The system of spatial motifs and images in contemporary Chelyabinsk's poetry

Every year contemporary literary studies tend to increase the importance of the interpretational analysis of a particular space, identifying its semantic and figurative content. Many scholars (M.M. Bakhtin, Yu.M. Lotman, V.N. Toporov, V.E. Khalizev and others) have repeatedly emphasized that literature is an art form most closely associated with spatial categories. The common semantic field for contemporary poetry of Chelyabinsk is the concentration of local atmosphere transmission through spatial motifs and images, their semantic unity and coherence of main aspects of the description of a city and region (such as ecology, climate, flora, fauna, landscape, architecture, marginal city location). This article presents an analysis of the system of spatial motifs and images of modern poetry of Chelyabinsk. The most frequent aspects of locus description of the city and the region are revealed. The continuity and development of various spatial models in three generations of contemporary poetry of Chelyabinsk is demonstrated. Nowadays the prevailing spatial model in the poetry of Chelyabinsk is the theme of the city manifested in the abundance of toponyms and urban imagery. In the poetry of the older generation, the space of Chelyabinsk is more often depicted in gray, dark tones, evoking a sense of melancholy and hopelessness. The theme of the nature in the South Ural becomes a common semantic field for those older Chelyabinsk poets who carry on with the traditions of classical and Soviet poetry (for example, N.I. Godina, N.A. Yagodintseva). The intersection point of the middle generation with the older authors is the perception and representation of urban space as a provincial one: the city is extremely narrowed, localized by certain toponyms associated with the authors’ geobiography. A. Samoilov and J. Grants adopt the aesthetics of minimalism and conceptualism when describing the Chelyabinsk space. The cosmopolitan lyric subject moving in the intertextual space that combines many local cultural texts becomes relevant for modern Chelyabinsk poets of the younger generation. Thus, the Chelyabinsk locus appears to be only one of the many places where the lyric character lives.