"Secrets" of mastery: the sound semantics of the poetic images of Varlam Shalamov

The article presents the analysis of the poem "Crystal" as the final and the most significant one in the works of V. T. Shalamov. The author explores the sound and semantic nature of poetic imagery. The proposed analysis is based on the author's theoretical reflections on the role of sound repetitions, is supported by biographical, ideological, philosophical and religious factors, and is correlated with the semiotic concepts, the modernist grammatology (in the aspect of a virtual debate), as well as with the theory of "probabilistic" language. As an experiment, one of the poems by B. L. Pasternak is analyzed as well.