''Visible is a symbol'': Nature as an animated creature pictured by Russian and German romantics

Il'chenko Natal'ya Mikhailovna ORCID: 0000-0003-2541-5061 Doctor of Philology Professor, Department of Russian and Foreign Philology, Kozma Minin Nizhny Novgorod State Pedagogical University 603002, Russia, g. Nizhnii Novgorod, ul. Ul'yanova, 1, kab. 406 ilchenko2005@mail.ru Other publications by this author

Chernysheva Elena Gennad'evna ORCID: 0009-0000-9612-331X Doctor of Philology Professor, Department of Russian Classical Literature, Moscow Pedagogical State University 119991, Russia, Moscow, Malaya Pirogovskaya str., 1, p. 1. el.chernysheva@yandex.ru

Romantics perceived Nature as a unique system, and life as its single deep spiritual and mystical essence. Based on the discovery of the idea of F. Schelling's idea of the close relationship of the spirit, human freedom and Nature ("nature does not voluntarily release anyone from its custody, and there are no born sons of freedom" ^{[1, p. 5]}), they picked up his idea of the ideal essence of Nature, its unconscious spiritual creative principle, an ascending system of stages of its development from lower forms to the higher ones. They were also close to understanding the dialectic of Nature, thinking about the essential unity of forces that determine the numerous natural connections discovered by natural science, about the unity of Nature as such. Commenting on the provisions of natural philosophy, F. According to Schelling, researchers note the importance of the idea that "individual beings do not live by themselves, not for themselves, but by nature and for nature" ^{[2, p. 261]}. Following F. Schelling, romantics discover the principle of mutual transformation of natural phenomena. Romantic writers consider Nature from the point of view of various analogies, striving to comprehend its spirit. "Schelling described the life of nature as a slow awakening of its spirit, and it is clear how joyfully the poets greeted him, who in the images of nature, in the fantastic formations of external existence found reflections of the moods and destinies of the soul" ^{[3, pp. 253-254]}. German, and after them, Russian romantics considered Nature as a symbol, associated capacious artistic images with it and created their own picture of the world.

The material for the study were the works of Russian (V. A. Zhukovsky, N. I. Grech, K. S. Aksakov, I. V. Kireevsky, N. A. Polevoy) and German (Novalis, Ya. and V. Grimm, K. Brentano, E. T. A. Hoffman) romantics, which reflected the idea of Nature as a living spiritualized entity.  

At the heart of the mythology of F. Schelling's idea is that at the beginning of their history, people possessed the highest truth. Over time, it was lost, but every nation has a memory of it: "It (mythology) is the world and, so to speak, the soil on which only works of art can flourish and grow. Only within such a world are stable and definite images possible, through which only eternal concepts can be expressed" ^{[4, p. 113]}. A kind of "summary of German romantic aesthetics", "the result of deep penetration into romantic thought, the result of creative thinking", A. V. Mikhailov rightly called the work of D. V. Venevitinov "Morning, noon, evening and night" ^{[5, p. 422]}. The Russian romantic believes that the source of inspiration lies in Nature. "Every phenomenon is an emblem", which becomes a symbolic reflection of the universe ^{[6, p. 135]}. In N. A. Polevoy's novel "The Painter", the main character reflects: "Man was created out of goodness and love, everything connected with them in his primitive life. He who was kind loved; he who loved was kind" ^{[7, p. 193]}. According to Polevoi, primitive man and Nature were an inseparable whole, they were united by love.

Pagan ideas of the Eastern Slavs, along with language, as well as all life activities, led to the formation of an independent ethnic group around the IV-VI centuries. In the Slavic pantheon, most of the gods are associated with heaven – Rod, Svarog, Perun, Dazhbog, Horse, etc. By the time Christianity was adopted, pagan ideas had not become a single system, therefore, due to the religious and cultural interaction of paganism and Christianity, a "connection" took place: Perun - Ilya-the prophet, Mokosh – Paraskeva-Friday, Veles – St. Vlasius, etc. Russian romantic prose reflects the mythological idea of the Eastern Slavs about the mysterious connection of man with heaven, which existed in a peculiar religious and mystical paradigm in Orthodoxy. In I. V. Kireevsky's fairy tale "Opal", the wonderful and strange music playing on the star makes the hero find himself in a state of "happy memory of something before life" ^{[8, p.220]}. The hero of K. S. Aksakov's novel "The Cloud" recalls the "pre-earthly life". He often looks at the road, which in the evening twilight seems to merge with the sky, "it still stretches there, far, far away, the soul strives after it and flies, flies, and in front of it all the distance is foggy – this is a wonderful state, some kind of unaccountable, boundless aspiration, some kind of Sehnsucht" ^{[9, p. 492]}. The plot of this "fantastic story" ends with the relocation of Lotharius in the form of a cloud to the sky.

M. Y. Lermontov's poem "Angel", permeated with ideal aspirations, reflected the memory of a lullaby (sung by a mother)  and there are no motives of God-fighting and demonism characteristic of Lermontov, correlating with the "angelic" theme: "And the sounds of heaven could not be replaced / She is bored by the songs of the earth" ^{[10, p. 374]}. The sky and the earthly "world of sadness and tears" are opposed, the soul remembers the sky and strives to return there. I. V. Kireevsky represents the soul as a star that was plucked from the sky and enclosed in a ring. The description of the "other world" in the story "Opal" is given within the framework of the fairy tale tradition. In this world, mountains of diamonds, silver cliffs, columns of marble and gold; the water tells a fairy tale. "Instead of clouds, transparent images of people flew, as if taken with a magic wand from a painting by some great author, they, light, rose to the sky and, floating in harmonious movements, bathed in the air" ^{[8, p. 217]}.

The idea of the transcendental origin of the soul (in a Christian reading) is present in the novella by N. A. Polevoy "The Bliss of Madness". Antiochus calls man, in connection with Christian ideas, a "fallen angel of God", the image develops in a "paradise-natural" figurative system, including traditional gender hypostases: "He carries the seeds of paradise in his soul and can plant them on the rich soil of earthly nature and on the best creatures of God – the heart of a woman and the mind of a man!" ^{[11, p. 96]}.  The hero of the story by N. A. Polevoy is sure that he knew Adelheid in "the world where before, before Italy, we once lived..." ^{[11, p. 116]}. Italy, from the point of view of romantics, is "the promised land of art", but the Russian romantic calls it an "anthill" here, because there are "enchanted paradisiacal gardens", they are invisible, but "for a moment they sometimes become visible to man" ^{[11, p. 116]}.

In the song of the Aksakov cloud girl, it is said about the beauty of the earth, but the "azure fields" of the sky are more expensive for the heroine: "And you do not beg in vain for yourself / The lucky ones of the sky will not be attracted - / They will not abandon the beautiful homeland, / No, they will not come down to you" ^{[9, p. 489]}.

According to romantics, a person does not lose his inner connection with the sky. Alimari, one of the heroes of N. I. Grech's novel "The Black Woman", paints an original picture of the world: "The souls of people live by heavenly food, are united by invisible bonds with the eternal source of life..." ^{[12, p.318]}, and "certain voices descend from the height of heaven" and help a person in earthly life ^{[12, p. 57]}. He finds a person close to him in the person of Kemsky, who has a lot of life trials. Having experienced a shock at the age of three, he came into contact with the mystical world and calmly perceives the appearance of the ghost of a black woman, who usually warns him of danger. Philosophically reflecting on the structure of the universe, Kemsky says that "natural phenomena, both quiet and menacing, and pleasant and terrible, act on me equally, arousing the thought of eternity, of the unchanging power of creative nature, of the goodness of Providence" ^{[12, p.28]}. It is characteristic that the heroes of the works and their authors are spoken of as messengers of another world. For example, Alimari Kemsky thinks of the soul that it descended "from another world, in which it lived before moving to its current home" ^{[12, p.67]}. Novalis, the author of the novel "Heinrich von Ofterdingen", was also spoken of as "a being who flew from another world" ^{[13, p. 337]}.

The ideas of "pre-earthly life" are often correlated with childhood memories. K. S. Aksakov idealizes childhood, shows the inner connection of a person with the world in this happy time, when not only everything seems wonderful, but miracles are present in life. Childhood is perceived by him as a kind of spiritual homeland of man, "an incomprehensible time of infancy": "At least I am firmly convinced that I flew in childhood" ^{[9, p.490]}. Therefore, in moments of joy and admiration, Lorraine "remembered the summers of childhood", the hero is sure that "infancy has a mysterious, now lost meaning for us" ^{[9, p.489]}. Music helps him to remember something mysterious, slipping away in the "fog of time".

The rebirth with the hero of N. A. Polevoy's story "The Painter" takes place thanks to the icon of the Akhtyrskaya Mother of God, inextricably linked with his perception of Nature.  "For the first time in my life, nature, hitherto dead, mechanical, spoke to me. Kneeling, I prayed, looked at the sky, at these colored clouds, and they seemed to me like hosts of saints, images of the Mother of God..." ^{[7, p. 156]}. Arkady interprets creativity in the spirit of the Christian-Platonic tradition: the artist does not create something completely new, but highlights the primordial images that he is able to contemplate. "At that moment, I was a primitive man, that virgin man who decided to transfer the image of man and nature into art" ^{[7, p. 157]}. The creative gift is not a personal merit: "I, a child, enthusiastic about the divine, imbued with the prophetic voice of my mother, who condemned me to be a painter... I unconsciously flew into the realm of primitive human fantasy: I created for myself what I learned after; I created a lot of things that I do not know even now!"^{[7, p. 157]}. After that, Arkady is filled with a religious feeling and perceives the images as placed by God "in man's dwelling to remind him of heaven" ^{[7, p. 157]}, and the iconostasis as "the world that human art created, reminding him of the high purpose of the artist as a depictor of the divine" ^{[7, p. 157-158]}.

The German Romantics have a secret meaning endowed with the image of the earth, the "language of flowers and plants." In Novalis's novel Heinrich von Ofterdingen, Sylvester tells Heinrich about plants as the "direct language of the soil": "Every new leaf, every peculiar flower reveals some secret that has made its way out" ^{[14, p. 154]}. Sylvester continues: every spring, the earth is renewed with a "mysterious green carpet of love": "his strange writings are understandable only to those who are loved ... He will forever and insatiably read, and every day a new meaning will be revealed to him, new more and more charming secrets of loving nature" ^{[14, p.155]}.

One of the explanations for the predilection of the German romantics for the earth can be found in the natural philosophical mysticism of J. Boehme: "And although the animal body is subject to decay, however, its power remains alive, beautiful roses and flowers grow out of the power" ^{[15, p. 316]}. F. wrote about the significance of the processes "taking place on and inside the earth", about the relationship of the Sun, air, magnetism, the earth's interior, terrestrial vegetation and other natural phenomena associated with man, with his spirit. Schelling in the famous book "Ideas for the Philosophy of Nature as an introduction to the study of this science." Man owes the very possibility of exercising dominion over Nature to nature itself" ^{[1, p. 37]}.

I. G. Mikhnevich, commenting on the philosophy of nature by F. Schelling, draws attention to the fact that the development of all things comes from the "original seed": individual beings do not live by themselves, not for themselves, but by nature and for nature" ^{[2, p. 261]}.

 German romantics have numerous images of a flower woman.    The Blue Flower is Matilda (Novalis. Heinrich von Ofterdingen), Rosa Aurelia (Hoffmann. Elixirs of Satan), Gamache, born from a tulip cup (Hoffmann. The Lord of fleas), the friend of the king's son, turned into a carnation (I. and V. Grimm. Carnation), etc. – this is not a complete list of images of a flower woman. She is usually beautiful and perfect, with her help the hero comprehends the meaning of life. 

Rose and lily are the most frequently used flowers of the German romantics. Matilda's face in Novalis' Heinrich von Ofterdingen "seemed like a lily facing the rising sun" ^{[14, p. 95]}. She "with childlike grace" gives Henry "the rose she wore on her chest" ^{[14, p. 107]}. Using the comparison of Matilda with lily is traditional: it means purity and chastity. Mastery of the oriental language of flowers is manifested in the gesture of the heroine: a flower (a rose is a symbol of love), presented from the chest, from the heart (or pinned after a man's gift) means love.  Henry saw Matilda's face in the petals of a blue flower, which became a symbol of the unearthly happiness that a person is looking for.

"Works of art," as F. writes. Schelling in the "Philosophy of Art" - should be characterized by the same, if not greater reality than the creations of nature, images that have the same necessary and eternal existence as human generations and plants, possessing at the same time individual and generic life and the same immortality" ^{[4, p. 113]}. These ideas of immortality, the eternal mystical connection of nature, man and his creative spirit, art, were shared by romantics and implemented in their works.

A peculiar natural philosophical system of understanding the universe is presented in K. Brentano's fairy tale "Myrtle". From the rich earth, which the potter's wife carried with an apron into a tub from the field, a myrtle tree grew, which later turns out to be in the porcelain palace. Prince Wedgwood is fascinated by the tree from which a beautiful girl appeared: "on her head is an elegant corolla woven entirely of myrtle flowers" ^{[16, p. 87]}. Myrtochka did not immediately become the prince's wife. After going through the ordeal of death, the flower girl returned in a beautiful wedding dress. Her abusers were punished: "the earth parted and the villains disappeared, and in place of that wild grass rose, the corinthian palm" ^{[16, p. 92]}. The myrtle tree was moved to a field, Myrtle's "parents" were buried under it, and then she and the prince found peace there. A tree growing from the ground grows on the ground, gives strength for growth and "speaks" in appearance. The poetics of the fairy tale gives rise to thoughts about the mystical unity of life and death, the dialectic of the natural and the human.

Flowers help E. T. A. Hoffman to create his own model of the universe. The Golden Pot contains Lindhorst's story about the love of the young man Phosphorus for the fire Lily – the "great-great-great-grandmother" of the archivist salamander.  "Fire Lily" is the personification of Atlantis, the world of bliss and harmony. The "magnificent lily", which grew out of a golden pot, became a symbol of Anselm and Serpentine's love. Magical Atlantis is filled with flowers: "Fiery hyacinths, tulips and roses raise their beautiful heads" ^{[17, p.296]}. The words of E.T.A. Hoffman from the diary are significant: "And I, unhappy, soon after just a few minutes, I myself will leave this beautiful hall, which is far from the same as the estates in Atlantis, I will find myself in my attic, and my mind will be at the mercy of the pitiful squalor of a meager life, and, like a thick fog, thousands of disasters will cover my eyes, and I will probably never see lilies again" ^{[18, p.215]}. Lily is a kind of synonym for a fairy-tale magical land for the author, a guide to it, in other words, a symbolic image. According to legend, the lily originated from milk, its natural color is white. However, the bush of flaming red lilies turns out to be Lindhorst's robe. The original meaning is lost, and the new coloring, shape of flowers and stems acquire a symbolic meaning.

In the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm, the image of a flower as a significant symbol is used more than once.  The heroines are given names according to the name of the flowers – "Rosehip", "Snow White and Scarlet Flower", etc. Hoffmann's heroines also bear similar names: Roschen ("Lord of Fleas") becomes Peregrine's wife, the fairy von Rosenschen has the ability to charm, and Balthazar, in a poem about the love of a nightingale for a scarlet rose under a flower, sings the beloved Candida ("Baby Tsakhes"). In "The Royal Bride", Mr. Dapsul warns his daughter that a "cunning spirit" (in German mythology, a chthonic being), in order to connect with a person, "sits in a flower" ^{[19, p. 168]}.  

     The "language of flowers" of the German romantics manifests itself through fragrance and sounds.     The hero of Hoffmann's short story "An episode from the life of three friends" tells about an "interesting premonition" associated with a "floral smell". The "sweet smell of roses" is connected with the girl who captivated the imagination of a young man, and the "terrible piercing smell of carnations" is connected with the old man: "The rose and carnation have become symbols of life and death for me" ^{[20, p. 110]}. Prince Wedgwood from K. Brentano's fairy tale guesses about the presence of Myrtle by its "sweet aroma".

Various elemental spirits – salamanders, undines, sylphs and other mystical representatives of another world - become messengers of the natural world in the works of romantics. The heroine of K. S. Aksakov's novel "The Cloud" says: "Know that wonderful creatures come into the world from every kingdom of nature, and when a girl with a wonderful, inspired look, with heavenly charm on her face flashes in front of you, know: this is a guest between you, this is a creature from another, wonderful world" ^{[9, p.496]}. The Schellingian philosophy of identity (in the most general reading, it is the identity of spirit and Nature, realized through reason, the equality of being and consciousness) sounds peculiar in the following words of K. S. Aksakov's heroine, Elvira: man found creatures like himself - in water, in the forest, "free clouds flew across the sky – he and in them he found life and creatures like him..." ^{[9, p.495]}.

The ideal female images of Russian romantics turn out to be the messengers of heaven.  In the royal peace of the shining sky, clouds live freely and easily, which will not leave their beautiful homeland even for the sake of the diverse beauties of the earth: "But if love for a mortal beats in their ethereal chest, / They will leave their peaceful land, / The shelter of careless clouds, / And breathing a single life, / They throw a sweet family, / And to a distant land, to a foreign land, / They carry their love" ^{[9, p.480]}. The "foreign land" cannot compare with the "wonderful" sky, but Elvira leaves it to save Lothar. The cloud girl Elvira plays the role of the guardian angel of Lothar in earthly life. About Mrs. Lindenbaum's pupil, Lotharius immediately says: Oh, that's right, my guardian angel" ^{[9, p.488]}. Elvira says to her father: "I will be his guardian angel… I revived his soul" ^{[9, p.495]}.

In the novella by N. A. Polevoy "The Painter", the artist Arkady saw a "sweet creature" - an "unearthly" Verinka, representing heaven in its rather sacred than natural hypostasis; for her sake it is ready to part with the life bestowed by Mother nature. He hears only one word spoken to her, and is already ready for these sounds to decorate his "past life" and "delight death": "My mother," I will say to nature and fall asleep, as a child falls asleep in the bosom of his mother, and these sounds will be a harbinger to me of what I will hear in the sky!" ^{[7, p. 189]}.  Arkady perceives Verinka as a "guardian angel", "a wonderful, real angel!" ^{[7, pp. 201, 215]}. The thanatological "notes", generally characteristic of romantics, and the very idea of saying goodbye to Mother nature here are due to a love-mystical motivation. In the same mystical context, the heroine of V. F. Odoevsky's "Cosmorama" turns into a "white cloud" in order to save her lover from the flames: "At that moment, only I noticed in front of me as if a white cloud ... peering ... Sophia's face flashes in this cloud... she smiled sadly, beckoned me" ^{[21, p.521]}.

In whatever guise "unearthly" women appear among Russian romantics, they essentially, or at least in the perception of idealistic heroes, gravitate towards angelic nature. The image of an angel woman is not a general rhetorical comparison of her with an angel, but an idea of an ideal female image close to a Christian angel; accordingly, the plots associated with his incarnation are representative. Pagan ideas may be present in these images: the cult of the oldest Slavic god of the Genus survived after the adoption of Christianity. Rod became the patron of the family. This mythological character was accompanied by women in labor. "The cult of women in labor, like other female characters ... is associated with the female environment, ideas about procreation and the fate of the newborn, to whom women in labor determine the share" ^{[22, p.407]}. On the other hand, according to the teaching of the church, everyone is given a guardian angel by God at the moment of baptism. He accompanies a person, protects him. An angel is a heavenly messenger, he acts as an intermediary between the heavenly (spiritual) sphere and the earthly (material) world. "In Christianity, angels and seraphim are considered female beings, and cherubim are considered male" ^{[23, p.120]}.  This specificity is reflected in the analyzed works of Russian Romanticism. It is no coincidence that Y. M. Lotman in the book "Conversations about Russian culture. The way of life and traditions of the Russian nobility (XVIII – early XIX century)" distinguishes the angel woman among female types ^{[24, pp.46-74]}.

The "angelic" protective function is performed by the ghost of a black woman in the novel by N. I. Grech. The mystery of the ghost is partially revealed: At first, she turns out to be a woman who became a nun after the death of the groom; Kemsky's wife is perceived as a ghost after her imaginary death.  However, the author of the novel does not exclude that the inexplicable is present in life: "there is something in man that the sages did not solve ... only not everyone sees, not everyone believes it" ^{[12, p. 56]}. The image of Natasha is associated with an appeal to the "Most Pure Virgin", the "intercessor"; her appearance is preceded by prayer. For example, Kemsky sees Natasha when the dim lamp in front of the icons "caught fire." Natasha is compared to an "angel of heaven" and embodies salvation ^{[12, p. 209]}.

V. A. Zhukovsky in a poetic translation of the story by F. Fouquet's de de Motte "Undine" emphasizes the celestial origin of the "water maiden": "and the wife sees that our darling/ The angel laughs"; "she shone with some kind of Heavenly vision"; the old people called her "heavenly / Angel, my dear daughter" ^{[25, pp.117, 135, 153]}.

Realizing that the beloved are messengers of the "other world", the characters reflect on the affinity of souls. Thus, the hero of the story by K. S. Aksakov says about Elvira: "it seems to me that I have seen her somewhere, that I have known her for a long time, that our souls are close to each other" ^{[9, p. 490]}. Antiochus, a character in N. A. Polevoy's The Bliss of Madness, painfully recalling where he had seen Adelheid before, exclaims several times: "I knew her somewhere; she was then an angel of God!" ^{[11, p.107]}. "... I recognized at first sight something familiar and native about Adelheid, which I tried to remember only: where did I know Adelheid?" ^{[11, pp. 107, 115]}. The hero of another story by N. A. Polevoy, "The Painter", met Verinka at the cemetery and immediately concluded: "her soul has been familiar to me for a long time, and everything native to her was native to me" ^{[7, p. 191]}. At the same time, Arkady did not see her face, but already knew: "her soul grave grave of her mother, on the grave of my benefactor" ^{[7, p. 192]}. Explaining to a friend his love for a girl who, as it seems to him, "bewitched" him, because they were very different, Arkady says with conviction: "At the same moment, when one soul in this way she comes into the world, another soul spies on her and recognizes her as her native, heavenly one" ^{[7, p. 216]}.  

The kiss has a symbolic meaning in the analyzed works, expressing not so much natural, erotic semantics, as spiritual and mystical, associated with saying goodbye to the earthly world. He expresses a whole range of meanings (emotions, intentions, meaningful aspirations), this is "a strong feeling, brotherhood, love, marital union; reverence, worship" ^{[26, p. 141]}. In Slavic mythology, it is customary to kiss when saying goodbye to the deceased: "they kiss him goodbye, say goodbye to him, because he has nothing to wait for longer, and it's time to go on the road" ^{[22, p. 386]}. Saying goodbye to Lothar, Elvira "hugged him tightly to her heart, kissed him on the forehead and left" ^{[1, p. 496]}. Gulbrand asks Ondine for a kiss with the words: "and let it be / To die in it!" "With a heavenly kiss she / She took him into her hands, but did not let him out of them anymore" ^{[25, pp. 218, 219]}. Tsar Nurredin asks the girl for a kiss.  "And the moment her lips touched Nurredinov's, and the ring from his hand passed to the girl's hand, in that moment, which lasted perhaps no more than one minute, the new world suddenly disappeared along with the girl..." ^{[8, p. 221]}.

The finales of the romantic works of I. V. Kireevsky and K. S. Aksakov are tragic only at first glance. Heroes who are disappointed in the vanity of earthly life find happiness. Through death, Lotharius gets the opportunity to connect with a "light cloud" - Elvira, who returned to heaven after her secret was revealed. The hero was sad and silent until one day he was found dead, "and two light clouds were moving away across the sky" ^{[9, p.496]}. In the novella by N. A. Polevoy "The Bliss of Madness", Antiochus talks about the upcoming "mysterious union" with Adelheid, although he does not know how it will happen: "whether we stay in peace or, humanly speaking, die - because I don't care" ^{[11, p. 117]}. The hero of the story "The Painter" dies in Italy. His beloved is getting married and is happy in family life. However, in Arkady's painting, she was depicted in the image of a child leaning on the knee of the Savior and being blessed by him. Mamaev says that the plot of the painting "tore" him: "in the face of the baby, blessed by the Savior, I recognized the features of Verinka, raised to the ideal of innocence of the first years of childhood," Arkady depicted himself in the image of "a shepherd tormented by passions" ^{[7, p. 235]}. "It seemed that this man heard in the words of the Savior the solution to the riddle that had tormented him all his life; it seemed that he would like to plunge into his former innocent infancy… He raised the gaze of hope and fear to heaven" ^{[7, p. 234]}. Faith, infancy, children (who, according to the Gospel of Matthew, appear to the Kingdom of Heaven), angelic appearance and/or angelic essence – such a spectrum of the "heavenly" meta-image is embodied in the story of N. A. Polevoy as quite typical for romantics. 

The end of earthly natural life, the death of heroes is a typical motif of romantic works. The fairy-tale plan of E. T. A. Hoffman's novella "Lord of Fleas" plot ends with the death of the characters. The maiden Dertje Elverdink, aka Princess Gamaheya – the daughter of the fabulous king Sekakis and the Queen of Flowers and the former Jena student Georg Pepusch – the fabulous Zeherit, aka thistle – disappear into earthly life to unite in mythological space: "In the middle of a beautiful bosket, a tall Cactus grandiflorus grew overnight, its flower drooped, withered in the morning rays, and a purple-yellow tulip lovingly wrapped around it, which died the same death of the plant" ^{[27, p. 894]}. The semantics of a flower here is far from what a flower means in the conventional sense. Getting into an individual picture of the world, the semantics of a word form can not only change, but also be ironically reinterpreted. The tulip is a symbol of love, according to Persian legend (it was brought to Vienna from Persia) was born from the blood and tears of a girl who went to the desert in search of her lover. Hoffmann's tulip girl in earthly life is frivolous and fickle. The thistle is a symbol of longevity and perseverance (because the cut plant does not immediately die), in Christianity it is a symbol of earthly suffering, martyrdom. Hoffmann's hero in real space undergoes alienation, turns out to be intemperate and touchy. The union of the heroes in death symbolizes their finding happiness.

Following F. Schelling, who proclaimed mythology the eternal image and source of art, I.V. Kireevsky accurately expressed the essence of the mythological tradition in the spiritual life and integral development of the people: "The mythology of the people is the inheritance that they receive from the former unity and with which they separate from the community of mankind" ^{[28, p.244]}. The mythopoetics of Romantics, based on the ideas of F. Schelling, holds together the romantic picture of the world. Embodying their idea of Nature, of the structure of the universe, of the human spirit and the spiritual fullness of existence in the general system of being, romantics became the creators of their own "poetic" natural philosophy, figuratively revealing what, according to their ideas, is hidden behind the visible, what meanings are hidden behind the obvious.

The understanding of the universe as a spiritualized being reflected in the artistic world of romantics is inherited by some writers in the 20th century. Only one example is characteristic in this sense. G. Hesse owns a quote: "Every person comes across an open gate here and there on the path of life, everyone someday comes to the idea that everything visible is a symbol and that the spirit and eternal life dwell behind the symbol" ^{[29, p. 354]}. In his fairy tale "Iris", flowers, still appearing annually on the surface of the earth, conceal a mystery. A hero named Anselm could not choose the right path and missed the "little Iris". After long wanderings, he sees "the cup of a huge flower", "Anselm enters its blue cup with an easy step", descends into the "secret of the secret blue depths", "down to his homeland" ^{[29, p. 367]}. In the national cultural consciousness, the image of a female angel performing a protective function remains significant. This can be judged by the texts of modern mass literature, representative in their own way in this aspect, for example, by the lyrics of songs (O. Orlova "Goodbye, my friend"; S. Osiashvili "You are not an angel"; V. Baranova "Honey, honey ...", etc.), movie scripts ("Nuts", directed by A. Surikov, based on the novel of the same name by V. Kunin) and others.

The tradition of romantically perceiving the world as a spiritualized substance, as Nature in a mystical universal movement, present in the literature of the XX – XXI centuries, requires further consideration.

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