THE WORLD OF IMAGES IN SANTTU KARHU’S POETRY

The paper analyzes the works of a well-known poet and rock musician S. Karhu, who writes in the Karelian language. The aim of the study is to highlight the author’s artistic system of images. The following tasks were set for the study: to formulate the poet’s original concept, to scrutinize and comment on the images in Karhu’s lyrics. The object is verses from the first and so far only volume. The subject of the study is the specific ethnic traits of Karhu’s poetry, as seen in the system of images. Literary-historical and comparative methods were used in the analysis. The scientific novelty is in the absence of similar studies on the poet’s works. Systemic analysis of the ethnic sources, the evolution and genre choices of the Karelian language literature associated with the changing artistic consciousness are coming to the foreground in this time of global change, when preserving the people’s cultural heritage is especially important. The poet’s personal background has brought him into the sphere of artistic creativity, enabled him to verbalize the world of ethnic life that had been opened up to him. The article points out some specific features of the world of images, language and culture of the Karelian people. Karelian literature shows a tendency to use folklore heritage. The transformation of folk poetic symbolic images is arguably the most characteristic trait of folklorism in contemporary Karelian-language poetry, where folk poetry symbols tend to be equaled with the image of the native land. Karhu’s philosophical verses increasingly pose and confidently resolve the questions of good and evil, happiness and pain, life and death. It is essential for him that the character retains the folklore origins, for he deems it to be the spiritual source of modernity.