Kotovych A. The functional specificity of prose in Osip Mandelstam's artistic system

The thesis investigates specifics of Osip Mandelstam’s prose in terms of its functional contrasting to the poet’s lyric. Nature of the relationship between Mandelstam’s prose and lyric at different levels and in different periods of his writing was profoundly studied and refined. The paper stresses certain non-equivalence of Mandelstam’s prosaic and poetic structures on the motive-topic level. The cases of intersection of the poet’s prose and poetic art world – so-called equivalences - were thoroughly detailed. Their analysis has proved that in the poet’s artistic system the prose shapes the pole of negative values while the lyric embraces positive ones. According to the nature of relationships between Mandelstam’s prose and poetry the nature of his abidance of two traditions - classical (Pushkin) and symbolic - was worked out.