COLOR IMAGES IN ALEXANDER KUSHNER`S POETRY

Abstract

In the present article poetic analysis of color designations in A. Kushner`s work is carried out. He is a life poet, and this love of life is manifested in color images in his poetry. This article analyzes color naming in poetry to identify their role, and basic or additional elements in creating text semantics. On the basis of his three collections of poems – “Tauride Garden” (1984), “Earth's Gravity” (2015) and “Autumn Theater” (2020) – a frequency dictionary of color names was prepared, and semantic analysis of three frequently used color names has been compiled. Lexical combinations with color elements were collected using software package “Hypertext search for satellite words in author's texts”. The study was conducted by using collective, descriptive, comparative and structural analysis methods.

These studies helped to identify frequency of color images in poet's poetic texts and made it possible to identify leading color elements used by poet (white, black, blue, cyan, green, yellow, red and gold), and least ones (gray, orange, pink, azure, turquoise, lilac, lilac, silver, copper and bronze).

Also, work analyses semantics of tricolor and lexical combinations with them in the poetic works to determine colors` thematic features. The analysis of Kushner's tricolor showed that semantics and lexical combinations of blue, green and red colors are similar in images. The functions of main coloristic elements describe living nature (vegetation), inanimate nature (sky, chemical elements) and objective world.

All lexical combinations of three colors form common pairs with word “life”. Thus, we came to the conclusion that A. Kushner conveys love for life through these bright colors.

The results of study will be used to create model for color elements analysis in modern poetic texts. Also, article will be used to create a functional thesaurus of color designations for Alexander Kushner's poetry.