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The article examines two female images by A. Tennyson, the Lady of Shalott and Godiva from the eponymous poems, through the prism of biblical and iconographic allusions. The former (Shalott) alludes to the plot and iconography of The Annunciation, the latter (Godiva)-to the motifs of The Old Testament and The Apocalypse. Picturesque paintings by the Pre-Raphaelites, among which were a number of those related to these Tennyson plots, provide even more reassurance with regard to the significance of biblical plots and iconographic canons in the specified Tennyson's works. Sufferings, fatalism, sensuousness, antinomicity, picturesqueness-all this made the Tennyson female images magnetic to Russian Modernist writers, the images which were in harmony with the spirit of the turn of the twentieth century. K. Balmont and I. Bunin in their translations of the Tennyson's poems made their own interpretations of the images of the Lady of Shalott and Godiva, accentuating (and even adding) details and nuances of meanings important for symbolist aesthetics.
Keywords: literature and visual arts / English poetry / Tennyson, Alfred / female characters / Lady Shalott / Lady Godiva / iconography / biblical allusions / Pre-Raphaelites / Russian translations / Balmont, Konstantin / Bunin, Ivan Aleksejevič
Russian literature was always open to the world's influence, but at certain times certain cultures became of increasing interest. The turn of the twentieth century was one of such periods, termed the Silver Age. Distinctive features were the West European cultural realities, literary movements, motifs and images chosen by Russian writers - in the first place by symbolists - to transmit to Russian ground. For example, the aesthetics of the Pre-Raphaelites with their cult of the archaic, close attention to the Middle Ages, to mythology, their aspiration for the synthesis of the arts, their intimate relationship with romanticism, proved to be in exceptional consonance with the symbolists' quest.
The Pre-Raphaelites' work is, in turn, inseparable from the poetry of their elder contemporary, Alfred Lord Tennyson, who captivated Russian minds in the Silver Age on the back of the increasing popularity of Rossetti, Hunt, Millais, Waterhouse. They not only admired Tennyson's poetry but also created a number of paintings inspired by his verses and poems. Tennyson was translated in Russia already during his lifetime (from 1859) but at the...