I. Melamed’s poem “Snow soils the dark, depresses vision”: a dialog with the prototext (A. Pushkin’s “I loved you; and perhaps I love you still...”)

The article offers a structural-semantic analysis and interpretation of Igor Melamed’s poem “Snow soils the dark, depresses the vision”. The analysis embraces all the levels of poetic speech, from rhythmical to compositional. An analogy is drawn between the text analyzed and Pushkin’s poem “I Loved You; and Perhaps I Love You Still.”, a relationship with which is shown to be built on the principle of “attraction-repulsion”. A practical attention is paid to the functionality of the quotational borrowings from the parcellated Pushkin’s text. The compositional-contentual appropriateness of the intertextems, including the epigraph, is clarified, and the facts of their resemantization are commented upon. A special attention is given to the temporal variations of the verb “to love”, in particular, their semantic divergences in the texts compared. Some traditional metaphorical comparisons (cold-death, snowstorm-chaos, sleep-death) and motifs (the locus “by the window”, awakening, coming back) are revealed, among them, genric ones (lullaby, consolation). Receptive allusions, connotations and associations found in the poem are pointed out. The usage of an ellipsis as a repeated stylistic figure is studied. Wherever necessary, some stylistic contexts are used (A. Pushkin, A. Fet), in particular, some poetic appeal to Pushkin’s poem at hand by J. Brodsky. In the end of the article the summation of our “reading” of I. Melamed’s poem is made and certain conclusions are drawn as to the character and degree of the contentual participation of the prototext in the lyrical hero’s making a vital resolution, about the poet’s polemical attitude to the postmodern game with the classical literary heritage.