WORD AND IMAGE IN K. BATYUSHKOV’S ELEGY ‘TAVRIDA’

The connection between a word and an image in Batyushkov's elegy ‘Tavrida' is examined in this article. The structural-semantic analysis was carried out. Not only the peculiarity of poetic word use is investigated but the motivation of the word use provided by cultural-aesthetic context of the last quarter of the 18th century till the beginning of the 19th century. Several compositional centres were found in the text. Each centre has its own lexical-semantic field. The artistic semantics of the text as a unit is determined by interaction of the fields mentioned above. ‘Palmira Severa‘ and ‘Tavrida‘ are the compositional centres in the first part of the elegy. They form the system of two-elements lexical-semantic oppositions which are connected with the Rousseau‘s philosophy. ‘Me’ and ‘you‘ — the lyric subject and the object of his love — are the compositional centres in the second part (‘love part‘) of the elegy. The vocabulary used here reflects the relationships between the subject and the object. This vocabulary has a certain connection with the cultural-ideological ideas of the epoch.