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Culture and Art
Reference:
Krokhina N.P., Ershova L.V., Astakhov O.Y., Romanova K.E., Okeanskaya Z.L., Maslov V.G., Val'kevich S.I.
The cultural meaning of the concept of "will" in the poetry of K.D. Balmont
// Culture and Art.
2023. ¹ 12.
P. 110-124.
DOI: 10.7256/2454-0625.2023.12.69363 EDN: AUVDVY URL: https://en.nbpublish.com/library_read_article.php?id=69363
The cultural meaning of the concept of "will" in the poetry of K.D. Balmont
Krokhina Nadezhda Pavlovna
Doctor of Philology
Professor of the Department of Cultural Studies and Fine Arts, Shuisky Branch of the Ivanovo State University
24, Cooperativnaya str., Shuya, Ivanovo region, 155900, Russia
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nadin.kro@mail.ru
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Ershova Lyudmila Viktorovna
Doctor of Pedagogy
Professor, Department of Cultural Studies and Fine Arts, Shuisky branch of the Ivanovo State University
24, Cooperativnaya str., Shuya, Ivanovo region, 155900, Russia
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ershova_l@bk.ru
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Astakhov Oleg Yur'evich
ORCID: 0000-0002-2764-7686
Doctor of Cultural Studies
Professor; Department of Cultural Studies, Philosophy and Art History; Kemerovo State Institute of Culture
650056, Russia, Kemerovo region, Kemerovo, Voroshilova str., 17
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Astahov_oleg@mail.ru
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Romanova Karine Evgen'evna
PhD in Pedagogy
Professor; Department of Technology, Economics and Service; Shuisky branch of the Ivanovo State University
24, Cooperativnaya str., Shuya, Ivanovo region, 155900, Russia
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rectorat@mail.ru
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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
153040, Russia, Ivanovo region, Ivanovo, Prospekt Stroiteley str., 33
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ocean_2004@mail.ru
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Maslov Viktor Georgievich
PhD in Philology
Professor; Department of Russian Language and Teaching Methods; Shuisky branch of the Ivanovo State University
24, Cooperativnaya str., Shuya, Ivanovo region, 155900, Russia
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vgmas@mail.ru
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Val'kevich Svetlana Ivanovna
Doctor of Cultural Studies
Professor of the Department of Cultural Studies and Fine Arts of the Shuisky branch, Ivanovo State University
24, Cooperativnaya str., Shuya, Ivanovo region, 155900, Russia
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svalkevich@yandex.ru
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DOI: 10.7256/2454-0625.2023.12.69363
EDN: AUVDVY
Received:
18-12-2023
Published:
29-12-2023
Abstract:
The purpose of the article is to reveal the cultural meanings that for the poet were associated with the concept of "will". To achieve this goal, we trace the evolution of the poet's work, in which the cultural meaning of the concept of "will" is revealed through a chain of interrelated and complementary meanings: the boundless desire of the symbolist poet, a rush into the distance and upward, gaining freedom, admiration for the free world and the discovery of the supreme Divine - creative principle in nature. It is shown that the concept of "will" embodies in Balmont's poetry the essence of God's world, turns to the foundations of the Russian cultural mentality, reveals the convergence of Divine and human, free and creative principles as the dominant cultural worldview of the poet of the Silver Age. It is necessary to reveal the many cultural meanings that for the poet were associated with the concept of "will". The methodology of the research is based on synchronic, structural-functional, biographical, historical and cultural methods. Thus, the concept of "will" in Balmont's poetry combines the aspiration to space, breadth and height – to infinity, freedom, the poet's kinship with the Divinely free and eternally changeable elements of God's world and the creative principle as comprehension of the soul of the world and his own "free-spirited" soul. The cultural meaning of the concept "will" embodies the essence of God's world and the poet's soul. The concept of "will" in its versatility is one of the key ones in Balmont's poetry and turns to the basics of the Russian mentality, as well as reveals the convergence of the Divine and human, free and creative principles as the dominant worldview of the poet of the Silver Age. The thirst for will and freedom is inseparable from the formation of the Balmont symbolist with his aspiration from external reality to internal realities and is also connected with the rush into the distance "thirst for will and space".
Keywords:
Volition, freedom, space, Our spirit is free, The free world, The creative will, The eternal will, Konstantin Dmitrievich Balmont, The Silver Age, conceptual sphere
This article is automatically translated.
Introduction: Concepts as units of the "mentality of a given culture" [1, pp. 40-41] are the subject of close scientific study by both philologists, linguists, and cultural scientists, philosophers, and psychologists. The linguocultural approach allows us to obtain scientific results by implementing inter- and transdisciplinary connections in the study of cultural phenomena based on natural language. Following S.A. Askold, we define the concept as "a clot of culture in the human mind" [2, p. 269]. This understanding has acquired the signs of a scientific paradigm and has its own tradition, according to which culture is the realization of the connections of concepts [3]. For our purposes, the works of V.I. Karasik are particularly significant, indicating that "the cultural concept in the linguistic consciousness is represented as a multidimensional network of meanings that are expressed lexically, phraseologically... units, precedent texts, etiquette formulas, as well as speech and behavioral tactics reflecting... recurring fragments of social life" [4, p. 172]. The concept, according to this approach, is the main unit of consciousness, has "reification (representation, objectification, internalization, verbalization) by linguistic means" [5, p. 5]. V.I. Karasik emphasizes that the analysis of the content of the concept becomes reliable, that is, relevant and verifiable precisely through an empirical approach, through the analysis of a set of linguistic means. An important milestone in scientific research exploring language and thinking has become the theory of cognitive metaphor (Lakoff J., Johnson M.), which permeates "our daily life, and not only language, but also thinking and activity" [6, p. 27]. In the works of N.A. Molchanova, T.S. Petrova, and others, the described approach to the study of the writer's artistic world through the analysis of his conceptual sphere is outlined. The focus of our attention is "will" as one of the key cultural concepts in the work of K.D. Balmont. The appeal to him corrects the traditional idea of the poet as a representative of the culture of Impressionism [7, pp. 392-418]. It is necessary to reveal the many cultural meanings that for the poet were associated with the concept of "will". To achieve this goal, we trace the evolution of the poet's work, in which the concept of "will" reveals a chain of interrelated and complementary meanings: the boundless desire of the symbolist poet, a rush into the distance and upward, gaining freedom, admiration for the free world and the discovery of the supreme Divine principle in nature. The will embodies the essence of God's world. The source of the poet's freedom is his "free soul" and the supreme will as the creative will. The results of the study. Russians Russian Language: Will as the Basis of Creativity in 1924, Balmont wrote: of all the words of the Russian language, "I love the word Will the most. So it was in childhood, and so it is now. This word is the most precious and comprehensive" [8, p.252]. The word image of the concept "will" is key in Balmont's poetry of the 90s and the heyday period in the early twentieth century. In a 1904 notebook, Balmont wrote "about the dominant of his poetry: his work began "with sadness, oppression and twilight ... under the northern sky, but by the power of inner inevitability, through thirst for the boundless, boundless, through long wanderings ... it came to a joyful light…The bridge that the dream creates leads away into the free beckoning distances ... from oppression to a deep sigh of liberation" [9, p. 22]. Already in the book "Under the Northern sky" the poet wrote: "The northern sky is gloomy, Mournful are the weeping clouds… My soul is tearing away from here, He longs for freedom and space" [9, p. 32]. The thirst for will and freedom is inseparable from the formation of the Balmont symbolist with his aspiration from external reality to internal realities and is connected with both the rush into the distance "thirst for will and space" and with the ascent: "Go higher and higher without fear… Until it turns around in front of you An airy mute infinity, Where time stops its flight. Then you will know what freedom is In reasonable subordination to the Creator, In humble reverence for nature" [9, p.23]. In the thirst for freedom, the poet is directed into the infinite, the faceless, "away from the narrow edge" [9, p. 127], he is possessed by an impulse to "merge with nature, beautiful and eternal" [9, p.31]. The desired freedom is inseparable from the thirst for wings: "Oh, if I had eagle wings, Free strong wings, – So that I could fly away on them to the boundless kingdom of azure" [9, pp. 35-36]. And the poet finds these wings in his formation, calling himself in the 1910s, referring to Russia, "your winged son" [10, p. 412]. Balmont the pantheist is characterized by a typically romantic motif of admiration for the free element: "A bright free bubbling stream"; "Gigantic mountains… You are always noble, They are always beautiful, We are free from aspirations, They are impassive to a person"; "Can a free wind obey anyone?"; [9, pp. 49, 63, 69]. Everywhere in nature, the poet sees the presence of a higher, free principle: to the call of a stream free from the dead shackles of winter, "A free response will be heard in the thicket of the forest"; "everything lives" in the "free height"; "free birds tease" [9, pp.73, 75, 130]. These images of freedom are inseparable from the image of the Creator in Balmont's poetry, whose presence generates the liturgical motifs of his lyrics: "The night lights the lamps Before the face of the Most Luminous Creator"; "There are traces of mysterious orders in everything, The Creator's hand is visible in everything"; "The golden stars shine endlessly. The stars glorify the Lord the Creator"; "The stars are eternal souls. The stars of the candle were lit" [9, pp. 105, 111, 116, 305]; see also [9, pp.118, 120, 141, 316, etc.]. Therefore, man is called to be a free creator. Gaining freedom is the basis of the transformation that the poet is experiencing. This is the cycle "Air-white" in the book "Silence". The poet creates his own myth about the "elemental genius" [9, p. 137]: "I heard a mysterious call…It was revealed to me that there is no time… I am the king over the realm of living visions, Always free, always alone." In his transformation, the poet finds unity with the most dynamic natural element – wind and waves: "The wind is with me, and everything marine, Everything that is alien to earthly thoughts"[9, p.139]. And finally, the culmination of the transformation: "I'm a free wind, I'm always flying, I wave the waves, caress the willows, In the branches, I sigh, sigh, go dumb, I cherish the herbs, I cherish the fields." Through sound recording, the poet dissolves this free principle in the world of nature. Both the mute Azure and the stormy sea heed the free wind. He is always different – sometimes gentle and light, sometimes stormy "I blow up the clouds, blow up the sea" [9, p. 140]. The continuation of the myth of the "elemental genius" in the same cycle is the transformation of the "golden star" into a flower: "A golden star flew over the earth in space, And she wanted to fall from the azure to the sleepy earth. She was seduced by the blue earthly flowers… And, without touching the ground, it crumbled into bright dust" [9, p. 141]. The "free heart" of the poet "trembles enthusiastically with the free joy of birds" [9, pp. 156, 153]. This "free heart" and the desire "for freedom" is associated with the memories of the manor childhood: "You loved everything with a free heart"; "It breathes sweetly in freedom"[9, pp. 156, 272]. Unity with the elements becomes the dominant motif of Balmont's poetry:
"I am not a brother to people, but to the storm and the wind, I am the brother of the cold plain of the sea… O waves of the sea, my native element, You always run freely to other lands" [9, pp. 185-186]. Gaining freedom is inseparable from gaining world consciousness: "The stars, the waves, and the mountains are close to me…I know complete freedom... I hear the whistling of the wind. I can hear the strings singing…The world has entered into me" [9, p. 208]. This freedom expresses itself in endless Balmont reincarnations: in the Spaniard "I want the primeval forests to open up to me... I will walk across the oceans..."[9, p. 213], the Scythian: "We are blessed hosts of freely roaming Scythians, Only the will alone is dear to us above all", "the free Arab" [11, p. 113]. Already in the book "Burning Buildings", the will of the poet and the will dissolved in the natural elements begins to connect with the higher, Divine will: the poet – "the chosen, wise, dedicated, son of the sun" feels his "closeness to the Deity" and sees "in life a sign of boundless will" [9, pp. 250-251]. The poet's bondage is only in himself – his mind or the deceptiveness of feeling [9, p. 251]. The poet overcomes this bondage with his programmatic variability: "My changeable spirit strives every moment"; "And I am like the spirit of the sea wave, I wander among people"; "I am devoted to fickle dreams, Mobile as flowing water"; "I am a free dream, I am everywhere and nowhere… I am a spirit, I am a magician, I am a guardian of the world consciousness" – this is the "mystery of creativity"[9, pp. 254, 257, 268, 293]. The poet learns "the bliss of being strong and proud and eternally free" [1, p.302]. This rush to freedom is inseparable from the ascent: "There, there! Beyond the borders of the eternal mountains! The peaks are sleeping. Azure, peace, space" [9, p. 307]. The poet glorifies divinely free and eternally changeable elements in the book "Let's be like the sun" and his involvement in them: fire "You change forever, You are different everywhere…I'm just like you"; ocean, "my ancient ancestor…You are an unshackled integrity"; "The wind, my eternal brother, the Wind of mountains and seas" [9, pp. 320-321, 329, 343]. The poet is subject only to the elements: about the moon – "She will shed cold light, And will kill with charms, She is Sybil and a sorceress" [9, p.327]. The "free world" is open to the poet [9, p.357]."And my heart sings about the free red sun" [9, p. 123]. Images of love in Balmont's poetry are also associated with the elements and the rush to the infinite: "Let's rush off with you to infinity"; "my love is bottomless, infinity"; "You are a light wave playing in the sea"; "You are forever a free summer"[9, p. 106; 11, p. 42; 9, p. 385; 11, p. 45]. The program in the book is the poem "Volya", dedicated to V. Bryusov. The poet is obedient only to his heart, his motto is "I will be free and beautiful, I will be a golden fairy tale." Like the elements, he is eternally different: "The sun caresses the lilies of the valley, weaves them into a dance, And if he wants, he blushes and lights a fire in the steppe." But the main thing is the will: "I will keep my free soul unchanged" [9, pp. 359-360], which the poet sees in the natural elements: "Freedom, freedom! Who understood you, He knows how free the flood rivers are" or the water between the rocks – "He values only his will" [9, pp.363, 367]. In this freedom there is a game ("wind plays", "water plays"[9, p. 244] and "chaos of the universe" [9, p. 19], which the poet glorifies, but ultimately – a sense of "the infinite in the finite" [9, p. 376, 392]. By asserting the priority of light, "Let us be like the sun," Balmont asserted the priority of the supreme Divine principle: "Only the Sun is bright, only God is eternal!", life is a mystery revealed to the poet: "Our life is a miracle in an eternal miracle, Our life is both here and forever there." The source of the will is "our free spirit." "But, striving, sinning, suffering, crying, our free Spirit was always preserved" by this supreme Divine principle [9, pp. 450-451]. Behind the chaos of the universe, the poet knows eternal harmony, behind the glorification of changeable elements, the poet discovers the liturgical nature of being: "The fog of meadows, like the quiet smoke of censers, Rises in praise of boundless harmony"; "Earth and heaven are the vault of a silent temple" [9, pp. 485, 449]. The poet is a "free wind" or a free wave ("If I were a ringing, brilliant free wave" [11, p. 11] realizes his kinship with his angelic and freedom–loving ancestor: "Isn't that my freedom-loving ancestor, the fallen light of angelic systems…He was amazed by the brilliance of the universe" [9, p. 485]. The will as a rush of liberation and overcoming a narrow earthly lot is both a rush into the distance, "into the expanses of free distance" and an eternal striving upward – endless, boundless, beyond: "I do not part with the heavenly soul", "heaven is an endless expanse"; "the heart wants boundless freedom" [11, p. 33, 29, 34, 66]. The essence of "spontaneous genius" is the glorification of the free elements: "free wind", "free wave", "free moon": "Crowned with me by the Free moon" [11, p. 41]. His choice is to be free: "Be free, be like a bird…You are a free ray burning in the waterfall and in the dew" [11, p.71]. For the poet is "the composer of prophetic songs", "the sage and the king" [11, p.73]. The Will embodies the essence of God's world: "And by the will of the constellations, we saw each other once"; "And my heart wants to have boundless freedom", "Chu, the song swept through the free expanse"; "The charms of the royal moon breathe smokily over the expanse of the free water depths"; "I am fanned by the breaths of the free seas" [11, pp. 46, 66, 74, 267]. Glorifying the "chords of the universe" [11, p. 57], in his quest for wholeness and all-acceptance of the world, Balmont of the period "Let us be like the sun" and "The Liturgy of Beauty" goes through a stage of symbolist panaesthetism: "I love light and darkness"; "I love you, Devil, I love you, God" [11, pp. 61, 93]. But overcoming all doubts and wanderings, "I am a dead weight – from free summer, From happiness and light I go into darkness" [11, p. 79], the poet's final choice for light is "This is the truth of the supreme will." The source of the poet's freedom is his "free soul" [11, p. 83]: "I am will, will, will" – the poet exclaims [11, p.100] and the supreme will: "The path is far to the eternal will, But we will return to it" [11, p. 84]. The image of the Creator God becomes an ideal for the poet: "God created the world out of nothing. Learn, the artist, from him... and yourself, like a fabulous bird. Fly high into the sky, Where the free lightning shines" [11, p. 85]. Thus, free will becomes a creative will. The transition takes place in the book "Only Love". The poet overcomes the earthly boundary, acquires "free wings" [11, p. 88]. And the mystery of the "World Ring" is revealed to him – the name of the cycle that completes the book "Only Love". The world is going on: "The creative hammer is pounding endlessly." The World is a "voiceless poem": "Every flower is a sculptured verse, In every plant there is a saga" [11, p. 105]. The free world lives according to the laws of creative will. And this "world communion" is the "world wine" and gives birth to "only love" of the poet [11, pp. 108, 167].
The spontaneous hymns of the "Liturgy of Beauty" glorify this creative principle in the poet's world and soul: "I won't get tired of being alive, The stream sings, I'm always with it, The dawn is burning, it is in me, I am in an ever-creative fire"; "I was not a gnome digging in the middle of the universe… And the salamander of the creative fire" [11, p. 112]. Thus, the concept of "will" in Balmont's poetry combines the aspiration to spaciousness, infinity, freedom, the poet's kinship with the divinely free and eternally changeable elements of God's world and the creative principle as comprehension of the soul of the world and his own "free-spirited" soul. The will embodies the essence of God's world and the poet's soul. We will find the same motives in the book "Birds in the Air": "We are free birds", the soul is "free" [10, p. 136]; "I fly as a free bird", "I am a free wave" [10, p. 175]. The world is "free will" [10, p.210]. "The road of souls is the road of birds, Let me be where there are no borders" [10, p. 218]. The will led the poet to move away from modernity "I love people – in the hypostasis of their ancient…The dialect of the seas could be heard in their voice, "giving birth to "their universal chant" [10, pp. 297, 328]. The embodiment of this departure and the poet's universality is the 1916 book "Sonnets of the Sun, Honey and Moon: The Song of the Worlds", in which the poet glorifies the creative principle both in nature and in man. This free-creative principle brings the poet closer to God, generates the Divine-human pathos of the book: "Be able to create from the smallest crumbs. Otherwise, what are you for, wizard? Among people, you are the God's viceroy, So remember that God is in your words… Be able to want, and by the power of desires The Lord's spirit will rush through the strings" [12, p. 18]. The poet comprehends the world game, in which light always wins – this is the credo of Balmont the poet: "the victorious light always plays at night" [12, p. 22]. The law of nature is the law of creativity: "Nature is the most whimsical creator" [12, p.26]. The poet – at the "peacemaking feasts": "At the fiery feast of the creative fire": "The sun creates creatures through light…I know the happiness of sculpting with the sun" [12, p.31, p.35, p.32]. Balmont returns to the defense of will and freedom in a different historical context in his books of the 1920s, which form a single "poem about Russia". In the book "Haze", the Divine "good will" and "creative will" embodied in the city of Peter is opposed to the "evil will", which led to the "shedding of blood", the oblivion of "free speech" and "free reason"[13, pp.440, 449-454]. The book "In the far distance" gives the highest, eidetic image of Russia: "there is no freer and wider" [13, p. 80]. This will is embodied by the Cossacks. His great-grandfather was a Cossack: "He was a fearless warrior, brave, My great-grandfather, a Chersonese, Balmut." Balmont writes about the free Cossacks, who became the rulers of the steppes and guardians of the south. The blood of the Cossacks also flowed in his veins. That's how he wrote about the Cossacks: "Cossacks, guardians of the South, The rulers of the free steppes… The Cossack is a free will, The Cossack is an indestructible fortress." [13, p. 23]. The poet also glorifies the freedom of the spirit: "My spirit has the power to escape from its shackles, To the beyond – to the edge – into the immensity of the world", the victory of the will: "The ebb is adjacent to the tide, The longing is replaced in me With a free and happy impulse, And in the highest I am drowning in fire" and "free world" – the temple : "I am in a free, blue, rounded temple"[13, pp. 111, 114. 123, 134]. Balmont's triumph of the will is always "the triumph of the creative fire" [13, p. 137] – this motif completes his poem about Russia. The poet's father and mother appear as free souls in the novel "Under the New Sickle". About his mother, in whose veins flowed Great Russian, as well as Cossack and Tatar blood, the poet wrote: "More than anything in the world, this young woman loved will, the fullness of will, and, loving will for herself, she could not and did not want to understand how anyone dares to embarrass anyone in anything" [12, p. 181]. In the character of his father, the poet emphasized "a deep inner aversion to all violence, to all injustice, to encroachment on someone else's soul and someone else's will…His grandfather was from the south, from the coast of the Black Sea, where, compared with Central Russia, they always knew more about the will..., the expanse of the steppe, water and sky" [12, 189]. Conclusion. Thus, the concept of "will" in Balmont's poetry combines the aspiration to space, breadth and height – to infinity, freedom, the poet's kinship with the Divinely free and eternally changeable elements of God's world and the creative principle as the comprehension of the soul of the world and his own "free-spirited" soul. The cultural meaning of the concept "will" embodies the essence of God's world and the poet's soul. The concept of "will" in its versatility is one of the key ones in Balmont's poetry and turns to the basics of the Russian mentality, as well as reveals the convergence of the Divine and human, free and creative principles as the dominant worldview of the poet of the Silver Age.
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28. Snezhko, Julia “I sang the reeds like no one had sung before me...”: the semantics of the swamp in the poetry of K. D. Balmont. Literature, 61, 70-83. 10.15388/Literature.2019.2.5
29. Nalevaik (2021). "The Terrible Dryads" by Janeta Lesmyan and their Slavic context (literary and other) December 2021. Textalia, 1(7), 15-30. doi:10.5604/01.3001.0015.6680
First Peer Review
Peer reviewers' evaluations remain confidential and are not disclosed to the public. Only external reviews, authorized for publication by the article's author(s), are made public. Typically, these final reviews are conducted after the manuscript's revision. Adhering to our double-blind review policy, the reviewer's identity is kept confidential.
The list of publisher reviewers can be found here.
The author of the article submitted to the journal "Culture and Art" theoretically accurately reflected the subject and object of research in the title ("The cultural meaning of the concept "will" in the poetry of K.D. Balmont"): the subject is the cultural meaning of the concept "will", the object is the poetry of K. D. Balmont. Following the linguistic and cultural methodological canon developed in Russian science (Yu. S. Stepanov, A. P. Ogurtsov, V. V. Krasnykh, etc.), the author ignores the need for methodological support for the presentation of the results obtained, implying that the reader is well-versed in the specifics of linguoculturology and the amount of knowledge accumulated by this scientific field. Without references to specific works, the author directs the reader's thought to the authority of Natalia Alexandrovna Molchanova (Pyatigorsk State University) and Tatyana Sergeevna Petrova (Ivanovo State University), as if no one else had studied K. D. Balmont's work in Russia and abroad, with the exception of Vadim Vladimirovich Polonsky, whose monograph (2011) the author mentions, where, among the contexts of Russian literature at the turn of the XIX-XX centuries, the work of K. D. Balmont is also considered. It seems that the work of K. D. Balmont is not the subject of extensive scientific discussions. Which, of course, does not correspond to reality, but the author is silent about that (there is no assessment of the degree of study of the topic or problem area of research in the article). Due to the weak methodological support, the presented material is more consistent with the genre of a short thesis report of a special session of some scientific and practical conference in a narrow circle of like-minded people. Nevertheless, based on the analysis of empirical material, the author makes his feasible contribution to the accumulation of knowledge about the work of K. D. Balmont: the final conclusion is well-reasoned and trustworthy. The subject of the study is thus disclosed by the author at a level sufficient for publication in a scientific journal, and, with the exception of purely technical descriptions (fused spelling of words in two places: "It is necessary to reveal those many cultural meanings ...", "... always one".In its transformation..."), there are no critical flaws in the text. However, the reviewer considers it necessary to point out to the author the missed opportunities in terms of enhancing the scientific significance of the presented article. The author does not pay special attention to the research methodology, as if in narratology, one of the directions of which is the analysis of cultural (mental) meanings of the conceptual sphere of literary works, there is an exceptional methodological consensus. If this were the case, then narratology should be classified as "dead" sciences that have exhausted their descriptive and heuristic potential, are not capable of expanding the field of new scientific knowledge, and operate exclusively with banal judgments. Nevertheless, the author admits that his result may contain significant scientific novelty, otherwise he would not have invited colleagues to read the presented material. This is the key paradox of the presented material: the author ignores the need for scientific discussion, the need to justify the relevance of his research, the need to justify the novelty of the result, as if no one except the author himself is interested in publishing the results of his research. As a result, the presented material, figuratively speaking, hangs in an airless space: it is not clear from the presented text why and to whom its content is needed. It is quite obvious that in the presented form the article may be of interest to a very narrow circle of specialists. The author misses the opportunity to include the results of his research in the broader context of scientific discussion and thereby significantly reduces the value of his publication. The relevance of the topic, the need for substantiation of which the author ignores, which, again, significantly reduces the scientific and social significance of the publication, undoubtedly lies in the cumulative accumulation of knowledge about the principles of functioning of culture as a semiotic system. The importance of such knowledge lies in determining the logic of the influence of cultural (semiotic, in particular) regulations on the historical eventfulness and potency of modern socio-cultural processes. The scientific novelty of the presented material is obvious only to a narrow circle of specialists. It consists in the author's interpretation of the cultural meaning of the concept of "will" in the poetry of K. D. Balmont, based on the analysis of empirical material. Meanwhile, the author does not explain to the reader whether the result he obtained contradicts the established scientific ideas, complements them in a complementary way or additionally argues. In essence, the author suggests that the reader independently explore the area of his interests in order to make sure that the scientific novelty of the presented result exists, which significantly reduces its scientific value. The style of the text is scientific, with the exception of the descriptions mentioned above, there are no comments. The structure of the article corresponds exclusively formally to the genre of presenting the results of scientific research: the content of the introduction does not contain the necessary scientific and methodological support, the final conclusion, although sufficiently reasoned in the main part of the article, borders on a banal judgment (there is no certainty that the presented result has not been published before). The bibliography does not reveal the problematic field of research at all: even taking into account the reliance of research on the analysis of empirical material, one scientific work analyzed by the author is not enough, it is desirable to present the scientific result in the context of relevant research over the past 3-5 years, taking into account the analysis of publications by foreign colleagues. Otherwise, it is not clear whether the result obtained by the author is outdated, or whether the author is inventing another bicycle? Which, of course, significantly reduces the scientific value of the publication. The author's appeal to his opponents is minimal and exclusively complementary. The interest of the readership of the magazine "Culture and Art" is limited to a narrow circle of specialists. In addition to correcting technical descriptions, the reviewer, as a wish, recommends that the author strengthen the scientific value of the planned publication based on his comments.
Second Peer Review
Peer reviewers' evaluations remain confidential and are not disclosed to the public. Only external reviews, authorized for publication by the article's author(s), are made public. Typically, these final reviews are conducted after the manuscript's revision. Adhering to our double-blind review policy, the reviewer's identity is kept confidential.
The list of publisher reviewers can be found here.
The author presented his article "The cultural meaning of the concept of "will" in the poetry of K.D. Balmont" to the journal "Culture and Art", which provides a cultural and philosophical understanding of the work of the famous Russian poet. The author proceeds in the study of this issue from the fact that concepts as units of mentality are the subject of close scientific study by both philologists, linguists, and cultural scientists, philosophers, psychologists. The concept of "will" in its versatility is one of the key ones in Balmont's poetry and turns to the basics of the Russian mentality, as well as reveals the convergence of the Divine and human, free and creative principles as the dominant worldview of the poet of the Silver Age. The cultural meaning of the concept "will" embodies the essence of God's world and the poet's soul. This concept combines the aspiration to space, breadth and height – to infinity, freedom, the poet's kinship with the Divinely free and eternally changeable elements of God's world and the creative principle as comprehension of the soul of the world and his own "free-spirited" soul. The relevance of the research is determined by the popularity of K.D. Balmont and the need for a scientific cultural justification of the poet's multifaceted work. The purpose of the study is to analyze the cultural meanings that for the poet were associated with the concept of "will". The subject of the study is "will" as one of the key cultural concepts in the work of K.D. Balmont. The methodological basis of the research was an integrated approach, including biographical, historical and cultural methods, as well as artistic and semiotic analysis of the text. The linguocultural approach allowed the author to obtain scientific results by implementing inter- and transdisciplinary connections in the study of cultural phenomena based on language. In the study, the author relies on the theoretical provisions of the works of such researchers as S.A. Askold, V.I. Karasik, N.A. Molchanova, T.S. Petrova, etc. The empirical material was the works and memoirs of K.D. Balmont. The scientific novelty lies in a comprehensive cultural analysis. The practical significance of the research is determined by the fact that 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. To achieve the purpose of the research, the author traces the evolution of the poet's work, in which the concept of "will" reveals a chain of interrelated and complementary meanings: the boundless desire of the symbolist poet, a rush into the distance and upward, gaining freedom, admiration for the free world and the discovery of the supreme Divine principle in nature. Based on the analysis of "Under the northern sky", "In the vastness", "Silence", "Burning buildings", "We will be like the sun", the author comes to the conclusion that the word image of the concept "will" is the key in Balmont's poetry of the late XIX and the heyday period in the early twentieth century. The will as a rush of liberation and overcoming a narrow earthly lot, a rush into the distance and an eternal striving upward is traced by the author in the works "Birds in the Air", "The White Architect", "Only Love", "The Liturgy of Beauty". The author notes Balmont's return to the defense of will and freedom – already in a different historical context in his books of the 1920s, forming a single "poem about Russia". In the book "Marevo", the Divine "good will" and "creative will" embodied in the city of Peter is opposed to the "evil will", which led to the "shedding of blood", the oblivion of "free speech" and "free reason". The poet's father and mother appear as free souls in the novel "Under the New Sickle". After conducting the research, the author provides the key points of his research. It seems that the author in his material touched upon relevant and interesting issues for modern socio-humanitarian knowledge, choosing a topic for analysis, consideration of which in scientific research discourse will entail certain changes in the established approaches and directions of analysis of the problem addressed in the presented article. The results obtained allow us to assert that the study of the dynamics of the artist's work, the formation of his style, the influence of certain socio-cultural factors on his creative path is of undoubted scientific and practical cultural interest and deserves further study. The material presented in the work has a clear, logically structured structure that contributes to a more complete assimilation of the material. This is also facilitated by an adequate choice of an appropriate methodological framework. The bibliography of the study consisted of 29 sources, which seems sufficient for the generalization and analysis of scientific discourse on the subject under study. The author fulfilled his goal, received certain scientific results that allowed him to summarize the material. It should be noted that the article may be of interest to readers and deserves to be published in a reputable scientific publication.
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