The poem “The wild fire” by N. Gumilev: formation of poetics of adamism

The article is concerned with the structural-semantic organization of the poem “The Wild Fire” (1909) by N. Gumilev. The poem was included into the composition of his third book ofpoems “Pearls” (1910). Turning from the symbolist perception of the world towards new poetics, the subsequently formed conceptual paradigm of acmeistic world vision and implemented ideologeme of adamism is emerging in N. Gumilev’s creative mind during creation of this poetry collection. The adamistic meaning of the poem is formed by the narrative representation of disastrous and rampant natural disasters. The fire in the African forest gets a status of an apocalyptic catastrophe because it destroys hierarchically organized forms of life, simultaneously reproducing the evolutionary logic of the living and of the ontological process of creation of allbeings: from the flora through the fauna to a human being. The ideologeme of the human “self” involvement into the nature-prehistoric rhythms of the existential movement of the universe is actualized in the structure of this text. The primacy of the human immersion in an apocalyptic wildfire, marked by death, becomes a sign of the adamistic “return” to the created primeval essence of the world. Coming as the first death of the natural disaster, a human being is mortally involved into a common process of existence. Therefore, poetics of adamism in “The Wild Fire” is represented implicitly and is not so much concerned with the biblical meaning of Adam as with the idea of creaturely cognation of a man and nature. Revelation of primordial essence of the human “self” in the event of the catastrophic death marks the initial stage of the adamistic concept formation in N. Gumilev’s poetry.