Вобраз Бога ў паэзіі Янкі Купалы і Антоніа Мачада

Abstract

The image of God (or gods) and of the divine is one of the universal problems that poetry in particular and literature in general have considered central throughout history. Despite the predominance and relevance of the aforementioned topics, the question of God’s image in Belarusian poetry remains under‑‑researched; philologists like Jan Čykvin and Iryna Bahdanovič have undertaken the study of this matter, yet it continues to be largely unexplored from a comparative perspective. In this manner, the present article is an attempt to complement the research of its predecessors and to present a new perspective of the subject. The purpose of this work is to identify, study and compare the image(s) of the God and the divine in the poetic work of Yanka Kupala and Antonio Machado. Special attention is paid to the moral and philosophical attitude of the authors towards higher powers. Folk and literary influences on the formation of their interpretation of the divine and, above all, metaphors and symbols that build divine images in their poetry are studied. Thus, their tendencies towards symbolic landscape poetry, which unite both poets, are analyzed. As a result of this analysis, several points of convergence have been found in Yanka Kupala’s and Antonio Machado’s representation of God in poetry, particularly in their metaphors of landscape and natural elements, as well as their vision of God as a source of inspiration and strength. Our attention has also been drawn to certain differences.