ТЕМАТА ЗА БРЪМБАРА В РУСКАТА ДЕТСКА ЛИТЕРАТУРА
THE THEME OF THE BEETLE IN RUSSIAN CHILDREN’S LITERATURE

Summary/Abstract: The text analyses the semantics of the beetle ("zhuk") in Russian children's poetry. The polysemy of the beetle's image is revealed as determined by both the extra-aesthetic properties of the insect (its different attributes) and the sociocultural and literary conventions where the image at hand is inscribed. The onomatopoeia of the Russian word "zhuk" motivates its thematisation in poems used in Russian language teaching, and the similarity of a beetle to the letter "zh" is used in children's alphabet representations, i.e., the beetle becomes an iconic sign. The relationship of a beetle to the sound and letter evokes the poetic interpretation of the insect as a lover of poetry, a calligrapher, a typographer, a telegraphist, and a reading teacher. The polysemy of the beetle's image is also expressed in its "being gifted" various other professions: shoemaker, watchmaker, lumberjack, or circus artist. Other constant motifs in the beetle-themed poems are light, beauty, and the liberation of the insect from a difficult situation or "prison". The images of imprisonment and pinning introduce children's poetry to a wider literary context, leading to works that relate the herbarised insect to the nailed Jesus (V. Visotsky and A. Kabanov).The analysis of the poetic material displays the bringing together of beetle and man (child) through ethical or aesthetic motivation (characteristic of the pedagogical discourse in children's poetry), as well as the overcoming of the fear of the insect and its otherness. In Soviet culture the interpretation of the theme of the beetle contains ideologemes such as soldiers' mutual assistance or re-education of the harmful insects (instead of their extermination).

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