Oriental motifs in N. Teffi’s poetry collection “Shamram: song of the East”

The subject of the authors’ reflection is the image of the Muslim East in the emigrant poetry of Nadezhda Teffi. The analysis revealed the semantic structure of the Oriental motif and the ways of its linguistic representation. A detailed analysis of oriental themes in Teffi’s lyrics is presented in the article. This part of the writer’s creative work has not been introduced into scientific circulation. Moreover, it has not been sufficiently discussed in criticism and still remains little known. The lexical material was extracted on the basis of the analysis of poems included in “Shamram: Songs of the East” by Teffi (Berlin 1923). All contexts containing direct nominations of oriental images and motifs were used as the research material. Analyzing the content and various interpretations of oriental themes, the authors of the article considered the nature of the literary text, its meaning and connotations from both linguistic and literary points of view. The methodology of the work is rooted in the theory of a systemic holistic approach, which made it possible to consider individual poems of Teffi as an example of oriental poetry with pronounced oriental imagery. Comparative-historical, biographical, structural and formal methods were used. The multifaceted study of the image of the East in Teffi’s lyrics revealed a close connection with universal categories that shape not only a person’s psychological sphere, but, more importantly, the spiritual domain. As a result, the relationship between the universal and the individual divulged the nature of the emigrant period of Teffi’s work, largely determined by the tragedy of exile and the loss of the motherland.