THE POEM “AKTAMAK” BY ISMAIL SEMENOV AS A LITERARY JOURNEY. OLD TURKIC MYTHEMES

Abstract

The article investigates textual embodiment of the idea of travelling in the real and imaginative world. The object of the analysis is the poem “Aktamak” by the Karachai poet Ismail Semenov (1891 – 1981). The poem is the story about the journey, accomplished by the hero-author and his beloved. The meaning of the journey is polysemantic. It is accomplished rather spiritually, but not physically. While travelling, the poet creates his own model of the world and systematizes the objects entering into it. One of the means of systematization is the usage of the Old Turkic mythemes and motives, which were preserved in the collective consciousness and which are functioning in the poem. Many of them present the fragments of the lost integrity of cosmogonical myths about the origin of the earth, space and its parts. Ritual fortune-telling on the shoulder bone determines the space model of the journey and of the world developed by the poet. The second archaic “model” – “Dzher-suu keryuyu” (“journey throughout the world”) contains the meaning and the purpose of the world’s comprehension. It is possible to assert that the Old Turkic mythological imagery becomes structure-forming in the poem.