Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Research in Social Sciences
Year: 2024
DOI:
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Raindrops of Darkness: Mythologies of Apprehension in the Poetry of Nikolay Liliev and John Keats
Dr. Zornitsa Lachezarova
ABSTRACT:
Nikolay Liliev, one of Bulgaria’s late Symbolist poets, is the subject of polarised critical consideration. Earlier critics, such as Atanas Dalchev, argue that Liliev’s poetry is meticulously calculated and refer to its “laboratory” poetic language. Later critical work emphasises the semantic depth of his imagery within the concept of “decadence” and melancholy. Keats’s early critics also challenge the merits of his poetry, before the establishment of his literary status as one of the most prominent Romantics. The affinity towards the dark and the unknown connects Nikolay Liliev’s poetry to John Keats’s work in that they both hold space for the atmosphere of apprehension for the future. Their poems reside within natural realms which reflect this affinity and transform it into an individually mythologised poetic experience. In this paper, the poets’ oeuvres are compared within the framework of a nostalgic foreboding, where the poetic speaker simultaneously experiences a dreamlike state of melancholic contentment with the past and anxieties for a nebulous and menacing future.
keywords: foreboding, imagery, literature, melancholy, poetic