Semantics of the image of the bee in Valery Pereleshin’s lyrics: the book of poems On the Way
- DOI
- 10.5922/pikbfu-2024-2-6
- Pages
- 68-73
Abstract
The ‘eastern branch’ of Russian émigré literature has received less scholarly attention than the works of authors who headed for the West in the aftermath of the 1917 revolution, making the position of the former within 20th-century Russian poetry a relevant research question. Valery Pereleshin is one of the prominent figures in the Chinese segment of Russian émigré literature. This article examines the metaphorical image of the bee, which has a crucial role in the poetics of Pereleshin’s book of poems On the Way (1937). The study focuses on three poems where this image is central. Analysing the image of the bee in the context of literary tradition and mythological connotations suggests that the bee is metaphorically related to the persona. This image embodies Pereleshin’s vision of the poet’s role and the nature of poetic work: the spiritual endeavours of a wordsmith should be accompanied by hard work, self-sacrifice and, ultimately, submission to the Higher Will.