Space-time continuum of the Bessarabian poem by A. S. Pushkin

The article attempts to identify the significant components of the chronotopical continuum of the poem “The Gypsies” based on the interpretation of the chronotope as a phenomenon of M. Bakhtin’s historical poetics. Bessarabia, represented by the poet in various aspects (the territory of the “long battle,” the country of “Russian glory,” the habitat of the “infant” people, the keeper of the poetic traditions steeped in the name of Ovid, the place of A. Pushkin’s own involuntary stay) acts as the dominant real-geographical, historical epoch-making and actually poetic chronotope of the poem. The examined space-time continuum of the work includes the distinctive topoi and loci that determine both the nomadic life of the gypsy camp in general and the individual fates of the characters in particular. The plot-forming role of Aleko’s “wanderings” is described as a process of searching, gaining and, as a result, a loss of himself. The hero’s rejection of civilization predetermined his moral death: his personality turned out to be unable to survive in the natural world outside the cultural and moral forms. Ultimately, the complexly structured constitutive Bessarabian continuum was dominated by the author's chronotope with his pessimistic idea of inevitable fate, which, in turn, was conditioned by the romantic model of the world, which was established in the philosophical and artistic consciousness of the Pushkin era.