EASTERN MOTIFS IN THE POETRY OF ALEXANDER PUSHKIN: TYPOLOGICAL PARALLELS WITH THE WORKS OF ALISHER NAVOI

Аннотация

This article examines how “Eastern motifs” function in Alexander Pushkin’s poetry and how these motifs can be read typologically alongside Alisher Navoi’s poetics. Using comparative close reading, motif analysis, and a contextual approach drawn from recent scholarship on Russian literary Orientalism, the study identifies three parallel clusters: (1) the East as an aesthetic system (landscape, palace/garden imagery, symbolic objects), (2) ethical–humanistic discourse (mercy, fate, justice, spiritual testing), and (3) the poetics of love and inner freedom (love as suffering, loyalty, and moral trial). The findings suggest that Pushkin’s “Eastern” texts are not only decorative exoticism but also a method of expanding Russian poetic form and meaning through hybrid imagery and culturally marked lexicon, while Navoi’s classical Eastern poetics provide a stable “typological horizon” for interpreting these strategies.

The study contributes to current comparative discussions by clarifying how intercultural dialogue in literature can be described through recurrent motifs rather than direct influence alone.