The specifics and functions of the concepts of LIFE and DEATH in V. Y. Bryusov's poetry

Glazkova Marina Mikhailovna ORCID: 0000-0003-0518-9896 PhD in Philology Associate Professor, Department "Russian Language and General Educational Disciplines", Tambov State Technical University 392000, Russia, Tambov region, Tambov, Sovetskaya str., 106 rusfilol37@mail.ru Other publications by this author

Ilyina Svetlana Anatolevna PhD in Philology Associate Professor, Department "Russian Language and General Educational Disciplines", Tambov State Technical University 106 Sovetskaya str., Tambov, 392000, Russia, Tambov region vaska24@yandex.ru

The lyrics of V.Y. Bryusov, the leader of symbolism, who gave this largest trend in literature and art a theoretical justification, captured the complexity and multidimensionality of such a socio-cultural phenomenon as the period of literature of the Silver Age, which arose at the turn of the century and gave rise to a peculiar cultural nature, cultural language, and a variety of ideological vectors. The socio-cultural image of the epoch, determined by the perspective of the analysis of cultural history, which was based on anthropological principles, is formed at the same time under the influence of self-awareness, self-determination of the cultural elite, the mover of the spiritual, literary and cultural mechanisms of society.

Bryusov's poetry, involved in a given "oppositional discourse" ^{[1, p. 142]}, is characterized by the dominance of the antithesis of life/death, due to the psychological tossing of a person between undefined spiritual demands and needs of the body, and reflects the "image of the poet" that arose in the lyrics, "dual and antinomic" ^{[2, p. 227]}. The thesis "We are enchanted not only by Golgotha, but also by Olympus, not only the suffering God who died on the cross calls and attracts us, but also the God Pan, <···> … And we bow benevolently not only to the Cross, but also to the divinely beautiful body of Venus [3. pp. 582-583] allows us to understand the presence of the motive of duality, embodied in his poetry in the concepts of LIFE and DEATH. The concepts considered as "the totality of all meanings captured by the word; a certain ideal object of the surrounding world, having a name and reflecting a culturally conditioned human idea of the world" ^{[4, p. 43]} are well-established concepts containing the conceptualization of the basic phenomena of human existence and formed associative connections in the minds of people, expressed in the representatives of the concepts of LIFE and The ELEMENTS that organize their conceptual fields are ideologically organic due to their structuring: they are based on frames and slots (semantic nodes). The mood of the poet, imprinted in the conceptual sphere of his artistic thinking, can be comprehended if the ontogenesis of linguistic and cultural understanding and feeling of the concepts of LIFE and DEATH are analyzed – those containing an ethnocultural aesthetic and semantic code of keys that defined and designated the antinomy, bipolarity of V. Bryusov's work.

The conceptums of both concepts are lexicographed in a variety of dictionaries, it is no coincidence that they reveal similarities in definitions. In the dictionary of S.I. Ozhegov ^{[5, p. 197]} and in the Large Explanatory Dictionary ^{[6, p. 306]}, the word life is qualified as a special form of existence of matter; as the physiological state of a living being in the process of its birth, evolution and death; the period of the named actual existence; the activity of society and the individual; as a real reality; manifestation activity, energy; the degree of manifestation of physical and spiritual forces. With the invariance of the conceptum, the expansion of the informative and evaluative potential of the lexeme determines an increase in the number of its representatives at the metaphorical level, as a result of which figurative meanings designated in contexts find a place in dictionaries: "I'm not happy with my life. My life! What's up? Never in my life... . A friend of life. Playboy. To go through life. Make a life. The elixir of life. Not for life, but for death" ^{[6, p. 306]}.

The semantics of the word death is also represented in several semes: the cessation of vital functions of an organism, its death; the cessation of the existence of a person or another being; the destruction of something. The figurative meaning is no less polysemic: "Political death. To die a natural death. It's a matter of life and death. I'm tired to death. I'm sick to death of everything. Death loves to chat", etc. ^{[6, p. 1216]}. In Dahl's explanatory dictionary, the word death is defined as "the end of earthly life, separation of the soul from the body, dying, the state of the obsolete. Human death, the end of carnal life, resurrection, transition to eternal, spiritual life..." ^{[7, p. 238]}.

In the "Bible Encyclopedia" we find a dictionary entry that examines death, bodily and spiritual. The first lies in the fact of depriving the body of the soul – the second is that "the soul is deprived of the grace of God ^{[8, p. 605]}. The soul is also subject to death: having died as a result of a committed sin, the soul plunges into a state of darkness, sorrow and suffering.

The Bible books speak about physical and spiritual death. One of Jesus' disciples, before following him, asked permission to go home to bury his dead father, to which "Jesus said to him: Leave the dead to bury their dead" [Luke 9:60]. As we can see, the dead are people who are physically alive, but who have renounced God's love, who are outside its sphere. A similar conclusion can be drawn based on the words of the Lord addressed to people who trample on his commandments: "You bear the name as if you are alive, but you are dead" [Rev. 3:1]. Accordingly, the soul of a physically deceased person who participates in God continues to remain alive, which follows from the words of Jesus: "He who believes in me, even if he dies, will live" [John 11:25], "And whoever lives and believes in Me will never die" [John 11:26].

In the "Complete Orthodox Theological Encyclopedic Dictionary" ^{[9, p. 886]}, the word life is missing – there is a concept of "Eternal Life" filled with faith in God. "Earthly life" in the context of the definition of "Eternal Life" is considered in a polar sense, suggesting the interrelation of these antinomic concepts denoting two opposite forms of life, but arising from one another.

Any linguistic culture includes an understanding of life and attitude towards it, which are moderators of human behavior, defining ethical norms inherent in a nation or ethnic community, the specifics of communication, and the identity of mentality. Being in the center of the semantic field of language, the concept of LIFE in the consciousness of the bearer of the cultural code is always associated with death, an inevitability included by dialectics in the progressive cyclicity of evolution, which determines the status of basic mental entities for the concepts of LIFE and DEATH, which are the soil for the morphogenesis of the components of the human conceptual system.

As A.V. Prokhorova rightly notes, the concepts under consideration represent a counterdictor type of antonyms only illusorily: life as being (existence) has an internal structure "birth – life – death" ^{[10, p. 228]}, the elements of which are arranged in the order of logical gradation subordinate to existential reality, therefore they relate to concepts, not to concepts. The contrariety of concepts is based on the experienced ideas contained in the first meanings: LIFE (being), the starting point of which is BIRTH, is in the interval between this stage of growth and DEATH, meanwhile, under the influence of the religious picture of the world, concepts have been supplemented with multi-vector experiences forming layers of sensations and emotions associated with the joys of birth of life, the joys of being, with gloomy feelings of non-existence and the joy of meeting with eternal life. Such an interpretation allows us to say that the final stage of existence, embodied in the concept of DEATH, becomes the beginning of a new life, eternal, imprinted in the concept of LIFE.

So, the analyzed concepts form a single bipolar concept of LIFE/DEATH, which performs ideological and aesthetic, textual and style-forming functions in the discursive space of V. Bryusov's poetry.

Bryusov's work of the late XIX – early XX century was marked by decadent tendencies, the temporal determinants of which were the painful rift of the epoch, the crisis of faith (in a society where "God died") ^{[11, p. 593]}, moral values were trampled – a new axiological scale was not established), and, as a result, the succession of Russian symbolists was realized the ideological and aesthetic principles of representatives of European literature: Baudelaire, Verlaine, Rimbaud, Mallarm?, who gave the symbolist movement an absolutely new structure of images.

According to Bryusov, the poet's acquaintance with symbolist philosophers and his enthusiasm for them contributed to the discovery of a new world in him and understanding of his mission - the spread of symbolism in Russia, thereby becoming his ancestor and theorist, and it was under the impressions of their work that Bryusov's early poems were created ^{[12, p. 169]}.

A special influence on the formation of Bryusov's poetic talent was exerted by the views of Baudelaire, who was vividly expressed in the poetic collection "Flowers of Evil" ^[13]. Bryusov was involved in the philosophical discourse of the French symbolist, deployed in the "Colors of Evil", because it highlighted an urgent problem – the search for moral postulates – through thematic vectors: leveling pre-existing moral foundations, the release of passions, the elevation of vice to the status of an aesthetic cult. Baudelaire's image of death is aestheticized: in his picture of the world, beauty is devoid of an unambiguous stereotypical assessment, according to which it belongs to the divine world of goodness.

The poem "Carrion" ^{[13, pp. 51-52]} reflects the aesthetic admiration of the rotting corpse of a young woman, caused by the anticipation of the prospect of the disappearance of the mortal body and the acquisition of immortal beauty – the expectation of purification before meeting Eternity. The personalization of Thanatos allows the author to combine the real and unreal world in his artistic space, close to God and Truth. Baudelaire's concept of evil is affirmed by him on the basis of a futile search for truth (goodness). When the author sinks to the very bottom of evil, he sees only death as a way out.

Baudelaire's ethical and aesthetic ideals corresponded to Bryusov's aspirations, embodied in numerous poems about love, passionate, ardent and withering. In the words of V. Bryusov about the human body, likened by him to a grain, the purpose of which is to blossom with magnificent color (passion), for which the physical essence suffers and dies without regret, there is an equivalent assessment of the instincts of life and death, which constitutes the poet's understanding of the Truth.

Bryusov's poetry is dominated by mortal vocabulary, which gives rise to expressive connotations of images of darkness and evil, organizes motives of decay and decay, and forms an extensive range of the "death" frame network. In the poem "Ease our suffering, God!", the pole of DEATH of the bipolar concept is explicated by the fullness of the conceptual field with the connotations "without rays and without faith", "cold cracks", "ulcers", "pus", "carrion", "grave rest", "the last veil" ^{[14, p. 88]}, included in the slots "night", "moon", "cold", "rot", exposes the suffering, tossing of the finely organized soul of a daring and proud lyrical hero who has reached a spiritual crisis. The reception of a self-enclosed personality comprehends the stage of moral quest, which is a rubicon when a person cries out to God, feeling a way out for himself either in rebirth or in death. The poet sees salvation from the abyss in love-passion, accompanied by the attributes of death. One of the main and beautiful images of her created by Bryusov is the image of the night, the patroness of love, igniting and intensifying passion, surrounding with an aura of sacredness and mystery.

In the darkness of the night, in the atmosphere

Intoxicating, languishing spirits,

I was looking at the blue alcove,

I dreamed of forests of cryptomeria.

And now I'm lying half asleep

On the moss of the primeval forest;

With the flicker of a closed eye

My friend clung to me.

We both enjoyed hunting:

They were chasing a mottled blackbird.

Then, wearily, the two of them

They forgot themselves in a short nap.

^{[14, p. 65]}

The night, intoxicating, intoxicating, demonstrating the situation through the optical prism of fuzzy colors following each other, exposing all material essences to fluctuation, dark ("half-glass"), blue (alcove"), mottled ("thrush"), has a suggestive effect on the lyrical hero and his girlfriend, immersing them in the atmosphere of half-glass, half asleep – in a state between reality and non-existence. The night in Bryusov's poems is a time of love, in which the poet sees the sacrament, since love is passion, in his view, is a God–fighting path to knowledge of God.

In the poem "Waiting" ^{[14, pp. 509-510]} passion ("remember the nights, remember the whisper") becomes the point of intersection of horizontal and vertical (existential and eternal) planes and is a portal to another world.

In "Voluptuousness" ^{[14, pp. 338-339]}, the lyrical image of a woman is distinguished by brightness, contrast, and rough beauty. She appears from the darkness of the cave, the semantic and figurative dominant of the night is emphasized by the presence in the poem of the representatives of DEATH, which are "darkness", "twilight", "black hair", as a creation of twilight. A wreath of "purple poppy", the glitter of golden ruby earrings, "blood coral" necklaces, which evokes an association with a bleeding wound on the neck, black hair on white shoulders, merging with the darkness of the cave, create a demonic image, at the mercy of unbridled, animal, deadly passion. K. Chukovsky in the article "On the topic of love at Bryusova" notes the peculiarity of passion in Bryusov's lyrics, which consists in torment and pain, suffering and horror on the bed of love; Bryusov's passion is likened to Chukovsky's "battle, fatal duel" of lovers ^{[15, p. 153]}.

In his quest to transform reality, Bryusov resorts to exoticism both in the choice of topics and in figurative means. The sonnet poem "Premonition" ^{[14, p. 57]} depicts the lyrical hero's expectation of a woman against the background of bright tropical nature and a sweetly painful union with her. The work is characterized by an abundance of figurative means adorning the text: syncretic epithets ("deadly fragrance", "inexorable garden"), the same kind of comparisons ("like a pair of greedy snakes") and metaphors. The image of the night is implicated here in the indication of time ("the day will slip by") and in the symbol-metaphor ("Your eyes will close. That will be death"), which, by psychologizing objects, actualizes the perception of material entities instead of themselves, as if dissolves reality, thereby blurring the line between LIFE and DEATH.

The Moon is the constant companion of a woman in Bryusov's lyrics. As noted in the "Encyclopedic Dictionary of Symbols", the Moon occupies an important place in the system of symbols of the heavenly bodies. There is a myth about the dualism of the universe, which is based on the rivalry of the Moon and the Sun, resolved by the Lord by the definition of two spheres, earthly and otherworldly, the dominion over which is given to the luminaries, while the Lord makes the Moon smaller than the Sun and gives it a weaker luminous power compared to the power of the Sun for the evil intentions of the Moon in relation to the daylight. In ancient folk beliefs, the Moon controls the tides in the seas and oceans, helps to fill plants with medicinal juices ^{[16, pp. 476-477]}.  In Christian hagiography, the Virgin Mary is compared to the Moon, depicted on icons standing or sitting on a crescent moon. Biblical texts depict the moon as a symbol of victory over evil forces: "... a woman clothed in the sun; the moon is under her feet" [Rev. 12: 1-1].

In the alchemical world, the Moon finds embodiment in the images of silver and the queen. According to the Greek Christian apologist Theochilus of Antichaeus, being along with the Sun the bearer of the great mystery, the Moon qualifies as the image of man, while the Sun is the image of God. The Greek Christian theologian and philosopher Origen Adamant interprets the Moon, which receives sunlight and spreads it to everything around, as an image of the church.

The Greek goddess of the Moon Hecate, the patroness of the underworld, magic and witchcraft, called Three-faced (Trideodis), acting in different guises, is associated with the three phases of the Moon and the three stages of a woman's life (girl, woman, old woman). The moon, in fact, is a very expressive symbol, which is the pole of the geocentric system, endowed with magic, powerful power, surrounded by a halo of demonism and representing the antinomy of life. At the same time, the life of the Moon is a metaphor for the rebirth of any idea, the resurrection of everything perishable.

The poetic image of a woman by V. Bryusov, expressive, mysterious, chthonic-demonic, connects the living and dead worlds – lexical units that create the image of a lyrical heroine turn out to be nodes of contamination of frame networks of poles of the concept of LIFE/DEATH. The moon, which has a feminine origin, endowed in folk beliefs and astrology with the ability to control the external sides of a woman's soul, in Bryusov's poems, with affectionate and imperious kisses of its ray, awakens the lyrical heroine from sleep for passionate love. A woman dressed in moon robes ("flooded with pale light" ^{[14, p. 398]}), under the power of the "call of spells" of Hecate, rushes into the arms of passion, completely giving herself to Astarte (the Greek version of the name of the goddess of love and power Ishtar). Bryusov's lunar female image is a generalized female image, woven from the obvious connotations of the concept of DEATH ("eyes lit by darkness", "dead lips"), it is no coincidence that it includes the motif of mystery-lies ("All of you are a mystery, all of you are a lie"): in the ancient world there was an interpretation of the false Moon (Luna Mendax) due to the associations of the Moon in its rising and waning phases with different graphics – the letters C and D. When explicating the concept of DEATH, there is an implication of the concept of LIFE: "You betray your body to God." The woman in Bryusov's poetry is the bearer of the divine principle, accordingly, in a fierce love connection, the lyrical hero comes into contact with the mysteries of the universe, learns its essence.

The cult of subordination to the cyclical existence-non-existence of the god Dionysus is associated with the Moon, eternally disappearing (dying) and reborn, as a result of which the motive of wine is indicated in Bryusov's lyrics. According to the myth, man learned the art of winemaking from Dionysus. A slightly intoxicating drink, considered spiritual, filled with the fire of life, exposing lies and witchcraft, wine was an attribute of religious rituals, the purpose of which was the unity of man with the revered god.

The author of mystical books, the nun Hildegard of Bingen, interprets the meaning of this symbol through an allusion to the biblical story, in which the new juice of wine created by the earth, which gave the renewal of wisdom, came from the blood of Abel that was shed and nourished the earth, therefore wine, symbolizing the identity of the blood of Christ, organically combines life and death. Overcoming the gravity of the earth, associated with the demands of the flesh, wine awakens fantasy, realizes the metamorphosis of a mundane vessel into a spirit aspiring to God. For Bryusov, such a drink, like wine, divine and endowing with madness, burning and reviving to soar above the material towards the spiritual essence of the universe, harmonious and binary at its core, is a woman.

The poem "You are a woman, you are a witch's drink!" ^{[14, p. 179]} in form is a sonnet bearing the name "Woman" of the same name to the addressee. The representatives of the Moon ("decorated with a starry crown") and Dionysus ("witch's drink", "burning lips", "drinking flame") presented in the work they enter the connotative field of the bipolar concept of LIFE / DEATH, not only successfully embodying the collective image of the Bruce lyrical heroine, who is the source of happiness and suffering, the deity and the meaning of life, but also creating the pathos of the anthem of the one who, by killing, revives.

Being consistent in his worldview, Bryusov addresses social problems, in the coverage of which the bipolar concept of LIFE/DEATH is also observed. The theme of the city turned Bryusov towards reality and the social realities of modernity.

Of fundamental importance to Bryusov is the urban landscape, characterized by a richness of artistic details. The lexemes that form conceptual fields are connotative paradigms that create antonymous frame structures. The city in Bryusov's image is two-faced. The frame "grave", explicated by the lexemes "coffin", "predatory beasts", "unwashed wombs" ^{[14, p. 177]}; "predatory wingless dragon", "black rally", "fiery Debauchery", "Madness, pride, need", "voluptuous poison, insidious serpent, blind rage", "a knife with its deadly poison" ^{[14, p. 515]}, exposing social problems, shows a city oppressing a person, bringing death to him. Bryusov's city "is the source of the main vices of mankind, which become proper names, these are the cornerstones of the city's existence (Malice, Poverty, Madness, Pride, Need, Debauchery)." ^{[17, p. 231]}.  People in the city are nondescript, like shadows – ghost people ("Like strange shadows", "We are not used to bright colors", "The City"), dead ("corpses" - the poem "Closed").

At the same time, the city is poetized by Bryusov: the lexemes "moon", "evening", "twilight", characterized by ambivalence, reveal their life-affirming meanings, filling the landscape with space and pacification "Twilight" ^{[14, p. 450]}. A city can represent another world – it is a world of "bright colors", dynamic, developing civilization by the forces of man, demiurge and fighter. Images of blood and war acquire positive meanings, as they embody the culture developing over the centuries and creative thought that overcomes the gray routine. Bryusov sees the city as the lord of the earth, the creator and collector of culture, which at the same time threatens people with death. Reflecting on the contradictions in understanding the culture of the coming era, the poet foresees a catastrophe ("two hordes of enemies" ^{[14, pp. 259-266]}, however, it is the confrontation that drives progress and elevates civilization to the next stage of development.

A representative of the poetry of the Silver Age, V. Bryusov refers to the artistic embodiment of one of the oldest and legendary cities in the world – Venice, by its nature associated with the mythological archetype "water", symbolizing, on the one hand, the source of all things in the universe; on the other hand, the destruction of existential units – these basic links that form paradigms and connotations. Global floods destroy some forms of life in order to give birth to new ones in the depths of the water. The duality of water is revealed in its status as a kind of Rubicon, bypassing which the Sun warms the world of the dead; in the reception of water-rain as a blessing of life and groundwater associated with primordial chaos; in the symbolism of whirlpools as life difficulties and peaceful life-water; in the interpretation of rivers, swamps, lakes as habitats of spirits; in the use of water in various rituals and rituals; in the designation of the mysterious depths of personality; finally, in the interpretation of water in the composition of wine, revealing the dual nature of the personality of Jesus Christ, the God-man ^{[16, pp. 95-98]}. 

V. Bryusov, referring to the Venetian theme, through the bipolar concept of LIFE/DEATH, the poles of which are antinomic and ambivalent at the same time, complements bright and definite touches to his linguistic and artistic picture of the world. In the poems "Venice" and "Back in Venice", the poet continues to assert the idea of conjugacy, interdependence, and the organicity of life and death. The oxymoronic expression given by Bryusov in the first couplet of the poem "Venice" ^{[14, pp. 351-352]}, combining incompatible "convex-beautiful forms" and "dust", allows us to imagine LIFE and DEATH as a kind of conglomerate, the internal dynamics of which ensures the cyclical development of everything existing, renewal, the emergence of new civilizational stages of evolution, the triumph of the spiritual principle above the material. The representatives of the poles of the concept of LIFE/DEATH create parallel motifs, the meaning of which is understandable only in terms of their interdependent consideration from the point of view of the conceptual sphere ("in the forms of convex-beautiful", "dust", "soul lived", "black bodies", "holy Lion", "life", "man", "palaces", "trace", "former audacity and power", "death") ^{[14, p. 351]}. For Bryusov, death is the basis for the appearance of life in its various forms. The pathos of glorifying man in the poem proclaims the eternity of the spiritual, one of the carriers of which is the creative impulse.

The concept of LIFE / DEATH, realized through the image of a lyrical hero, an "alien" who finds himself in a city and feels himself in a special world, plays a text-forming role and demonstrates the hero in development: he learns himself through contact with the past, living in the present.

In the poem "Back in Venice" ^{[14, pp. 529-530]}, the oxymoronic formulas "magnificent ashes", "immortal ashes", included in the connotative structure of the concept of LIFE/DEATH, creating a ring composition, are elevated to the principle of creating Venice, following the idea of "synthesis of cultures" [18. p. 200]. The image of the "ruins of the Campanile" captures the concept of the rebirth of a strong harmonious personality – a mode of ideas from the period of antiquity and the Renaissance, attracting Bryusov's interest. The "Ruins of the Campanile" become a signature that captures the cultural context as a creative synthesis involving interpenetration and mutual influence, connecting immortal artistic creativity with life ^{[19, p. 352]}.

It is no coincidence that one of V. Bryusov's favorite poets was Dante, whose work, according to Bryusov, was distinguished by depth of conception, psychologism, and mastery of presentation. In the poem "Dante" Bryusov confesses his reverence for Dante ("He captivated my imagination for a long time//A gloomy image from distant years, // Reflections of lonely incarnation.")  ^{[14, p. 154]}, which became a standard for the poet in assessing the phenomena of the past and present.

In the poem "Dante in Venice" ^{[14, p. 155]}, the images of the Italian poet of the Middle Ages and the mythical city on the water, correlating with the cultural and historical context, act as frames of the concept of LIFE/DEATH, thanks to which the poet effectively combines three time layers – the past, present and future. It was Venice, according to the myth known in literature about its birth from the waters of the sea, like an ancient goddess, that became a portal that allows you to simultaneously see the disappeared, existing and destined. The hero's encounter with the past, represented by the great Dante, is psychologically conditioned by the landscape: "canals, like huge paths"beckoned to eternity", "shadows", "marvelous strict pillars", "a series of animated ghostly buildings" – "an impossible miracle". An adherent of descriptive poetry, Bryusov, in the spirit of symbolism, depicts an urban landscape, monumental and majestic from the point of view of architecture, immanently mystically mysterious. The poet does not specify a specific day of the event, but calls the time "evening hour". Temporal abstraction, the image of the moon associated with the motives of life and death, which are part of the frame structure of the bipolar concept of LIFE/DEATH, which is a sign of the combination of temporal planes, participates in the organization of the discourse of the eternity of life.

The image of Dante, "an undead face, but enlightened and passionate. // Ageless – not a boy, not an old man", is the messenger of eternity, the prototype of the future. In the image of Dante, presented by the author in contrast with the crowd, vulgar, down-to-earth, mired in debauchery, there is a vertical organization of space: Dante Alighieri towers above the crowd, a lonely, Olympian poet who refracts the force field of history, he believes in the greatness of people and foresees other people in the distance of time, "longs for the resurrection of man and humanity" ^{[20, p. 50]}. Thus, the concept of LIFE /DEATH used by Bryusov allows, by connecting time layers, to show an extraordinary personality endowed by the author with the mission of a guide to Eternity, to see the present in a single plane, simultaneously with the past and rush into the future, while remembering the impermanence of the material and the eternity of the spiritual.

The concept of LIFE /DEATH becomes necessary for V. Bryusov to create apocalyptic motifs that became the reception of the dramatic events of the eve of the twentieth century, which were perceived by many as fatal. Despite the well-known victory of God and the salvation of mankind in the apocalypse, people have always been afraid of possible trials and disasters. In the poem "The Horse is Pale" ^{[14, pp. 442-444]}, a character personifying Death from the Revelation of John the Theologian is presented. Chaos is an omen of the apocalypse and at the same time a sign of peacemaking. In the work, the "chaos" frame, verbalized and explicated by the "storm" and "crowd" slots, creates a phantasmagoric picture full of disordered, insane, scary. The city street was filled with crowds, fast and eager, "As if they were being pursued by an inescapable fate," there was a "hellish whisper", these were "the souls of ... creatures drunk by the city." The inanimate part of the street is made up of vehicles, signs, high-rise buildings, "chained moons" that shed "merciless light." Both elements merge into one, creating a transcendental effect that anticipates the inevitability of future events.

The appearance of the "fiery horseman" creates another chaos – a storm that overshadowed the chaos of everyday, familiar, household ("alien, not consonant stomp", "horse with fire in his eyes", "scroll", "Death", "Bright stripes ... the firmament flared up"), created from the feelings of eyewitnesses of the pale horse. Bryusov materializes an internal storm through actions and exclamations: people, seized with horror, "fell on the pavement, fought", "in great horror, hiding their faces, ... cried out." By the nature of the perception of the vision, the horror of the crowd is contrasted with the delight of "a woman from the halls of fun and madness" – symbols of venality and incorruptibility, which "they understood the true power and greatness of the horseman, in whose coming they saw a "dream" of salvation, deliverance from the hardships and sufferings of earthly life" ^{[21, p. 71]}. The picture is completed by a sudden return to the usual chaos of existence. "The Tempest", forming connotations, embodies physical, spiritual and spontaneous factors and introduces the actions of the crowd and the rider on horseback into a single artistic picture, saturated with biblical allusions and having acquired a Universal sound. The author solves the dilemma of the relationship between life and death in an optimistic way: speaking about the impermanence of being, the poet asserts the eternity of life both in the theological sense and in the empirical one. At the same time, the oxymoronic "Woe! God is with us!" reflects the great love of people for life and the will to it. Bruce's mystical knowledge of the world, his thirst for the infinite, the restless chaos of contradiction of "searching, unsatisfied thought" contained in it are embodied here ^{[20, p. 56]} The instantaneous metamorphosis of the Universal Tornado of feelings and emotions of people into everyday chaos demonstrates the continuity, cyclicity of life, its constant renewal, based on the law of balance of the world of being and the universe.

Bryusov's idea of harmony, coupled with the concept of conciliarity, is manifested in the poet's interest in ancient and medieval genres on biblical themes. One of the vectors of the thematic directions of Bryusov's lyrics is the culture of Germany of the XVI century, marked by the flourishing of engraving art. In the ekphrasis "Dances of death. German engraving of the XVI century" ^{[22, pp. 356-357]} reflects the iconographic motifs of the master of engravings G. Holbein. The key defining the structure of the poem, the main motives, the system of images, the idea and pathos, is the frame "death".

The main motif is the duality, embodied in the composition of the work as a whole and within its fragments: each stanza is dedicated to a specific character (peasant, lover, nun, baby, king), verbalized in the form of a monologue-the appeal of Death to the hero, followed by a call to dance. The repetition of the "dance" parts, forming a kind of composition, creates a refrain that includes verbs with the meaning of circular motion ("wrap up", "wrap up"), with the semantics of hugging ("hug", "hug", "hug") – the visual effect of the dance of death is realized. Semantically polarized lexemes: "God" – "Satan"; "black cassock", "blueberry" – "chernets"; "wedding", "under the crown" – "grave", "I will save you from life"; "hell" – "friend", "beloved", "dancing fun"; "Death" – "dance" – expresses the idea of equality of all before death and the idea of conciliarity, which is a basic component of the spiritual culture and mentality of the Russian people.

The motive of the path, movement, associated with the demands of the poet's personality, eager for new knowledge and discoveries, became very significant for Bryusov. In fact, Bryusov's poetry, as well as his life and work, demonstrates the path of a scientist, a demiurge of a new socio-cultural reality, a guide to the future, a fighter. In the concept of LIFE/DEATH, which is the focus of the poetic embodiment of the idea of movement, the pole "life" dominates over time. In the system of images of Bryusov's lyrics, the image of light is affirmed in its various connotations: fire, star, flame, etc.

In the poem "Street Rally" ^{[14, pp. 430-431]}, with the help of representatives of the image of light ("torches", "not dying fire", "glow", "in flames", "fire"), verbs with the meaning of glow, gorenje ("flare up", "light up"), as well lexemes with negative, destructive semantics ("black bat", "bitterness", "enmity", "sacrifice", "last moment", "terrible dance", "darkness") reveal Bryusov's concept of renewal of life, the birth of another reality through destruction, the destruction of the former reality, stagnant, gray and false: "But out of the fallen darkness / / Out of the ashes of the general fire / / You will build a new world – not you."

Speaking about a new man, strong-willed and strong-willed, the poet turns to the theme of the Vikings. The poem "To the King of the North Pole" celebrates the triumph of life over death, which retreated before the fearlessness, endurance and will of people. According to Bryusov, it is the "barbaric" component inherent in Russian culture and constituting its uniqueness that can become a promise for the appearance of a person who will transform the world and breathe into it an active, creative life. In contrast to the biblical apocalypse, according to which Christ stands up to fight the Antichrist, Bryusov's eschatology is based on faith in man, in his inexhaustible powers and limitless possibilities.

Thus, concepts are linguistic units, each of which has a structure of knowledge that appeared in the process of human activity and cognition of the world, refracted and categorized by his consciousness. The cognitive models contained in the mentality of the Russian person, embodied in the concepts of LIFE and DEATH, are the basic ones in the work of V.Y. Bryusov. The concepts of "life" and "death" are revealed through primary meanings, figurative meanings and are represented in the author's connotations. Their specificity lies in the fact that they organize an integral phenomenon: being closely, inextricably intertwined, independent concepts are explained through opposition to each other and through the establishment of a causal relationship between them. The explication of the associative-connotative component of the contents of the concepts of LIFE and DEATH, their culturally and religiously conditioned unity are laid down at the ideological level of Bryusov's philosophical discourse and state the fact of the formation of a bipolar concept of LIFE/DEATH, the unity of which is determined by the intersection of the frame networks of its poles.

The use of the concept of LIFE/DEATH allows the poet to express his ideological and aesthetic position: through the organic interweaving of these lexical units, the end-to–end motive of Bryusov's poetry is designated - the motive of duality, which became the source of the motives of loneliness, despair, chaos, apocalypse, movement, life affirmation, while reflecting the intentionally motivated modalization of Bryusov's creativity, the oppositional discourse, the problems of which are the search for moral and spiritual foundations, the meaning of human existence, life and death, love, the eternity of life, the future of civilization.

The concept of LIFE/DEATH is a text-forming tool, creates the plot and composition of Bryusov's poetic works, characterized by a special organization of space-time relations, the inclusion of reminiscences and allusions correlated with the Bible and myth-making.

As a visual and expressive means, explicated at the lexical level, the concept of LIFE/DEATH generates vital and mortal associative connotative meanings. It is important to note the expansion of the thesaurus of Bryusov's poetry with lexemes with positive semantics. The phenomenon of the bipolar concept of LIFE/DEATH forms the idiostyle of V.Y. Bryusov, which is a way of embodying the poet's idiolect personality, and allows us to comprehend his linguistic picture of the world, multifaceted, dynamic and evolving. Fascinated by the mystery of life and death, Bryusov, in search of the meaning of life and truth, goes back from decadent decadence to faith in the boundless possibilities of man, to the assertion of the immortality of creativity, art, historical achievements.

As a result of the research, the prospect of a multifaceted study of the work of V.Ya. Bryusov and other poets from the point of view of cognitive linguistics, namely through the conceptual sphere, opened up.