North and south in the poetry of Bella Akhmadulina

The article analyzes Bella Akhmadulina's poems of the 1960s and the 1980s from the collections Dreams of Georgia and The Garden. The purpose of the work is to analyze the features of the functioning of the images of north and south using biographical, descriptive, and comparative methods. Based on the analysis, it is concluded that north and south in Akhmadulina's poems form a spatial and symbolic opposition that was evolving throughout the three decades under study. While in the 1960s the concept of “north” was abstract and appeared as an antipode of “south”, in the 1980s it was localized, with Saint Petersburg and Karelia being marked as northern territories. In the works of the 1960s and the 1970s addressing the southern theme the plot of escape and return is realized. According to the author, it can be correlated with the biblical story of the exile from Paradise. Thus, south assumes paradisiacal connotations in the poems. Special attention is also paid to the analysis of the “center - periphery” opposition, which is important for revealing the images of north and south in Akhmadulina's lyric poetry.