Light-shadow “drawing” in the poetry of I.B. Klishbiev

The proposed article focuses on the question of the potential of semantic patterns contained in the chiaroscuro imagery of a literary work. Based on the material of subscript translations of poems by the little-known author of Adyghe literature I. Klishbiev, various variations of combinations of images of darkness and light are investigated, their conceptuality is revealed. The author traces the movement from the visual contrast of images of darkness and light at the early stage of creativity to the increase of psychological expressiveness and their symbolization in the future. At the same time, the meanings of darkness and light are concretized from the point of view of general cultural connotations, in the context of ethnic history and mythopoetics, but mainly in the context of the artist’s biography. I. Klishbiev’s poetry is saturated with images of light, their interpretation reveals a number of individual aspects. Thus, light images are revealed in the poems of I. Klishbiev through a close connection with sound images. In this case, the sound can act as a characteristic of light, or be located with it in the same figurative and semantic series. The activity of darkness, despite the fact that its variations in the case under consideration are less developed, and the values are less individualized, determines the ideological subtext of the development of light images. The most expressive and informative in terms of reflecting the spiritual evolutions captured in the poet’s biography is the image of a powerless light. Impotent, non-reflecting, “sounding”, but “inaudible” light appears in works that can presumably be attributed to the early period of creativity; starting from generalized meanings, it eventually transforms into a stable symbol of the the Klishbiev’s depicted world, and more broadly - as a symbol of the poet’s own fate.