Strong Position of Song Lyrical Text in the Context of Classical Literary Image: “Wet Shine of Our Eyes” by Alexander Bashlachev

The article examines the strong position of the song lyric text, its fi rst verse, in the context of an image from classical literature. And although the problem of the opening line of a poem as the center of meanings of the entire text following it, as a formula that sets certain characteristics of it according to a number of parameters, was posed more than half a century ago, nevertheless, research appeals to this position seem rather special and random. Meanwhile, even the most superfi cial observations of lyrics show that the fi rst verse often forms a pre-understanding of the subsequent text, becoming a fully striking formula of the entire poem in semantic terms. To an even greater extent, this kind of emphasis is inherent in the opening line in song lyrics; this is due to its sounding nature, because the existence of a sounding text in time does not imply a rearrangement of segments: what should be at the beginning will be exactly at the beginning, therefore, it will aff ect the listener, forming a pre-understanding of the subsequent text. And since the semantic contextuality of the fi rst verse can signifi cantly infl uence the meanings of the rest of the text, external contexts that can be connected to the initial stress formula of the lyrical text are extremely important in the formation of such pre-understanding. The article examines the fi rst verse of Alexander Bashlachev’s song “The Wet Shine of Our Eyes...” The song is traditionally named after this fi rst line, which uniquely forms the subjective structure of the text that follows it and explicates some important meanings for the song. A textbook image from Leo Tolstoy’s novel “Resurrection” is taken as a context for Bashlachev’s stress formula, “black, like wet currants, eyes” of the main character. As a result, a conclusion is made about the semantic enrichment of the fi rst verse of Bashlachev’s song, and, consequently, the entire text of the song through the meanings of Tolstoy’s image. And in addition, it is shown how Tolstoy’s text is enriched in semantic terms through contextual contact with Bashlachev’s image.