The semantic potential of the lexeme ‘organ’ in Russian poetry: one’s оwn and someone else’s
- DOI
- 10.5922/2225-5346-2026-2-4
- Pages
- 75-95
Abstract
The potentially inexhaustible semantic potential of the word, reflected in the full range of its conventional meanings and individual authorial reinterpretations as manifested in literary discourse, has repeatedly attracted philological attention. One such polycode sign, distinguished by a broad semantic spectrum and complex syntagmatic behaviour, is the word ‘organ’. This article analyses the literal and figurative uses, as well as the metaphorical transformations, of the lexeme ‘organ’ in Russian literature over approximately one and a half centuries of its development. The main material for linguapoetic analysis consists of literary contexts containing the lexeme ‘organ’, recorded in the National Corpus of the Russian Language and dating from the 18th century to the 20th century. The study aims to identify the main tendencies in the figurative and symbolic use of the word ‘organ’, as well as its individual authorial reinterpretation by poets representing successive literary movements, including the Baroque, Classicism, Sentimentalism, and Romanticism. Particular attention is paid to the process by which this long-assimilated Greek borrowing was integrated into lyric poetry and Russian culture as a whole. The analysis leads to the following conclusions. First, in the poetry of the Baroque, Classicist, and Romantic periods, the lexeme ‘organ’ is rarely used in its direct meaning of ‘musical instrument’, appearing mainly in translations and adaptations. In twentieth-century poetry, by contrast, the meaning ‘wind keyboard instrument’ becomes clearly dominant, including in similes, while personifying metaphorical transfers also emerge, such as ‘organ-man’. Second, figurative and symbolic meanings, for example, in metaphorical expressions such as ‘organ of the soul’ or ‘organ of the heart’, become especially productive during the Golden Age, when figurative contexts predominate and reveal the broadest syntagmatic and functional-semantic possibilities of the lexeme organ. These uses enrich its dictionary meaning through multiple semantic extensions and transform its usual valency patterns. Third, the frequency of the lexeme ‘organ’ in Russian poetry correlates closely with the process of assimilation of Western European organ music in Russia, which was particularly intensive during the Baroque, Romantic, and Silver Age periods. Meanings derived from the Psalms and familiar within the Orthodox tradition are adapted and become closely intertwined with ‘foreign’ themes within the semiosphere of Russian culture.