Poetyka zapachów w świecie przedstawionym Dmitrija Mierieżkowskiego

Motifs of smells appear to be essential as the far as the structure of the world presented in the works by Dmitry Merezhkovsky is concerned. The writer makes many attempts to define the general features of smells, the way they influence man and the relationship between information being transmitted by means of aromas and the cultural context of transmission. There are two discernible and opposite groups of smells in the works by Merezhkovsky. One of them consists of pleasant olfactory impressions, indicating indirectly the meaning of life and bloom, whereas the other group contains nasty smell impressions connected with death and decay. Motifs of smells perform mnemonic and indentyfying functions in the structure of works being analyzed. Apart from analytically reconstructed principles of immanent poetics of smells, we can come across essays and feature writings with directly worded category of smell transmitting metaphorical senses, typical for concepts of religion, interpretation of Gospel, the style of culture and historiosophy, being fostered by Merezhkovsky. That group of judgements makes apeculiarly formulated poetics of smells. Both systems of poetics of smells reveal close connections with one another.