Verbalization of image of an apple tree in V.A. Soloukhin’s poetry

We analyze linguistic features of poetic texts by V.A. Soloukhin, included in the collection “Poems” (1990). The subject of research is the image of an apple tree from the point of view of the specifics of its verbalization in the individual author’s picture of the world by V.A. Soloukhin in comparison with the linguistic embodiment of the image of an apple tree in the linguistic picture of the world of Russian people. The relevance of research lies in the fact that V.A. Soloukhin’s poetic picture of the world is analyzed from various linguistic and cultural positions, which is associated with the ability of a lexeme to absorb both ethnocultural information and individual author’s information. The purpose of study is to comprehend the role of the dendronym apple tree in the author’s work as a carrier of figurative folklore and mythological meanings. The image of a tree is considered in the context of the manifestation of the Russian mentality, culture and history. The study may have a practical focus in the teaching of Russian, including Russian as a foreign language; when studying the creativity of V.A. Soloukhin in the literary course and in the compilation of author’s dictionaries. It is concluded that the apple tree in the artistic picture of the world of V.A. Soloukhina is inextricably linked with the image of the Russian garden. The author, associating the concept of life and death with the apple tree, recalls the harm that a person can cause to wildlife, and by including in his works lexemes describing the flowering of an apple tree, the beauty of its fruits, wilting of leaves, coarsening of trunks and roots, he shows cyclicality life not only of a tree, but also of a person.