“The prophet” by A. S. Pushkin (1826) and “The prophet” by M. Yu. Lermontov (1841): a comparative semantics of the motifs

The article reconstructs the creative history of the same name poems by A. S. Pushkin and M. Yu. Lermontov. M. Yu. Lermontov's poem “Prophet” (1841) is considered as dialogical in relation to Pushkin's “Prophet” (1826). By comparing draft and final versions of the poems, the semantic spectrum of the prophetic motif, common both o Pushkin and to Lermontov, is determined. The study of the creative work is used as an approch for understanding it. A special attention is paid to an eschatological motif openly stated in the draft of “The Prophet” by Pushkin, going into subtext in the clean copy, but remaining paramount in the aspect of the work's etiology and its rapprochement with Lermontov's poem “The Prophet”. The features of Pushkin's and Lermontov's poetics are revealed. Pushkin emphasizes a single action associated with the idea of transforming a person into a prophet and developing in a single spatial point equal to the universe. Lermontov's text is multi-event, that is bearing the prophetic word to people, the rejection by a vicious community, going to the desert, a harmonious stay in nature. It is noted that with a visible difference in the poetics of texts, the common stable and isomorphic to the prophetic motif remain the eschatological motif, the motif of transformation, the motif of carrying the word of God, the motif of paradisal being.