Kosmologia poety i podróżnika. Językowy i tekstowy obraz słońca, gwiazd i księżyca w poezji Josifa Brodskiego
Cosmology of Poet and Traveller. Linguistic and Textual Worldview of the Sun, Stars and the Moon in Poetry of Joseph Brodsky

Summary/Abstract: The paper is an attempt to analyse selected poems of Joseph Brodsky by employing the semantic frame method. In his poetry, Brodsky presents the linguistic worldview of astral objects such as the Sun, stars and the Moon. He also creates his own unique textual worldview of these objects, which is related to and dependent on the linguistic worldview, using a specific, original and individual language, his own idiolect. The Sun, stars and the Moon map out directions of his journey. They also make a point of reference to provoke reflection on the human being and the surrounding world. Brodsky’s poetic texts contain anthropocentric linguistic and textual worldviews in which the central position is occupied by the human being.The poems are analysed according to contemporary cognitive semantics, where meaning is understood as changing notional structures dependent on their contextual and genre conditions. The connotations also make an important element of meaning, especially in artistic texts; for this reason, the semantic definition of meaning should be an open definition.Brodsky’s poetry also conveys the image of the poet and traveller in different spaces and times which influence his thoughts, feelings and behaviour. His cosmology is highly extensive; it includes not only the universe, the Earth or the sky, but primarily the human being’s spiritual space. The poet’s journey has its signposts: the Sun, stars and the Moon. They are visible in many poems, especially in Christmas poems. Brodsky uses the lexemes Sun, stars and Moon in remarkable ways. His metaphors, ellipses, epithets, similes and many other means of expression create the image of a unique microcosm, the human being, travelling in the macrocosm, which is the world.

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