Karelian motives and folklore elements in R. Rozhdestvenskii lyrics

The theme of Karelia takes an important place in the lyrics of R.I. Rozhdestvenskii. Karelia was a poetical homeland of the world famous lyric poet of the second half of the ХХ century. The image of Karelian land in the poetry of “Orpheus of the Soviet era” is examined with the help of some poems written in the early 1970’s. The poems were included into the collection “The Return”. For the first time, the image of Karelian land is analyzed in close connection with the folk genre, stylistic, and dialect elements penetrating into the structure and content of the lyrical works by R. Rozhdestvenskii. Metaphors, comparisons, hyperboles, repetitions, syntactic parallelism, and other lexical and grammatical features of lyrical texts are analyzed. The studied lexical and grammatical features are, on the one hand, in close connection with poetics of lyrical and epic folk poetry, on the other hand, are an integral feature of the idiostyle of R. Rozhdestvenkii. Karelia is presented as a place-keeper of folklore traditions. R. Rozhdestvenskii’s poetry of the early 1970’s is rich with Karelian motives and continues the best traditions of the folk songs.