THESAURUS OF DEATH IN NIKOLAY GUMILYOV'S LYRICS
This paper is concerned with the thesaurus of death in Nikolay Gumilyov' lyrics: it presents a classification of mortal plots and motives and distinguishes three groups: “marine”, thanatology, “ballad" thanatology and autothanatology. In “marine” thanatology, the motives of a ghost-ship, sailing on a ghost-ship, corpse captains etc. are pointed out. The ballad thanatology consists of the following motives and plots: a mysterious travel to the other world, a virgin's death, a victim-groom, the lord bringing death etc. Gumilyov's autothanatology includes the following aspects: the death of a poet, the character's death, a lover's death and creating the image of the afterworld. The variety of the presented classification is determined by the features of the poet's creative thinking: the first group is thematic, the second is distinguished by genre sign, the third shows the features of a lyric narrative. The article highlights a contrast between the poet's zest for life and his experience of life tragedy, represented in poems describing his death/ lyric character's death.