-1912, K.D. Balmont traveled around the world. Egypt, Indonesia, and India completely conquered the poet. Balmont studied a huge number of scientific works on religion, philosophy and mythology of the East. K.D. Balmont wrote many letters, poems, travelogues, essays, essays on the culture of the East. The poet's translation activity occupies a special niche in his work. He translated Ashwagosh's "Life of the Buddha" from Sanskrit, Kalidasa's drama "Sakuntala", "Malyavika and Agnimitra" and "Urvashi Obtained by Courage", and he translated "The Koran" from Arabic.  Folklore and mythology of India, China, Japan, and Iran are collected in the collection "Calls of Antiquity".

The research materials can be used in further study of K.D. Balmont's work, in teaching cultural studies and Russian literature of the XX century, seminars and practical classes in secondary specialized and higher educational institutions.