Linguaculturological Features of the Images of the Celestial World in the Russian Poetry of the 1990’s

Modern philology studies language at the junction of different directions, e.g. hermeneutics and cultural studies, cognitive linguistics and literary criticism, linguaculturology and textology, etc. As a rule, combined methods provide the most interesting results. The article describes the images of the sky / heaven in the Russian poetry of the late XX century, the period of Russian history known as “the dashing nineties”. Contemporary poets seemed to have a very peculiar perception of that period. Their vision of traditional mythological and cultural symbols differed from commonly accepted interpretations. They described Russia as a dead woman or as a man at a crossroads, while the sky was a lost paradise that retained the peace and tranquility that are not to be found on the earth any more. The gap between heaven and earth is shown by the chaos of birdcalls, machinery noise, and nuclear clouds. Heaven and earth are connected by the World Tree, which unites the macroand microcosm. Man seeks balance and harmony but cannot find them. In the 1990’s, mankind was repeating the stage it had passed in the early XX century, when cherry orchards gave place to railways, and the old world order was coming to an end. In such periods, people do not look at the sky for solace; they mind their own step and see heaven reflected in the rails. The poetry of the 1990’s is filled with deep symbolism. The present analysis revealed several image clusters of the sky: mythological, religious, culturological, philosophical (eschatological), scientific and technological, and folklore. These clusters are interconnected and complement each other.