Silentium by Ella Krylova: (non)Buddhist silence

Statement of the problem. The article provides a comparative analysis of the eponymous, but essentially different poems by F. Tyutchev, O. Mandelstam, and E. Krylova. The purpose of the article is to analyze the specifics of the perception of Buddhist epistemological and ontological concepts in Ella Krylova’s poetry, as well as the analysis of the intertextual dialogue of her poem Silentium with works of similar titles by Tyutchev and Mandelstam. Methodology (materials and methods). The article, written as part of a large study on the ‘Buddhist text’ of modern Russian literature, uses methods of hermeneutical, intertextual, and comparative analysis. Review of the scientific literature on the problem. The possibility of analyzing Krylova’s poem in a selected perspective is ensured by the works of V. Toporov, R. Bekmetov, T. Bernyukevich, and P. Alekseev. Research results. It is revealed that although each of the analyzed works has the title ‘Silentium’ and although certain intertextual connections are found between them, they are different at the level of problematics. Krylova’s Silentium, claiming to be a new statement based on the Buddhist view about the source, character, process and limit of literary creativity, nevertheless does not follow this view: unlike Buddhism, which speaks about the illusory nature of reality and the possibility of only intuitive cognition of it, the poet asserts the superiority of the reality of living beings over their verbal representation.