Conceptualization of “Living by the river” in the lyrics of the Ugra poet Vladimir Mazin

This article aims to identify and describe the conceptual pattern in the work of the Ugra poet Vladimir Mazin devoted to the life by the Vakh river whose image is connected with his small Motherland and childhood. Linguistic and cultural analysis of the tokens from the collections of the poems published in 1997–2005 enabled to discover the features of the poet's individual perception of “Life by the river” whose integral important part is fishing accompanied by certain important phenomena (i. e., knowledge of fishing techniques, the transfer of the traditional type of fishing to the younger generation, etc.). This enabled us to develop the basic statement about the independence of the “Life by the River” concept sphere. The complexity of conceptualizing vivid poetic images of the small Motherland is the relative feature of Vladimir Mazin’s poetry. Creativity and life experience helped him reveal the diversity and significance of the element of water for the northern people mentality. It was also found that depending on the territorial and climatic conditions, fishing is one of the main ancient ways of obtaining food which is synonymic to the northern people’s survival. The results also show that to describe the atmosphere of the northern region and the small Motherland, the author uses at least 35 most frequent lexemes related to various thematic groups (river, fishing, fish, tackle, small Motherland, fellow villagers, etc.). Another characteristic feature of Vladimir Mazin's poetry is the use of toponymic vocabulary indicating the bind of the lyrical character to a specific area. The image of the lyrical character created by the poet is autobiographical, the described events and atmosphere of «life by the river» are bound to particular time and space making the images more realistic.