In the first part of the article, the author discusses the function and meaning of the category of the (Dionysian) body in Thus Spoke Zarathustra and shows the significant presence of Nietzschean impulses (the body–dancer concept, the vision of the woman and other) in Russian Symbolists’ poetic thinking about the body and corporeality (V. Briusov, F. Sologub, A. Blok). The second part of the article provides a contextual interpretation of dance as an ecstatic whirl and as a creation of a symbolic I–You (man–woman) relationship in A. Blok’s cycle of poems entitled Zaklatie ogniom i mrakom. The author reveals the overt and implicit reminiscences of Zarathustra’s “Second Dance-Song” and analyses the image of the body and the meanings of corporeality in Blok’s poetry.
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