Spirit, Being and Liberty. Premature by BaratynskyAgainst the Foil of the Bible

Abstract

The paper deals with the “pneumatology” of Evgeny Baratynsky’s poem Prema­ture. The topic of the poem stems from the “windy” nature of the Holy Spirit. In the language of the Bible, the Holy Spirit denotes God’s Wind or God’s Breath: God gives life by sharing his breath or Spirit and takes life by taking the breath away. As dry wind, God’s Breath can be deadly. The Spirit is the source of life and death, existence and annihilation, ephemerality and infinity. The Bible has not yet developed the notion of abstract or invisible air. Rather, the Bible endows the Holy Spirit with anthropomorphic qualities of freedom and willpower to bring life or death. These anthropomorphic features characterize Baratynsky’s poetry. Baratynsky’s “winged sigh” rushed about between the earth and the sky in a way that the Holy Spirit rushed over the waters. This “winged sigh” creates a “prema­ture” only to see its doomed and fleeting existence, an attribute of humanity.