The Conceptual Object "Bird" in the Eponymous Bunin’s Poem and Qur'anic Text

Abstract

The present paper offers an outlook on the conceptual object “bird” in Ivan Bunin's poem and the Holy Qur'an. Actualizing Bunin's appeal to the Qur'anic meanings is due to the linguistic and cognitive approach to its study to identify sense generating features of the “bird” as a symbol that may be close to the Russian mind. Conceptual object is thought of as an ideal object which enters the people's naive consciousness sphere or religious contemplation and becomes a subject of cognitive specification in their spiritual life. The linguistic sign categorization is associated with abstracting from its primary meaning and metaphorizing but, unlike a concept, the conceptual object is not represented by the national cultural and linguistic code. Analysis of the Qur'anic bird representation as a fate allowed us to evolve its substantial paradigm “fate – deeds – conscience – will – soul ↔ bird ↔ spirit/soul – angel on the right and angel on the left – scripture – will – knowledge/science – predestination” and to draw a parallel with the Bunin's literary image of “prophetic bird” imbedding precognitive symbolism of fate.

Extended abstract:

The present paper offers an outlook on the conceptual object “bird” in Ivan Bunin's poem and the Holy Qur'an. The article’s objective is actualizing Bunin's appeal to the Qur'anic meanings and identifying sense generating features of the “bird” as a symbol that may be close to the Russian mind. The question formulated concerns the reasoning that the bird  may be considered a conceptual object which is thought of as the ideal object and enters the people's naive consciousness sphere or religious contemplation becoming a subject of cognitive specification in their spiritual life. The linguistic sign categorization is associated with abstracting from its primary meaning and metaphorizing but, unlike a concept, the conceptual object is not represented by the national cultural and linguistic code. Our hypothesis is what the analysis of the Qur'anic bird representation might evolve its substantial paradigm and draw a parallel between the Bunin's literary image of “prophetic bird” and the Qur'anic bird imbedding precognitive symbolism of fate. The methodology for proving the hypothesis was based on linguistic and cognitive and hermeneutical approaches to the study of insights into the symbolic image of the bird. The Bunin's poem denotes the semantic paradigm of the conceptual object “bird” captured in the title “amulet – prophetic bird – secret sign – fate – owl” and establishes its relations in the poetic intention implementation: “man – bird”, “God – bird.” The “secret sign” in this case can be seen as a meta-concept by means of which “amulet alike prophetic bird” and simultaneously “fate” are defined. The paradigm derived from the Qur'anic text study includes the following chains of components: “bird ↔ soul – will – conscince – deeds – fate” and “bird ↔ spirit/soul – angel on the right and angel on the left – scripture – will – knowledge/science – predestination.” The bird appears as the interlink in the two chains and the ultimate links in them “fate” and “predestination” align and form a dot commensurate with the concept of “qadar.” In general, the fate of a person (or soul) conditioned by "free will" in deeds and destiny as God's judgement constitute a whole. The convergence of the conceptual meanings of the bird in Islamic culture and Russian word artist's work determines the novelty of the research topic. “The fate-bird” idea entails a conceptual object semantic value which can arise under certain conditions or depending on this idea purposive intent. Such a solution to the conceptual object problem brings together different levels of language awareness.