Interpretation of the Eastern Theme in Poetic Reality of Nikolay Gumilyov

Abstract

This review examines how ‘Eastern’ thematics functions as a constructive principle of poetic reality in Nikolay S. Gumilev’s oeuvre. Synthesizing scholarship on Acmeism, orientalist poetics, translation-mediated “China” cycles, and cognitive-stylistic readings, the article argues that Gumilev uses the East not as ethnographic décor but as a semiotic engine that reorganizes space, value, and subjectivity. Eastern loci (Arabia, Persia, China, Turkestan, Africa) enable condensed world-models built from proper names, exotic objects, and ritualized action. These models intensify Acmeist concreteness while also producing mythic distance, letting the lyric ‘I’ test authority, desire, and metaphysical quest under conditions of estrangement in modernity’s crisis.