Boundary, Border, and Line in Alexander Tvardovsky’s Poetry

The article offers a contextual analysis of the themes of boundary, border, and line in the A.T. Tvardovsky’s lyrics and poems. The peculiarities of the writer’s work with the poetic word show that the widespread idea of the “simplicity” of his language is deceptive. Adhering mainly to the poetics of direct utterance, Tvardovsky maximizes the range of contextual meanings of words, realizing the effect of multilayered meanings. As a result, the concept of border in his poetic world goes far beyond spatial meanings into temporal and axiological spheres. The semantic diversity of the concept’s implementation turns out to be wider in Tvardovsky than on average in the Russian linguistic picture of the world, reflecting mainly the meanings of “separation”, “lack of exit”, “reaching the limit”, “distancing”, “isolation”. Contrary to the expectations associated with the traditional inclusion of Tvardovsky in the concept of the Smolensk Poetic School, the border in Tvardovsky’s poetics does not become one of the characteristics of a local text, neither Smolensky nor any other. In addition, there is an evolution of the image of the border in his poetry. In his early work, the border is synonymous with the boundary and is closely connected with the earth. In wartime, it tends to the frontier and becomes a measure of combat events. In the post-war period, its spatial significance decreased, the border was actively metaphorized and characterized by abstract concepts of glory, freedom, and the afterlife. In the late lyrics, the border is transformed into a line as a measure of time and an ethical assessment of events.