Conceptual potential of anthroponyms in George Gordon Byron’s poetry

CONCEPTUAL POTENTIAL OF ANTHROPONYMS IN GEORGE GORDON BYRON'S POETRY

A superfluous pageant-for, by the Lord Harry!

They'll find where they're going much more than they carry.

Byron's open poetic «attack» on the representatives of the national elite was expressed in the transparency of poetic allusions, assigning to the subject corresponding evaluative and emotional attributes. Political poetry was characterized by caustic wit, which manifested itself in the actualization of the ambiguity of the English word, the famous Byronic play on words, etc.

The axiological, moral and ideological content of anthroponyms in Byron's poetic works is substantiated and reinforced by constellation of different stylistic devices. Important in completing the image of the British aristocracy in terms of morality, behavior, thinking and communication by developing the semantic scope of an anthroponym is the role of poetic detail, imagery textual resources that incorporate explicit or implicit author's subjective observation, emotional response to a particular event, which is the basis of various anthropocentric images of Byron's poetics. There the informational, eventful component harmoniously interacts with the empathic component of the meaning of the artistic image reproduced in the artistic form as a result of empathy and contemplation. The emotional-axiological component of the artistic meaning of an anthroponym rests on certain values ascribed to it by society or by the author. It acquires additional senses, deepens the phenomenon poetically modelled by the author, contributes to the psychological aspect of the context, the emergence of implicit meanings due to its sensualistic perception.

In the poems Lines Addressed To The Rev. J. T. Becher, On His Advising The Author To Mix More With Society, Written After Swimming From Sestos To Abydos and I would I were a careless child the author designs two different vectors of understanding the concept ARISTOCRAT:

- negative, generally named The world, mankind - a world I despise, and specified in the metonimies these cultured lands, metaphoric epithets The cumbrous pomp of Saxon pride, with the following distinguishing atributes: wealth, title - the phantom ofpower, name of splendid sound, a hateful control, the voice of those / Whom rank or chance, whom wealth or power, / Have made, the basic stereotypical behaviors - the touch of servile hands, the slaves that cringe around, mingle in Fashion's full herd, crouch to her leaders, or cringe to her rules, bend to the proud, or applaud the absurd, search for delight in the friendship of fools, that transform the personality into degenerate modern wretch;

- and positive, idealized, where the notion of fame, aristocracy of spirit, devotion to the homeland are at the forefront: fame / Bids me live but to hope for posterity's praise; For the life of a Fox, of a Chatham the death... / Their lives did not end when they yielded their breath; Their glory illurnines the gloom of their grave.

Spiritual dominants of heroism, historical significance of the role of the individual - the subject of poetic image, the lyrical hero-advocate of higher national values - in the structure of anthropocentric images of Byron's poetry contribute to the actualization of the artistic concept NATIONAL HERO. It is manifested by the thematic and compositional lines and artistic details in numerous poetic texts. In the poems Answer To A Beautiful Poem, Entitled `The Common Lot ', Thy Days Are Done, On The Star Of `The Legion Of Honour ', Jephtha's Daughter the poet lays down the general guidelines for understanding the concept of «hero-fighter» - the uniqueness, peculiarity of destiny, deity, greatness of mission, immortality: Some few who ne 'er will be forgot; Thy days are done, thy fame begun; Thy country's strains record / The triumphs of her chosen Son; Thou shalt not taste of death! On The Star Of `The Legion Of Honour'; Let my memory still be the pride, / And forget not I smiled as I died!

The basic cognitive features are the notions of «immortal glory» of the national hero (Some shall exist beyond the grave, Some few who ne 'er will be forgot Shall burst the bondage of the grave; Thy fall, the theme of choral song / From virgin voices pour 'd! honour's laurel ne 'er decay / But bloom in fresh, unfading spring; glory decks the hero's bier, /Or binds his brow), the source of which are his activity, life, destiny, deeds, fight, struggle: The sword, the banner, and the field, his martial worth; The deeds he did, the fields he won, / The freedom he restored! The actional component of the semantics of the image is enhanced, as a rule, by the poetic elements that convey the idea of continuity of generations (Yet nations now unborn will know / The record of his deathless name), the repetitions of the heroism of the past in the present of the nation as a guaranty of its longevity (A bright renown shall he enjoy'd/ By those whose virtues claim reward; Thy name, our charging hosts along, / Shall be the battle-word!), embodied in the metaphors with symbolic components «blood» and «breath»: The generous blood that flow 'd from thee / Disdain 'd to sink beneath: / Within our veins its currents be, / Thy spirit on our breath! (Thy Days Are Done); That the blood of thy child is as pure (Jephtha's Daughter).

The national hero and his deeds serve as a moral guideline of the nation (Awake, my spirit! Think through whom / Thy life-blood tracks its parent lake, / And then strike home!; The land of honourable death / Is here: - up to the field, and give / Away thy breath!). They are metaphorized in the notions of light, glimmering, radiance of the immortal souls: Wild meteor of immortal birth; Souls of slain heroes form'd thy rays; Eternity flash 'd through thy blaze; are embodied in the symbolism of the star: Star of the brave! - whose beam hath shed / Such glory o 'er the quick and dead.

In creating the concept NATIONAL HERO, Byron actively resorts to historical and mythological sources - by introducing corresponding anthroponims into the poetic context, by poetizing them and alluding to a set of moral, ideal, behavioral notions. In this case, the allusive reference to the anthroponym is the incorporation of both positive and negative lessons of history, which generally corresponded to the essence of the romantic worldview, with its special attention to prominent historical phenomena, events and figures, with the intention to find the meaning of history in the awareness of the social significance of the past for the present. In Byron's cycle of poems «Hebrew Melodies» historical motifs become the basis of philosophical and political generalizations of the latest experience of the English people and the peoples of

Europe, their historical destinies. The plot is based on the ideas of the struggle for freedom, the inevitability of the collapse of empires, the national significance of the fate of the individual, the disclosure of the concept of patriotism. Representing the movement of history in a mystical-romantic form, as the fulfillment of the will of God, who destroys tyrants and liberates nations, Byron consciously refers to the biblical motif of God's sign, which foretells the death of monarchs (the poems Vision Of Belshazzar and To Belshazzar), expresses the ideas about the inevitable end of any mortal reining irrespective of its form (Bright is the diadem, boundless the sway, / Or Kingly the death, which awaits us today! (Song Of Saul Before His Last Battle)), the fall of king- dooms and thrones (beheld the decline / Of the rays from the mountain that shone, on thy shrine (On The Day Of Destruction Of Jerusalem By Titus); And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail, / And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal; / And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword, / Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord! (The Destruction Of Sennacherib)). Whereas the death in the name of the liberation of one's own people is the highest honour: Since our Country, our God Oh, my Sire! / Demand that thy Daughter expire; I have won the great battle for thee, / And my Father and Country are free! (the poem Jephtha's Daughter).

In the artistic form, Byron paints two different pictures of human death - the death as a result of God's terrible punishment, to which oppressors and tyrants are doomed (the poem Vision of Belshazzar), and the heroic sacrifice of a hero-fighter full of life- affirming, revolutionary meaning. Let us compare:

Belshazzar's grave is made,

His Kingdom passed away,

He, in the balance weighed,

Is light and worthless clay (Vision Of Belshazzar).

It must be so; 'tis not for self That we so tremble on the brink;

And striving to o 'erleap the gulf,

Yet cling to Being's severing link.

Oh! in that future let us think

To hold each heart the heart that shares,

With them the immortal waters drink,

And soul in soul grow deathless theirs! (If That High Word).

Byron, however, also creates an image of «royal death» - death, worthy of the leaders of the people (Warriors and chiefs! should the shaft of the sword / Pierce me in leading the host of the Lord), on the battlefield, within the rows of his subjects:

Farewell to others, but never we part,

Heir to my Royalty - Son of my heart!

Bright is the diadem, boundless the sway,

Or Kingly the death, which awaits us to-day! (Song Of Saul Before His Last Battle).

The poet had the ability to grasp the social and historical processes syncretically, to discover the prophetic meanings of future in the tempestuous events of the historical past. Written a few months before the famous Battle of Waterloo, the poem The Destruction Of Sennacherib (February 17, 1815) wonderfully reflects the end of the Napoleonic Wars in Europe in the early nineteenth century, and embodies the dualism of the conceptual features «victory - defeat» in the structure of the artistic concept MONARCH as inevitable aspects of the fate of any army and commander.

The poem is based on the opposition of imagery «victory», «glory», «deed» and «defeat», «death», «perishability», «destruction» and actualizes the ancient biblical- historical plot. It undoubtedly implicates the «French» subtext and is a kind of poetic reflection of poet's ambiguous attitude to the personality of Napoleon, to whom in the creative heritage of the great romantic poet there is dedicated a series of poems and numerous allusions and reminiscences.

The figure of Napoleon Bonaparte and the conceptualization of the precedent name of Napoleon in Byron's poetry occupies a special position, is characterized by a high concentration of symbolic meanings and plays a key role in actualizing the cognitive parameters of artistic concepts MONARCH and NATIONAL LEADER / HERO. Dualism in the perception of the personality of Napoleon, ambiguity of the evaluation of his historic role and consequences of his actions to the people of France and the whole Europe by the author also informs the possibility to construe these concepts as correlated in their axiological parameters. Although Byron's most notable poetry on Napoleon was written mainly in 1814-1816, his interest in the figure of the emperor dates back to his university years. The dynamics of the poet's personal attitude to Napoleon, recorded in his epistolary legacy, private texts, memoirs of contemporaries, is the subject of historical and literary studies (Tuite 2020; Clubbe 2008). It is a conceptual projection of poet's individual identification (ch aracteristic mainly for English- language critics) that relies on a kind of obvious parallels in the destiny, similarity of characters, behavioral traits, that Byron tended to ascribe to Napoleon and himself (Clubbe 1997). Instead, domestic philological thought tends to reveal the embodiment of moral, ethical and philosophical concepts, figurative reflection of universal relations and processes in Byron's Napoleonic imagery (Ткаченко 2008: 132), that accumulated general cultural, historical, domestic senses in the multifaceted poetic word due to the interaction of extratextual and intratextual (genre, language, etc.) factors.

The contradictory nature of the poet's attitude to Napoleon is a defining feature of the semantic content of all his poetry of political and civic orientation. Byron's idealization of the figure of Napoleon was determined primarily by the fact that the young Bonaparte was perceived as the embodiment of the French Revolution, the liberation of European nations from the oppression of imperialism, as opposed to colonial expansionist policies of Britain, its dominant economic role in trade and political relations on the continent and in the world.

The ambivalence of Napoleon's image is manifested in author's comprehension of his personality as a prominent figure who dared to challenge the world order, as the individual's desire to realize almost limitless human possibilities and at the same time as the embodiment of the conflict of ambitions for power that led to personal and historical catastrophe, to the loss of the sense of freedom and justice won in the process of the wars for national liberation. The positive qualities of the great general are devalued by his policies of injustice, deception, enslavement, and aggressive imperialist wars. The historicism and national specificity of Byron's poetry, especially in relation to the Napoleonic theme, is manifested in the syncretism of understanding the historical events and phenomena, the recurrence of the past in the present and their close interdependence and interrelations, which, in particular, are explicitly verbalized by the epigraphs to the poem «Ode to Napoleon Bonaparte».

The overarching idea of Byron's Napoleonic cycle is the disproportionate ratio between merits and crimes of the national leader, the conflict between his fate as a defender of freedom and the tyrant. Byron brings forward the general philosophical question: «Whether the vanity and ambition of national leader, as the cause of his downfall and destruction of numerous nations, is just an accidence, a casual coincidence of circumstances, the peculiarity of individual destiny and character or the general pattern inherent in the essence of power itself and the dialectic of relations between the power and the people?»

The versatility of Napoleon's artistic image is based on the opposition of verbal images that actualize the opposite cognitive features (The triumph and the vanity) in the structure of artistic concepts MONARCH: «greatness, state, military power» (usually expressed in the frequent forms of verbal past tense) and «defeat», reinforced by the figurative actional schemes «fall», «disappearance», «dispersal», «melting», by a system of metaphors and epithets of explicit and implicit moral evaluation.

Byron pays special attention to the opposition between a dignified, royal, glorious death and dishonor, renunciation of power, emphasizing that the idea of renunciation of power for a person as great as Napoleon is unacceptable and unworthy, worse than death itself. It is described by the poet in metaphorical terms: Thy late repentance, long despair, / Thou throneless Homicide? The poet deprives his poetic hero of his name (Now thou art a nameless thing...) as signs of personal and historical identification, thus achieving a high degree of generalization, emphasizing that such unworthy behavior of the monarch turns him into nothing (Those Pagod things of sabre sway / With fronts of brass, and feet of clay); levels his previous merits (Nor till thy fall could mortals guess / Ambition's less than littleness!; Dark Spirit! what must be / The madness of thy memory!) and makes the progress of national development and the rise of a new national leader impossible:

If thou hadst died as honour dies,

Some new Napoleon might arise,

To shame the world again -

But who would soar the solar height,

To set in such a starless night? (Ode To Napoleon Bonaparte).

In the context of the Napoleonic cycle the system of semantically and associatively connected symbols, cultural dominants and stereotypes - defined by a number of associatively connected anthroponyms and mythological anthroponyms - plays a leading role in revealing the diverse complex of cognitive features of the artistic concept NATIONAL LEADER. Introduction of the system of anthroponyms into the poetic context, the source of which is European mythology, folklore and history, the actualization of stylistic potentials of intertextuality performs both informational (encyclopedic) and aesthetic & pragmatic functions.

The contextual connotation and associative imagery of each of them makes prominent the specific features of the object of poetic image. For example, the disgraceful defeat of Napoleon and his abdication of the throne is likened to the fall of Lucifer: man nor fiend... hath fall 'n so far; one who would soar the solar height. The figure of the legendary ancient Greek athlete Milon (the IV century BC) actualizes the associations with the concepts «carelessness», «self-confidence» and receptively refers to the Napoleon's defeat in Russian campaign. The personality of Sulla Lucius Cornelius, Roman general and political leader (82-79 BC) and Charles V (1500-1558), emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, and Spanish king Dionysius the Younger (395 -335 BC) serve as an example of the instability of domination and power, the moral choice of the individual and the statesman, specify the need to choose ethical guidelines. The introduction of the name of Washington to the poetic microcontext, the creation of a double comparison (Washington - The Cincinnatus of the West) testifies to the poetic synthesis of chronologically different realities, cultural codes, author's and social worldview priorities for the ideal image of a national leader. The idealization of the image of the national hero and national leader underlies Byron's key concept of Prometheanism as a symbol of service, self-sacrifice, dignified fate, traditionally associated with the images of fire, burning, glow.

Behind each element of Byron's system of poetic anthroponyms in the cycle of poems dedicated to Bonaparte and the epoch of the Napoleonic Wars there is a large- scale picture of historical reality, which is impossible to assess clearly due to the complex dynamics of passions, significance of certain processes and events that neither the author nor his compatriots and ancestors were able to understand. This determines the axiological and emotional multi-vector interpretation of linguistic and aesthetic forms of concept creation due to the antithetical «split» of the poetic microcontext.

The poem Ode (From the French), written as if on behalf of the French people after the Battle of Waterloo, is of particular importance in this context. The second stanza of the poem reflects the ambiguity of the people's assessment of their own history, whose desire for freedom changed the course of historical development throughout Europe and at the same time turned the freedom into a new tyranny, the difficulty of determining the historical, military and political significance of national political elite. Let us compare the imagery context of two famous French political and military figures - Labedoyere and Murat who are ascribed controversial axiological features:

Labedoyere - whose honour'd grave / Contains the 'bravest of the brave;

Murat - thou, too, of the snow-white plume! / Whose realm refused thee ev'n at omb:

- blood-bought title bears; the warrior's guide; moved his heart upon our foes;

While helmets cleft, and sabres clashing, / Shone and shiver'd fast around thee;

- There be sure was Murat charging! / While the broken line enlarging Fell, or fled along the plain; / There be sure was Murat charging! / There he ne 'er shall charge again!

- Than sold thyself to death and shame / For a meanly royal name; / Of the fate at last which _ found thee;

- Was that haughty plume laid low /By a slave's dishonest blow?

The microcontext reflects the negative dynamics of the transition from the concepts of national leadership, national heroism to the concept of monarchy (on the example of Murat). A symbol of freedom and civic virtue becomes the embodiment of evil and tyranny, a soldier-hero becomes a simple ruler doomed to loss of power and death because of destructive political and personal ambitions.

In a poetic form, Byron proposes a solution to the moral and ethical aspects of the concepts MONARCH and NATIONAL LEADER / HERO: the reason for the defeat of any power is not so much the action of external factors or military factors, but the destructive forces inherent in the nature of power, conflict with its own people, inability to understand and follow its aspirations. Monarchy and national leadership / heroism are simultaneously opposed and related phenomena: The Chief has fallen, but not by you, / Vanquishers of Waterloo! - The Hero sunk into the King? / Then he fell: - so perish all, / Who would men by man enthral! Notinal dimension and the content of words-images chief and king, that verbalize the concept MONARCH is formed, thus, on the basis of the evaluative stratification of their imagery contextual associates: The Chief - the soldier citizen - Glory, Freedom's son, Who, of all the despots banded, / With that youthful chief competed?; King - lone Tyranny, goaded by ambition 's sting, Then he fell, so perish all, Who would men by man enthral.

Byron's biographers convincingly prove the colossal influence of the personality of the French emperor on the worldview of the English romantic (Marchand 1995: 155). This influence was so significant that, according to biographers, the poet himself asserted the spiritual unity between himself and Bonaparte and was convinced of the connection of his own destiny and the fate of Napoleon. Accordingly, the multilevel linguistic-aesthetic format of poetic actualization of the analyzed artistic anthropoconcepts in Byron's poetry, along with civic and political aspects, also includes irrational, emotional, lyrically-intimate semantic roots, actualized in the plane of verbal expressions of psychological states, feelings, desires of the lyrical hero - protagonist as a domination of author's subjective reflections over purely rationalist, objective forms of image.

In the poems From The French (written allegedly on behalf of one of Napoleon's subordinates, an officer loyal to the emperor's at the time of his exile) and Napoleon's Farewell (written on behalf of Napoleon himself, who addresses his homeland and his people), the concept NATIONAL LEADER unfolds in a completely different artistic and semantic plane. Monarch is a man deeply sad, repentant, full of awareness of the tragedy of his own destiny (His fall, his exile, and his grave), the inextricable link between the fate of the national leader and the nation (There are links which must break in the chain that has bound us, / Then turn thee and call on the Chief of thy choice!) and hope for an objective assessment of his role in the national history and the memory of their descendants: (She abandons me now - but the page of her story, / The brightest or blackest, is fill 'd with my fame). He, who was previously called an overthrown tyrant, is named «my glorious Chief, / Sever 'd from thy faithful few; Idol of the soldier's soul!; First in fight, but mightiest now; My chief, my king, my friend, adieu!; The last single Captive to millions in war; thy soul unbent», becomes the object of positive evaluation, emotional attachment and loyalty of those who followed him (Who can tell thy warrior's grief, / Maddening o 'er that long adieu; soldier's faith for thee; By thy side for years I dared Death; and envied those who fell, / When their dying shout was heard, / Blessing him they served so well; All I ask is to divide /Every peril he must brave) and the subject of self-evaluation (I have warr 'd with a world which vanquish'd me only / When the meteor of conquest allured me too far; I have coped with the nations which dread me thus lonely, / The last single Captive to millions in war).

Personalizing and intimidating the image of a national leader, the poet seeks a poetic solution to the age-old philosophical question of the relationship between the great individual and society - «who is the main source of power and the driving force of socio-historical processes?» This relationship is expressed in a set of compositional metaphors and symbols in the words of the lyrical hero, addressed to his people: Farewell to thee, France! when thy diadem crown 'd me, /1 made thee the gem and the wonder of earth. The people elect their leaders who are responsible for their future destiny - the people turn them into a «jewel» and a «miracle», as well as, in fact, lead them to their defeat: thy weakness; his native darkness. The people decide on the fate of their leaders (But thy weakness decrees I should leave as Ifound thee, / Decay 'd in thy glory, and sunk in thy worth) and are the driving force of future victories: for the veteran hearts that were wasted /In strife with the storm, when their battles were won / Then the Eagle, whose gaze in that moment was lasted, / Had still soar 'd with eyes fix'd on victory's sun!

Creating the mythology of the great, where Napoleon occupies a special position (the greatest, nor the worst of men; Extreme in all things; Conqueror and captive of the earth; more or less than man - in high or low), the poet depicts the «human» face of monarchy and national leadership through the deployment of microconcepts love, friendship, loyalty, betrayal, hypocrisy, exile in the figurative-conceptual structure of the poetic context (long adieu; Woman's love, andfriendship's zeal; the sycophants of him; Every peril; His fall, his exile, and his grave). These ideas are characteristic for the whole creativity and world outlook of the English romantic.

The poetic anthroponyms of Byron's works is full of multifaceted symbolic, mythological, and axiological meanings, and their associative field is extremely wide.

Using the multifaceted semantics of anthroponimic images as a combination of aesthetic, emotional principles, the author seeks to enhance the suggestiveness and expressiveness of the work, determines the interpretation of its main semantic line, the leading motif. The introduction of numerous precedent names into the canvas of a work of art sets the main guidelines for author's individual perception and reflection of social, historic processes and events both of his own country and the European continent, highlight moral, axiological, existential aspects of the phenomena of monarchy, national leadership, national heroism from the perspective of their impact on both the destiny of his own country and the peoples of Europe. Moreover, in the symbolic, associative and figurative dimensions, anthroponyms / precedent names correlate with other artistic forms of the poetic context for the profiling of the conceptual features of analyzed concepts, which form the moral political, economic, cultural foundations of society.

Conclusions. Thus, in Byron's poetry the understanding of fundamental nationbuilding political categories is carried out through the deployment of a network of artistic anthropoconcepts that in the unity of their semantic aspects display poet's deep generalization about the essence of monarchy, the relation of the fate of a national leader and national hero with the destiny of their nation, the notion of individual and collective responsibility, author's philosophical views and ethical beliefs. Anthroponyms, introduced into the composition and content of poetical works, subjected to author's artistic reflection and reconsideration, contribute to creating notional and axiological content of the artistic concepts MONARCH, ARISTOCRAT, NATIONAL LEADER / NATIONAL HERO. Associative, evaluative, symbolic sense of anthroponyms provide conceptually significant information, the images based on the application of multifaceted potential of anthroponyms and the pragmatic power of lingual-aesthetic resources of the text constitute the ground for identifying the definite conceptual features. Thus, artistic actualization of the selected concepts develops within the relevant artistic and semantic planes, covering:

- socio-political aspects: national policy, national interests, ethnic self-identification;

- expression of philosophical and ethical concepts of patriotism, betrayal, truth, justice, faith, honesty, heroism;

- awareness of individual and collective destiny, individual and collective responsibility for the historical choice of the people and the nation.

Consequently, the basic conceptual features of the content of the artistic concept MONARCH include immorality, greed, sinfulness, hypocrisy; usurpation of power, death, dishonor, inglorious death. The conceptual features that are subjected to the profound artistic reflection from the perspective of their axiology are the ability or inability to become a true leader of the nation, tragic destiny, axiological dualism in assessing the role of the monarch in development of national history. The structure of the artistic concept ARISTOCRAT includes the features of political irresponsibility, betrayal of the national interests, the desire for wealth and satisfaction, pseudopatriotism, assimilation to the conditions of power, dishonor, and degradation of moral principles. The concept's axiology is predominantly negatively marked by its poetic representation through negatively connoted imagery.

The basic conceptual features of the content of the artistic concept NATIONAL LEADER include ambition for power, military deeds and aspirations. The conceptual features that are subjected to the profound artistic reflection from the perspective of their axiology and are the ground of author's ambivalent assessment are the ability to reach the status of the national hero or the transformation into the tyrant-ruler due to the betrayal of national interests and moral principles, hypocrisy, dishonesty. In the content of the concept, undeserved honours, destructive behaviour and conflict with one's own people, personal and as a result national catastrophe, death due to the punishment of God or people are foregrounded as dominating negative axiological conceptual features. The basic conceptual features of the content of the artistic concept NATIONAL HERO include divinity, greatness, sacred mission, immortal glory, valor, antagonism to the national pseudo-elite, political activity, heroism, glory, heroic sacrifice, glorious death on the battlefield. The conceptual features that are subjected to the deep artistic reconsideration from the perspective of their axiology and are potential possibility of metamorphosis from a national hero to a tyrant-ruler due to destructive behavior, conflict with the people, ambition, hypertrophied sense of self-worth.